What Does Amos 2:6 Mean in the King James?
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 analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
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.
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.
Thou shalt not wrest judgment; thou shalt not respect persons, neither take a gift: for a gift doth blind the eyes of the wise, and pervert the words of the righteous.Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.THE THREAD
That we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes; yea, and sell the refuse of 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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