Amos 5:7

Translations

King James Version (KJV)

You who turn judgment to wormwood, and leave off righteousness in the earth,

American King James Version (AKJV)

You who turn judgment to wormwood, and leave off righteousness in the earth,

American Standard Version (ASV)

Ye who turn justice to wormwood, and cast down righteousness to the earth,

Basic English Translation (BBE)

You who make the work of judging a bitter thing, crushing down righteousness to the earth;

Webster's Revision

Ye who turn judgment to wormwood, and leave off righteousness on the earth,

World English Bible

You who turn justice to wormwood, and cast down righteousness to the earth:

English Revised Version (ERV)

Ye who turn judgment to wormwood, and cast down righteousness to the earth;

Definitions for Amos 5:7

Wormwood - A bitter plant; bitterness.

Clarke's Amos 5:7 Bible Commentary

Ye who turn judgment to wormwood - Who pervert judgment; causing him who obtains his suit to mourn sorely over the expenses he has incurred in gaining his right.

Barnes's Amos 5:7 Bible Commentary

Ye who turn - Those whom he calls to seek God, were people filled with all injustice, who turned the sweetness of justice into the bitterness of wormwood . Moses had used "gall" and "wormwood" as a proverb; "lest there be among you a root that beareth gall and wormwood; the Lord will not spare him, but then the anger of the Lord and His jealousy shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him" Deuteronomy 29:18, Deuteronomy 29:20. The word of Amos would remind them of the word of Moses.

And leave off righteousness in the earth - Better, "and set righteousness to rest on the ground" . They dethroned righteousness, the representative and vice-gerent of God, and made it rest on the ground. The "little horn," Daniel says, should "cast truth to the ground" Daniel 8:12. These seem to have blended outrage with insult, as when "the Lord our Righteousness" Jeremiah 23:6 took our flesh, "they put on Him" the "scarlet robe, and the crown of thorns" upon His Head, and bowed the knee before Him, and mocked Him," and then "crucified Him." They "deposed" her, "set her down," it may be, with a mock make-believe deference, as people now-a-days, in civil terms, depose God, ignoring Him and His right over them. They set her on the ground and so left her, the image of God. This they did, not in one way only, but in all the ways in which they could. He does not limit it to the "righteousness" shown in doing justice. It includes all transactions between man and man, in which right enters, all buying and selling, all equity, all giving to another his due. All the bands of society were dissolved, and righteousness was placed on the ground, to be trampled on by all in all things.

Wesley's Amos 5:7 Bible Commentary

5:7 Ye - Rulers and judges. Judgment - The righteous sentence of the law. To wormwood - Proverbially understood; bitterness, injustice and oppression. Leave off - Make to cease in your courts of judicature.