Amos 5:25 - Exposition

Ye have always been idolaters, corrupters of pure worship. Your service in the wilderness, when you were little exposed to external influence, was no more true and faithful than that which you offer now; that was as unacceptable as this. Have ye offered unto me? Did ye offer unto me? The answer expected is "No;" i.e. you did not so really, because your worship was mixed with falsehood, and was not offered simply and genuinely to me. It is certain, too, that during the sojourn in the wilderness sacrificial worship fell greatly into desuetude, as we know that the rite of circumcision was suspended ( Joshua 5:5-7 ), the Passover was not duly celebrated, and Joshua urged the people to put away the strange gods from among them ( Joshua 24:23 ). Moses, too, doubtless with a view to existing practices, warns them against worshipping the heavenly bodies ( Deuteronomy 4:19 ), and offering sacrifice unto devils ( seirim ), "after whom they had gone a-whoring" (Le Joshua 17:7 ). The prophets, too, allude to the idolatry practised in the desert (see Ezekiel 20:7-26 ; Hosea 9:10 ). But to argue (as some neologians do) from this passage of Amos that the Israelites during those forty years knew nothing of Jehovah, or that Amos himself denies that they offered him any worship, is absurd, seeing that the prophet presupposes the fact, and blames them for corrupting the Divine service and mingling the prescribed and enacted ritual with idolatrous accretions. Sacrifices ; slain, bloody sacrifices. Offerings ; bloodless sacrifices, meal offerings.