Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Amos · About this commentary
For Three Transgressions of Israel
Amos 2:6-8
6 Yahweh says: “For three transgressions of Israel, yes, for four, I will not turn away its punishment, because they have sold the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals; · WEB
The eighth oracle lands at home, and the crimes are priced in silver, sandals, and clothing taken as security.
The formula falls for the eighth and last time, on Israel, in the identical words used of Damascus and Gaza. Whatever the audience felt through seven verdicts, they are now inside the same sentence as the nations they had been agreeing about.
And the charges are startlingly small. Not atrocity, not idolatry — commerce. They sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals. The second detail is what indicts: a person's freedom traded for footwear, the price named to make it unanswerable. The same pairing returns near the book's end Amos 8:6.
Verse 7 adds the trampling of the poor into the dust and the turning aside of the afflicted — a courtroom phrase, about denying someone their case. Then a sexual charge, a man and his father using the same girl, and the reason given is not decency but desecration: to profane my holy name.
Verse 8 puts both halves of the book in one picture. They stretch out beside the altar on garments taken in pledge, and drink wine bought with fines in the house of their God. The law required a poor man's cloak returned by nightfall, since he sleeps in it. Here it is bedding at a shrine.
Worship and injustice are not two failures in this book. They are one scene.
settled What this mark means