Did ye bring unto me sacrifices and oblations in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel?
Amos speaks to a nation busy with feasts, offerings and songs. God answers by reaching back forty years, to the wilderness, and asking what they really brought Him then. The question exposes the gap between how Israel looked and what was in their hearts. On that ground God announces the captivity to come.
The verse comes at the end of a section where God refuses everything Israel offers Him. The wilderness question is not a change of subject. It reaches back to the root of the problem.
The Lord took no pleasure in their offerings and sacrifices. He could not bear their solemn feasts. What He wanted was judgment and righteousness. But the people had been the same from the beginning. In the wilderness it was not Himself that they worshipped, but their Moloch and their Remphan, which they had made for themselves. So they would be carried away captive, beyond even the land they now dreaded. This last appeal of the prophet carries deeply important instruction. The evil principle that ruined them had been among them from the beginning. God's power stepped in and checked it, and turned aside its effect. But it was still there. As faith and godliness declined, and human interests no longer held it back, the same evil reappeared.
Idolatry looks like a later problem, something Israel picked up after settling in the land. God dates it much earlier, to a time that looked right on the surface.
God reminds them when and where their idolatry began: in the wilderness. They worshipped false gods there, Moloch and Chiun. They carried these gods the whole time the Levites were carrying the ark of the tabernacle, with the sons of Israel following so meekly behind. They had not got rid of the gods of Egypt yet. They brought these worthless things with them into the wilderness, and now God charges it against them.
Commentators differ on how to read the question. Some take it as a plain statement about the wilderness record.
As for history, we have no proof that anyone brought a single offering in all the time they were in the wilderness. Burnt offerings were always voluntary. In the state Israel was in, it is just as likely they never troubled themselves about it. They sinned without any sense of guilt, and they had certainly never circumcised their children, so they had no right to offer any sacrifice at all.
Another writer points to what was going on at the same time. They were sacrificing to the Lord while lavishing gifts on false gods.
One of the most repulsive features of this early corruption among the chosen people was this: all the while, they were offering victims and sacrifices to the Lord in the wilderness. Even the poorest can afford to spend freely in honour of false gods. The same people complain about what they owe the true God, as if He were a hard taskmaster and not the Giver of every good and every perfect gift.
Centuries lie between the wilderness and the exile that Amos announces. The delay is part of the lesson.
He let them know that divine judgment takes account of the first sin. Judgment may wait a long time — until the insult against God reaches a point where patience itself can bear no more.
Israel never judged that first sin. Their later history shows what one unjudged step costs a whole people.
It is only one step in a general, steady departure from God, a step never retraced and never repented of. It is solemn to say, but however many people may be delivered, the body as a whole never recovers from such decline. Each step downward only makes the fall faster… There were many reformations afterward, more or less partial, but no fresh start.
Judgment reaching back is not the whole story. When a person faces his own failure honestly, God does more than forgive.
He is faithful and just to forgive and cleanse. More than that, He loves to restore the one who has failed and bring him into a better condition than he had ever known before… Self-judgment, wherever it is thorough, wherever a person takes God's side against his own sin, always brings him deeper into God's grace than he has ever been. The depth of grace matches the depth of the repentance.
- Root. The idolatry God names did not start in the land. It began in the wilderness, brought in from Egypt while the Levites carried the ark in front of them.
- Rot. The offerings and feasts never stopped. That is what makes the charge so serious: religion carried on while the heart worshipped something else.
- Reading. Commentators differ. Some say Israel brought almost no sacrifices at all; others point to sacrifices offered to the Lord by hearts already given to idols.
- Reckoning. God traces the exile back to that first unjudged sin. He waits centuries, then dates the blow from its source.
- Recovery. A body never simply recovers from such decline. Yet one person's thorough self-judgment opens a depth of grace never known before.
Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of your Moloch, and Chiun your images, the star of your god, which ye had made to yourselves;
Amos speaks to a nation full of feast days and sacrifices. Then he names what they were also carrying in the wilderness. Two hard questions follow. Who were these gods with the strange names? And why does God charge a later generation with a sin from the wilderness?
