Amos 4:4

Israel has an Appointment with God

4:4 “Go to Bethel ¹  and rebel! ² 

At Gilgal ³  rebel some more!

Bring your sacrifices in ⁴  the morning,

your tithes on ⁵  the third day!

Amos 4:9

4:9 “I destroyed your crops ⁶  with blight and disease.

Locusts kept ⁷  devouring your orchards, ⁸  vineyards, fig trees, and olive trees.

Still you did not come back to me.”

The Lord is speaking!

[4:4]  ¹ sn Bethel and Gilgal were important formal worship centers because of their importance in Israel’s history. Here the Lord ironically urges the people to visit these places so they can increase their sin against him. Their formal worship, because it was not accompanied by social justice, only made them more guilty in God’s sight by adding hypocrisy to their list of sins. Obviously, theirs was a twisted view of the Lord. They worshiped a god of their own creation in order to satisfy their religious impulses (see 4:5: “For you love to do this”). Note that none of the rituals listed in 4:4-5 have to do with sin.

[4:4]  ² tn The Hebrew word translated “rebel” (also in the following line) could very well refer here to Israel’s violations of their covenant with God (see also the term “crimes” in 1:3 [with note] and the phrase “covenant transgressions” in 2:4 [with note]; 3:14).

[4:4]  ³ sn See the note on Bethel earlier in this verse.

[4:4]  ⁴ tn Or “for.”

[4:4]  ⁵ tn Or “for.”

[4:9]  ⁶ tn Heb “you.” By metonymy the crops belonging to these people are meant. See the remainder of this verse, which describes the agricultural devastation caused by locusts.

[4:9]  ⁷ tn The Hiphil infinitive construct is taken adverbially (“kept”) and connected to the activity of the locusts (NJPS). It also could be taken with the preceding sentence and related to the Lord’s interventions (“I kept destroying,” cf. NEB, NJB, NIV, NRSV), or it could be understood substantivally in construct with the following nouns (“Locusts devoured your many orchards,” cf. NASB; cf. also KJV, NKJV).

[4:9]  ⁸ tn Or “gardens.”