Amos 5:7
There are those who turn justice into wormwood and cast righteousness to the ground.
BSB
ASV
Ye who turn justice to wormwood, and cast down righteousness to the earth,
KJV
Ye who turn judgment to wormwood, and leave off righteousness in the earth,
Ye who turn - Those whom he calls to seek God, were people filled with all injustice, who turned the sweetness of justice into the bitterness of wormwood . Moses had used “gall” and “wormwood” as a proverb; “lest there be among you a root that beareth gall and wormwood; the Lord will not spare him, but then the anger of the Lord and His jealousy shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him” Deu 29:18, Deu 29:
Corruptio optimi est pessima -- The best, when corrupted, becomes the worst. "You leave off righteousness in the earth, as if those that do wrong were accountable to the God of heaven only, and not to the princes and judges of the earth. " Thus it was as before the flood, when the earth was filled with violence.
A mirrored structure
Amos 5:10Amos 5 chiasm inner pair: turning justice to wormwood mirrors hating the reprover in the gate.
de Waard, VT 27 (1977): 170-177
Rare words are the text's own signal of a deliberate thread: the fewer the occurrences, the more the places it appears belong together.
The walk8
Follow this verse’s cross-references two steps out. Each card is a verse this one points to, and beneath it the verses that one points to in turn. Where several different paths arrive at the same place, that place is listed first: the text keeps returning to it. Every stop shows its own words, and every stop is a page.
Through
Zephaniah 1:6and those who turn back from following the LORD, neither seeking the LORD nor inquiring of Him.”
leads to
“For My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living water, and they have dug their own cisterns—broken cisterns that cannot hold water.
Alas, O sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a brood of evildoers, children of depravity! They have forsaken the LORD; they have despised the Holy One of Israel and turned their backs on…
You have forsaken Me, declares the LORD. You have turned your back. So I will stretch out My hand against you and I will destroy you; I am weary of showing compassion.
Have you not brought this on yourself by forsaking the LORD your God when He led you in the way?
But My righteous one will live by faith; and if he shrinks back, I will take no pleasure in him.”
Through
Amos 6:12“Do horses gallop on the cliffs? Does one plow the sea with oxen? But you have turned justice into poison and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood—
leads to
They speak mere words; with false oaths they make covenants. So judgment springs up like poisonous weeds in the furrows of a field.
Reached by 2 independent paths from here.
Through
Deuteronomy 29:18Make sure there is no man or woman, clan or tribe among you today whose heart turns away from the LORD our God to go and worship the gods of those nations. Make sure…
leads to
See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God, and that no root of bitterness springs up to cause trouble and defile many.
But be careful that you are not enticed to turn aside to worship and bow down to other gods,