The names in the verse belong to foreign gods. Acts quotes the passage in Stephen's speech to the council. One reference work traces the charge all the way back to Egypt:
The expression "the tabernacle of your Molech," Amos 5:26, is quoted in Acts 7:43-44. For forty years in the wilderness the Israelites had not worshipped Jehovah. Instead they carried symbols of Molech and Chiun (or Remphan) and worshipped them. The root of their idolatry was that in heart they had never made a clean break from Egypt.
The timing is what shocks. These idols moved with Israel while the nation honoured God's tabernacle. One writer reads this as a warning about religion that looks sound, and about judgment that waits:
When the Spirit of prophecy announced their coming captivity, He did not go back to the wicked kings of Israel, or to the shameless sons of David who ruled Judah. He went back to the idolatry in the wilderness — at the very time when they were outwardly honouring the tabernacle of Jehovah and the priesthood of Aaron. But all the while God saw how hollow their offerings and sacrifices in His name were. In their hearts, in secret, they took up the tent of Moloch and the star of the god Raiphan (or Romphan) — the images they made in order to worship them. God may wait with wonderful patience, but it is the early sin left unjudged that decides the outcome, even though the judgment may not be carried out for many centuries.
The same writer notices what people will spend on a false god:
Even the poorest can afford to be lavish in honour of false gods. Yet these are the people who complain about what is due to the true God, as if He were a harsh collector of dues and not the Giver of every good and every perfect gift.
The sin named here is not his own generation's. It belongs to their ancestors in the wilderness. One writer applies that to our own failures:
God, we may see, always goes back to the beginning when He judges. In the time of the Babylonian captivity, why did He judge Israel? He looks at what they did in the wilderness. It was because of Moloch and Chiun (Amos 5:26). They had learned to worship their images in the wilderness, and so they were to be carried captive beyond Damascus… So our wisdom as Christians, when we fail, is to go back to our first departure. We never get right by judging just this or that outbreak. We must always search out the cause.
Translators handle the Hebrew names in more than one way. Commentators differ: some keep "Moloch and Chiun" as names, and others read the words as objects — a shrine, a base, a star. One writer takes the second route. He also notes that Stephen says "Babylon" where Amos says "Damascus":
They had not got rid of the gods of Egypt then. They brought these worthless gods with them into the wilderness, and now God charges them with it. "But you have borne the shrines of your king, and the base of your images, the star of your god, which you made for yourselves." Notice the circumstances. "Therefore will I cause you to go into captivity" (the deportation to the cities of the Medes) "beyond Damascus." Stephen says beyond Babylon — and that is indeed what happened — perhaps to mark it off from the Babylonian captivity.
The ESV keeps the Hebrew names, "Sikkuth your king" and "Kiyyun your star-god." It also reads the line as something still to come, while the older rendering used above puts it in the past.
Israel's later idols were not a new invention. One writer traces them back to the same root:
The evil principle that ruined them had been among them from the beginning. God's power stepped in, held it in check and turned its effect aside; but it was still there. As faith and godliness declined, and human interests no longer held it back, the same evil reappeared. The calves at Dan and Bethel were only a repeat of the calf they made in the wilderness.
Another writer follows that decline to its end:
It is only one step in a general, persistent departure from God — a departure never retraced and never repented of. It is solemn to say it, but however many people may be delivered, the body as a whole never recovers from such a decline. Every step downward makes the fall faster… There were many reformations afterward, more or less partial, but no fresh start.
- Root — The idols came from Egypt. Israel left the country; their hearts never did.
- Cargo — What they carried told the truth. A false king's shrine went with them while they honoured God's tabernacle.
- Cover — The sacrifices never stopped, and God called that worship hollow.
- Cause — When God judges, He goes back to the first departure, not the latest outbreak — and so should we when we fail.
- Consequence — Captivity "beyond Damascus" grew out of one wilderness sin. Unjudged evil only sleeps.