Amos 5:21–24

Amos 5:21 — "I hate, I despise your feasts" The double verb — sane'ti (I hate) and ma'asti (I despise/reject) — is without parallel in its ferocity in prophetic literature. These are not mild qualifications; they represent the full weight of divine revulsion. The "feasts" (ḥaggîm) refer to the great pilgrimage festivals of the liturgical calendar: Passover, Weeks (Pentecost), and Tabernacles. These were mandated by the Torah itself. God is not rejecting the institutions He ordained — He is rejecting the spirit, or rather the absence of spirit, with which they are being celebrated. Amos preaches in the northern kingdom of Israel under Jeroboam II (c. 786–746 BC), a period of startling economic prosperity and correspondingly stark social inequality. The sanctuaries at Bethel and Gilgal were thriving with cultic activity (cf. Amos 4:4–5), yet the courts were corrupt, the poor were sold for a pair of sandals (Amos 2:6), and the widow's cloak was kept overnight in pledge (Amos 2:8). It is precisely this contradiction — lavish religion coexisting with systemic injustice — that provokes the divine "hatred." The liturgical calendar continued, but the moral ecology that gives worship its meaning had collapsed.

Amos 5:22 — "Yes, though you offer me your burnt offerings and meal offerings" Amos extends the indictment from festival celebrations to the regular sacrificial system. Burnt offerings (ʿōlôt) were wholly consumed on the altar, representing total self-offering to God. Meal offerings (minḥôt) were grain offerings of thanksgiving. The phrase "I will not accept" (lō' ʾerṣeh) is a technical priestly term: it describes sacrifices that fail to achieve their theological purpose. God does not merely dislike these offerings — He refuses to receive them. The peace offerings (šelamîm) mentioned in the continuation are fellowship sacrifices shared between God, priest, and worshipper, symbolizing covenant communion. By rejecting all three categories — holocaust, oblation, and communion sacrifice — the Lord signals that no liturgical category, however scripturally legitimate, can substitute for the moral conversion He demands. The "fatted animals" represent costly, prestigious sacrifices — the best was being given outwardly, while the heart remained unreformed.

Amos 5:23 — "Take away from me the noise of your songs" The word "noise" (hāmôn) is deliberately jarring — the same word used for the tumult of a crowd or the roar of battle. What the worshippers experienced as beautiful temple music, God hears as mere cacophony. The harps (nĕbālîm) accompanied the Levitical choirs in liturgical psalmody. Again, these were not intrinsically wrong; the Psalms themselves call for exactly this musical worship. The point is that song divorced from lived justice is mere acoustic performance. It makes no claim on God. The prophetic imagination here performs a radical de-aestheticization of false religion: what sounds sublime to human ears is noise to God when it rises from lives that oppress the vulnerable.

Amos 5:24 — "But let justice roll on like rivers" The great climax. Mišpāṭ (justice) and ṣĕdāqāh (righteousness) are the twin poles of the prophetic moral vocabulary. Mišpāṭ concerns the proper ordering of community life, especially fair legal judgment; ṣĕdāqāh is the relational fidelity that undergirds right action — covenant loyalty lived outward. The image of a river (naḥal) is specifically the wadi, the seasonal desert stream that runs powerfully after rain but can dry to nothing. Amos says justice must roll like an ever-flowing stream (ʾêtān) — not seasonal piety, not occasional acts of charity, but a persistent, structural, unstoppable current of righteous action. This is not the abolition of worship but its true completion: liturgy that pours itself out into the transformation of the world.

Catholic tradition brings a rich and distinctive lens to this passage. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that "the desire for God is written in the human heart" (CCC 27) and that authentic worship must engage the whole person — but it also insists, quoting Isaiah 1 and implicitly the prophetic tradition of which Amos is a part, that worship divorced from conversion is "empty religiosity" (CCC 2100–2101). The Catechism explicitly states: "The 'pure worship' God desires… requires an interior conversion… it is this conversion of heart that gives cult its value."

St. Augustine, commenting on similar prophetic texts, writes in De Civitate Dei (X.5–6) that the true sacrifice acceptable to God is the sacrificium cordis — the sacrifice of a broken and contrite heart — and that all external sacrifice derives its meaning from this inner offering. He reads Amos's thundering rejection of Israel's feasts as a precursor to Christ's own purification of the Temple (John 2:13–22).

St. John Chrysostom went further, applying this directly to the Eucharist in his Homilies on Matthew (Hom. 50): "Do you wish to honor the Body of Christ? Do not ignore him when he is naked. Do not pay him homage in the temple clad in silk, only to neglect him outside where he is cold and ill-clad." This is a direct patristic echo of Amos 5:21–24 applied to the Christian sacramental context.

Pope Benedict XVI, in Deus Caritas Est §31, teaches that the Church's charitable activity is not merely social work but flows organically from the Eucharist itself — the liturgy demands justice as its natural fruit. This is the positive fulfillment of Amos's negative warning.

Vatican II's Gaudium et Spes §43 warns against "a split between the faith which many profess and their daily lives" — precisely the rupture Amos condemns. For Catholics, Amos 5:21–24 is not a rejection of sacramental worship but a prophetic guarantee that sacramental worship, to be real, must issue in justice.

Contemporary Catholics can hear Amos's words as an uncomfortably direct address. It is possible to attend Sunday Mass with devotion, participate in parish events, complete the external calendar of Catholic practice — and yet live in ways that are indifferent or complicit in structural injustice: ignoring exploitative labor conditions in the products we buy, remaining silent about policies that harm the poor and vulnerable, treating colleagues unfairly, or withholding the mercy we perform ritually at the Sign of Peace.

Amos does not call Israel to stop worshipping — he calls it to let worship reshape every dimension of life. For a Catholic today, this means asking: Does my reception of the Eucharist move me toward greater solidarity with those who are poor? Does my Confession lead to repaired relationships and restitution where possible? Does my Lenten fasting open my hand to the hungry (cf. Isaiah 58:6–7)?

Concretely, parishes might examine: Does our community's financial stewardship reflect the justice we proclaim at the altar? Do our social structures — in family, workplace, civic life — embody the ṣĕdāqāh God demands? Amos warns that if not, our most beautiful liturgy is noise.