Amos5chapter 5

The chapter opens in the rhythm of a funeral dirge — a limping metre Israelites associated with professional mourners at a graveside. Singing it over a prosperous kingdom was as shocking as reading someone their own obituary at their birthday party.

The gate was the courthouse. Excavated Israelite city gates at Dan, Beersheba, and Gezer have chambers with stone benches built into them, and this is where elders heard cases, witnesses testified, and contracts were sealed — the shaded, public bottleneck every citizen passed through. When Amos says they hate the one who reproves in the gate and take a bribe and push aside the needy, he is naming a specific place with a specific address.

The astronomy in the middle is not decoration. Pleiades and Orion were watched across the ancient world and were the property of star cults everywhere; Amos hands them to the God who made them and who turns deep darkness into morning and calls for the waters of the sea.

The two names at the end, Sikkuth and Kiyyun, are Assyrian astral deities associated with the planet Saturn. Their appearance in Israel's worship shows how far imported religion had come, and it shows up centuries later in Stephen's speech, quoted from this chapter.