What Does Amos 5:23 Mean?
Remove from me the roar of your songs, for I will not hear and respond to the plucking of your harps.
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
Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols.THE KEY
A full, finely played song can still be refused as noise by the one it addresses.
THE MEANING
The verse names the songs as noise before God and says their melody does not compel God to hear them. Its force remains now: abundant sound and religious form do not by themselves create reception.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that beautiful or abundant religious performance guarantees divine reception.
THE ROOT
אֶשְׁמָע
eshmaʿ
GROWS FROM
שמע
shamaʿ
Hear, listen, attend to, or heed.
“hear and respond to” in this verse is eshmaʿ. The Hebrew word can reach from hearing sound to attending to or heeding what is heard. The verse places that receptive hearing beside music that is abundant but refused.
ALSO GROWS
shemaʿ: Hear; listen.
שְׁמַע
This imperative shares the same root and makes hearing an act of attention, not merely the arrival of sound.
shemuʿah: A report or news; something heard.
שְׁמוּעָה
This noun carries the root from hearing into what is received and communicated.
הֲמוֹן
hamon
GROWS FROM
המה
hamah
Roar, murmur, or make a tumultuous sound.
“roar” in this verse is hamon. Hamon can name a tumultuous mass or multitude; here it presents the songs as a surge of sound. Set beside shama, the line distinguishes abundant sound from attentive reception.
ALSO GROWS
hamah: To roar, murmur, or make noise.
הָמָה
The verbal form evokes the sound swelling behind the verse’s word for noise.
hamullah: Uproar or tumult.
הֲמוּלָה
This related word carries the same noisy force, illuminating how song can register as clamor rather than received expression.
הָסֵר
haser
GROWS FROM
סור
sur
Turn aside or depart; in a causative form, remove.
“Remove” in this verse is haser. The command pictures the sound being made to turn aside and leave God’s presence. The verse asks for removal before it speaks of hearing.
ALSO GROWS
sur: Turn aside or depart.
סוּר
This basic form shows the movement contained in the command to take the sound away.
hesir: Remove or take away.
הֵסִיר
This causative form from the same root expresses making something depart, as the verse does with the songs.
THE PATTERN
When ritual sound stands apart from justice and responsive listening, its abundance cannot compel divine reception.
But let judgment roll down like waters, and alignment like a stream that never runs dry.When you spread your palms, I will shut my eyes to you. Even when you multiply your prayers, I will not hear and respond. Your hands are filled with blood.Clean and unstained service before God and Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widowed in their being pressed, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.THE THREAD
And Samuel said, Does the LORD delight in rising offerings and slaughtered offerings as much as in hearing and responding to the voice of the LORD? Behold, hearing and responding is better than a slaughtered offering; to prick the ear is better than the fat of rams.Amos uses שמע (shamaʿ) when God says the melody will not be heard; Samuel uses the same root for hearkening to the LORD’s voice. The shared root draws a line between sound offered upward and the act of hearing that responds.
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