Amos 5:7

The Message

Woe to you who turn justice to vinegar and stomp righteousness into the mud. Do you realize where you are? You’re in a cosmos star-flung with constellations by God, A world God wakes up each morning and puts to bed each night. God dips water from the ocean and gives the land a drink. God, God-revealed, does all this. And he can destroy it as easily as make it. He can turn this vast wonder into total waste.

Cross References

Proverbs 21:7

The wicked get buried alive by their loot because they refuse to use it to help others.

Isaiah 10:1

Doom to you who legislate evil, who make laws that make victims— Laws that make misery for the poor, that rob my destitute people of dignity, Exploiting defenseless widows, taking advantage of homeless children. What will you have to say on Judgment Day, when Doomsday arrives out of the blue? Who will you get to help you? What good will your money do you? A sorry sight you’ll be then, huddled with the prisoners, or just some corpses stacked in the street. Even after all this, God is still angry, his fist still raised, ready to hit them again.

Isaiah 46:12

“Now listen to me: You’re a hardheaded bunch and hard to help. I’m ready to help you right now. Deliverance is not a long-range plan. Salvation isn’t on hold. I’m putting salvation to work in Zion now, and glory in Israel.”

Isaiah 5:20

Doom to you who call evil good and good evil, Who put darkness in place of light and light in place of darkness, Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!

Isaiah 5:7

Do you get it? The vineyard of God-of-the-Angel-Armies is the country of Israel. All the men and women of Judah are the garden he was so proud of. He looked for a crop of justice and saw them murdering each other. He looked for a harvest of righteousness and heard only the moans of victims.

Ezekiel 18:24

“The same thing goes for a good person who turns his back on an upright life and starts sinning, plunging into the same vile obscenities that the wicked person practices. Will this person live? I don’t keep a list of all the things this person did right, like money in the bank he can draw on. Because of his defection, because he accumulates sin, he’ll die.

Ezekiel 3:20

“And if the righteous turn back from living righteously and take up with evil when I step in and put them in a hard place, they’ll die. If you haven’t warned them, they’ll die because of their sins, and none of the right things they’ve done will count for anything—and I’ll hold you responsible. But if you warn these righteous people not to sin and they listen to you, they’ll live because they took the warning—and again, you’ll have saved your life.”

Amos 6:12

Do you hold a horse race in a field of rocks? Do you plow the sea with oxen? You’d cripple the horses and drown the oxen. And yet you’ve made a shambles of justice, a bloated corpse of righteousness, Bragging of your trivial pursuits, beating up on the weak and crowing, “Look what I’ve done!”

Micah 3:9

The leaders of Jacob and the leaders of Israel are Leaders contemptuous of justice, who twist and distort right living, Leaders who build Zion by killing people, who expand Jerusalem by committing crimes. Judges sell verdicts to the highest bidder, priests mass-market their teaching, prophets preach for high fees, All the while posturing and pretending dependence on God: “We’ve got God on our side. He’ll protect us from disaster.” Because of people like you, Zion will be turned back into farmland, Jerusalem end up as a pile of rubble, and instead of the Temple on the mountain, a few scraggly scrub pines.