What Does Amos 2:6 Mean?
Thus says the LORD; for three rebellions of Israel, and for four, I will not turn it back, because they sell the ones in alignment for silver, and the poor for a pair of sandals.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Thus saith the LORD; For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because they sold the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes;THE KEY
The verse exposes the price of injustice: people are treated as merchandise, whether the payment is silver or a pair of sandals.
THE MEANING
This verse names what happens when profit makes a person tradable: both the righteous and the poor are reduced to what someone will pay for them. The smallness of the price does not make the harm small; it shows how cheaply justice and human worth are being treated.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A person with little power can be treated as expendable, or justice can be traded away for a sufficient price.
THE ROOT
מִכְרָם
mikhrām
GROWS FROM
מכר
m-k-r
To sell; to transfer for a price.
“sold” in this verse is mikhrām. The Hebrew names a sale: a person is transferred for payment. Silver and sandals differ in value, but the same act makes a human being merchandise.
ALSO GROWS
māḵar: To sell
מָכַר
The verb gives the passage its stark action: people are transferred for a price.
mimkār: A sale or thing sold
מִמְכָּר
This noun makes the transaction itself visible, the person is treated as something that can be sold.
צַדִּיק
tsaddiq
GROWS FROM
צדק
ts-d-q
Rightness, justice, alignment.
“ones in alignment” in this verse is tsaddiq. The word describes a person in terms of rightness and justice, not merely a private virtue. Selling the righteous therefore turns the very person associated with justice into an object of an unjust transaction.
ALSO GROWS
tsedeq: Justice, rightness
צֶדֶק
The root connects the person called righteous with the order of justice that the sale violates.
tsedaqah: Righteousness, justice
צְדָקָה
This related word carries the same root into the practice or quality of rightness, sharpening the contrast with selling a person for gain.
THE PATTERN
When gain becomes the measure, justice is bent and people are treated as goods.
You shall not bend judgment. You shall not recognize faces, nor take a bribe, for the bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of the aligned.Look, the wages of the workers who mowed your fields, stripped away by your fraud, cry out, and the cries of those who reaped have gone into the ears of the LORD of hosts.THE THREAD
That we may buy the emptied for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals, and even sell what falls from the wheat?The same Hebrew root מכר (m-k-r, to sell) returns: Amos 2:6 names the sale, while Amos 8:6 voices the desire to buy the poor for silver and shoes. The repeated root makes the market logic plain: a human life is counted as something purchasable.
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