What Does Amos 5:21 Mean in the King James?
I hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies.
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 LORD refuses even the scent of a sacred gathering when its form carries no welcome.
THE MEANING
The LORD’s refusal reaches both the feast and the assembly: he hates them, despises them, and receives no scent from them. The verse speaks now wherever sacred forms are treated as proof of divine welcome; the gathering’s name alone does not make it pleasing.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a sacred calendar or crowded assembly guarantees divine welcome.
THE ROOT
אָרִיחַ
ʾārîaḥ
GROWS FROM
ריח
To smell or perceive a scent.
The refusal is expressed through the senses: the LORD will not smell within these assemblies. This echoes the language of offerings whose fragrance is received as pleasing, making the verse a refusal of welcome, not merely a rejection of the occasion.
ALSO GROWS
rēaḥ: Scent, fragrance.
רֵיחַ
This noun names what the LORD refuses to receive in the assembly.
rēaḥ nîḥōaḥ: A pleasing aroma, especially of an offering.
רֵיחַ נִיחֹחַ
This familiar offering phrase makes the force of “I will not smell” clear: the expected sign of a received offering is absent.
THE PATTERN
A gathering or offering cannot stand in for the justice and care that give devotion its substance.
But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting.Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.THE THREAD
And the LORD smelled a sweet savour; and the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.Both verses use the same root for smell: here the LORD will not smell within the assemblies, while there he smells the offering’s pleasing fragrance. The shared image can mark reception or refusal; a gathering is not received simply because it is a gathering.
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