Amos 4:1-5, Unpleasing Worship

Were you to liken any woman to a cow today, you would be rightly persecuted for it. It is a highly disparaging rudeness. So, is Amos to be faulted for calling the wealthy women of Samaria, Israel by this label?

4:1 “Hear this word, you cows of Bashan, who are on the mountain of Samaria, who oppress the poor, who crush the needy, who say to your husbands, ‘Bring us another drink!’ 2 The Sovereign Yahweh has sworn by his holiness, “Look, the days are coming when they will take you away with hooks, even the last of you like fish on a hook. 3 And you will be led out through the breaches in the wall, each one straight ahead; and you will be cast out into Harmon,” declares Yahweh.

4 “Come to Bethel, and transgress; to Gilgal, and keep on transgressing; bring your sacrifices every morning, your tithes every three days; 5 offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving of that which made with yeast, and proclaim freewill offerings, and brag about them; for so you love to do, O people of Israel!”  declares the Sovereign Yahweh.

Like the pampered buffalo cows used to make Mozzarella cheese in Italy, the cows of Bashan were famous for being fat and healthy when brought to slaughter. Amos is saying nothing about the appearance of the wealthy women of Israel, but about their pampering and their nearness to judgment. They are being judged because they are part of the system that crushes the needy, making constant demands of their husbands for what pleases them. They don’t care that the backs of the poor are broken to provide them with what they want.

Yahweh is promising, again, invasion by Assyria that would result in deportation of the conquered, leading them out of their broken-down city walls with, literally, fishhooks in their lips tied together with one another and marched naked for sometimes hundreds of miles. (https://enduringword.com/bible-commentary/amos-4/)

Again, besides oppression, the Israelites are being judged for their idolatry. Startlingly, Yahweh invites them, ironically, to keep sinning by coming to their worship sites (set up as alternates to Jerusalem) in Bethel and Gilgal, where they have set up images to worship Yahweh. He hates it. Their borrowing of Jewish and Gentile worship elements resulted in “a syncretistic Israelite religion devoid of real allegiance to the covenant” (Expositor’s Bible Commentary). The worshipers who brought offerings, thinking they were getting in good with Yahweh, were actually sinning against Him. Even if they brought exaggeratedly more than the Law of Moses required, their bragging about them and their direct disobedience about how to worship Yahweh condemns them.

Loving how we worship does not make it true worship.