Let Justice Roll Down
21 I hate, I despise your feasts, and I can’t stand your solemn assemblies. 22 Yes, though you offer me your burnt offerings and meal offerings, I will not accept them; neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat animals. 23 Take away from me the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. 24 But let justice roll on like rivers, and righteousness like a mighty stream. 25 “Did you bring to me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, house of Israel? 26 You also carried the tent of your king and the shrine of your images, the star of your god, which you made for yourselves. 27 Therefore I will cause you to go into captivity beyond Damascus,” says Yahweh, whose name is the God of Armies.
The worship God rejects is his own prescribed worship, and what he asks for instead is described as moving water.
The verbs in verse 21 are the strongest in the book, spoken in the first person about festivals God himself instituted. I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Then the offerings are refused one kind at a time — burnt, grain, the peace offerings of fattened animals. Then the music: take away from me the noise of your songs.
Nothing here complains of the wrong ritual. Every item named is commanded elsewhere in Scripture. What is rejected is the whole apparatus, performed correctly, by the men described nine verses earlier as taking bribes in the gate.
Verse 24 gives the alternative in one image, and the image is chosen with care. But let justice roll on like rivers, and righteousness like a mighty stream. The Hebrew behind the last phrase names the stream that still runs in the dry season — most Palestinian streambeds are seasonal, full in the rains and empty when needed. Justice that arrives only in good years is a wadi. What is asked for is the rare kind that still runs in summer.
Verses 25 to 27 close with a question about the wilderness years and a charge of carrying images, and then the sentence: exile beyond Damascus. The third creation refrain of the book stands over it — whose name is the God of Armies.
The wilderness question and the images are taken up in the New Testament, in a speech that follows the quotation with the same sentence of exile Acts 7:42–43.
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