What Does Amos 5:22 Mean?
Though you bring up to me ascending offerings and your grain gifts, I will not be pleased with them, and I will not look upon the wholeness offerings of your fattened beasts.
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
Though ye offer me burnt offerings and your meat offerings, I will not accept them: neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts.THE KEY
The burnt offerings are literally “ascents,” yet rising toward God does not compel God’s acceptance.
THE MEANING
An offering can be presented to God without receiving God’s acceptance. The burnt offerings ascend, yet God refuses them; even the peace offering is not regarded. The verse speaks directly: outward ritual does not compel divine regard.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie it undoes is that the sacredness of an offering guarantees that God receives it.
THE ROOT
עֹלוֹת
ʿolot
GROWS FROM
עלה
rise, ascend
“ascending offerings” in this verse is ʿolot. עֹלוֹת (ʿolot) grows from עלה (ʿalah, rise or ascend): it names the sacrifice as something that rises. Here, that upward movement ends in refusal, the offering’s ascent is not the same as being received.
ALSO GROWS
ʿalah: to rise, go up
עָלָה
This verb shares the root עלה and makes the movement inside the offering’s name audible.
maʿalah: ascent, step, upward course
מַעֲלָה
This noun carries the same root into the idea of an ascent, keeping the offering’s upward motion visible.
שֶׁלֶם
shelem
GROWS FROM
שלם
be whole, complete
“wholeness offerings” in this verse is shelem. שֶׁלֶם (shelem) carries the root’s sense of wholeness, also heard in שָׁלוֹם (shalom, wholeness). The same consonants form שִׁלֵּם (shillem, repay or make good), placing wholeness beside restoration; even an offering named for wholeness is not regarded here.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: wholeness, well-being
שָׁלוֹם
It shares all three consonants with שֶׁלֶם and makes the wholeness carried by the offering’s name explicit.
shillem: to repay, make good
שִׁלֵּם
It shares the root שלם and links wholeness with making something good or complete.
THE PATTERN
When justice is absent, ritual cannot secure God’s regard; justice and concrete care express worship’s substance.
But let judgment roll down like waters, and alignment like a stream that never runs dry.Learn to do good. Seek justice, straighten the crushed, judge the fatherless, contend for the widow.But do not let slip the good you do and the sharing in common, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.THE THREAD
What is the abundance of your slaughter to me, says the LORD? I am filled with the ascending offerings of rams and with the fat of the fattened beasts. I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of he-goats.The Hebrew for “burnt offerings” in both verses is עֹלוֹת (ʿolot), from עלה (ʿalah, to ascend). Isaiah names the same ascending offering while describing God’s refusal, so the shared root makes the repeated pattern visible.
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