I Hate Your Festivals - The Meaning of Amos 5:21

In this post we will tackle the meaning of God's words spoken to the prophet Amos.

"I hate, I despise your religious festivals; your assemblies are a stench to me." -Amos 5:21

The easy way to read this passage in Amos is to connect the despised religious festivals with the Biblical holidays. Pastors and Bible commentaries will tell you verses like these are proof that even God doesn't like the Bible holidays like Passover or the Feast of Tabernacles, so of course he doesn't expect his people to celebrate them today. You can see the logic, why should we do something if God despises that thing?

While there's logic to a view like this, pulling this one verse out of context with the book that it's in (not to mention the rest of the Bible) leads us to an extremely incorrect understanding of this Bible verse. Amos 5:21 is not about YHWH despising his own holidays that he invented and then commanded his people to keep. If that were true, that would be rather confusing to have God go back and forth about what he thinks of the holidays. But if we take a look at the book of Amos, and the context in which it was written, we will see that this is not the case.

The first thing we need to know about the context of Amos was that it was written to the northern kingdom of Israel after the unified kingdom of Israel had been split into two under the reign of King Solomon's son, Rehoboam. This matters because after the split, YHWH consistently has a specific grievance against the northern kingdom. Over and over, Scripture tells us that Israel's kings continued to follow in the sins of Jeroboam, who first ruled Israel after it was divided. The sins of Jeroboam were especially offensive to YHWH.

What were the sins of Jeroboam? For as much as they get brought up, they are not what you would expect. He didn't turn his back on YHWH and go on genocidal rampages. He didn't tell the people to worship Baal or other idols. He simply changed how the people worshipped YHWH. 

God traced the blame for Israel's sins to this man for generations.

One of the adjustments Jeroboam made was changing when the Biblical holidays happened.

Amos was written many generations after Jeroboam, but the northern house of Israel was now ruled by another king who "did not turn away from the sins of Jeroboam" (2 Kings 14:23). Fittingly, he was called Jeroboam II (the two weren't related, but had a spiritual connection). Given this context, knowing that an on-going sin in Israel had to do with not abiding by the directions God gave for the Biblical holidays, we should be able to see Amos 5:21 in a different light.

It was bad enough for Jeroboam to change the holidays in the first place, but more than 137 years later, you can imagine the game of 'telephone' that had been played regarding the commandments for the holidays (and surely most other areas of life). A century of sin later, the Israelites would have been even further removed from the correct ways to worship and how YHWH wanted his feasts to be kept and celebrated.

The festivals that God hates in Amos 5:21 are not his. They had been badly twisted and perverted by thirteen dysfunctional kings. Scripture doesn't tell us exactly what they were doing on these holidays, but it wasn't what God had told them to do. Under the reign of the original King Jeroboam, the northern kingdom of Israel had stopped following Biblical instructions for their religious celebrations. This was despised by the YHWH.

If we look at the context when these words were spoken and written we will see that the northern house of Israel was not diligently keeping the Biblical holidays in the times and ways that God had directed them. In fact, they had departed so much from the instructions that he had given that he did not recognize them as his own. That's why he called them your festivals. The holidays that YHWH hates in Amos are not the ones he made or told his people to celebrate.

Related posts:
What Were the Sins of Jeroboam?
The Two Houses: Israel and Judah in Scripture
Why the Biblical Holidays are for All Believers

What Were the Sins of Jeroboam in the Bible? (After Israel Was Divided)

Reading through Kings so many of their lives contain what appears to be a footnote and it goes like this, "But nevertheless he did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam, which made Israel to sin." This summation is at the end of almost every King of Israel's story. "He did some good stuff, but he walked like Jeroboam." No matter how many things they did for YHWH, military victories, and accomplishments of their reign, if they lived like Jeroboam that's the defining theme of their lives in Scripture.

If you aren't familiar with him, Jeroboam was the first king of the Northern House of Israel, which first gets mentioned in 1 Kings 11 after the ten tribes of Israel split away from the tribe of Judah. While Israel refers collectively to all twelve tribes from Genesis up through the reigns of Kings Saul, David, and Solomon, after the split under Solomon's son Rehoboam, the term 'Israel' refers to the ten northern tribes.

What did Jeroboam do that made his name one of the biggest insults in Scripture? Generation after generation YHWH traced the blame for Israel's sins to this man. You might be surprised by how innocuous his offensives seem in our culture.

Jeroboam:
-made two golden calves
-set up temples in high places
-decided himself who could be a priest
-moved the feast dates

I certainly don't want to downplay how he transgressed against YHWH, but those things seem fairly low-key don't they? He is not described as a murderer or war hungry. He did not make it illegal to worship YHWH in his kingdom. In fact, 1 Kings 12:28 tells us that he was trying to make worship of YHWH more convenient for his people as, "it is too much for you to go to Jerusalem."

(You can read about Jeroboam in 1 Kings 11:26 - 12)

So Jeroboam: did the same thing as Aaron by creating golden calves; set up a house of worship according to what he felt like doing; used his own standards for who would work in this ministry; moved the date of a Biblical festival. Do these things sound eerily familiar? A leader has decided that the things YHWH has asked are too difficult for the people, so he announces his alternative ideas, as if they were commandments. That can be seen in every pastor that teaches YHWH's instructions are too hard and every rabbi that says a chicken is an appropriate Yom Kippur sacrificial substitute. They are going to do what they see is best, while ignoring the word of YHWH.

It's interesting that 1 Kings 12:32 describes Jeroboam's feast "like the feast that is in Judah." He did not create a new feast to worship a false god or himself. He simply decided to move the feasts of the seventh month (Yom Teruah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot) to the eighth month of the year. This seemingly unimportant adjustment is hugely offensive to YHWH. Rescheduling something that YHWH instructed caused Israel to sin for generations. In light of that, it is extremely important for Christians to evaluate the holidays that they keep. In many ways how Easter is celebrated in churches is very similar to Passover. It's like the feast that happens in Scripture, but traditions are valued more than the word of YHWH. Christmas is somewhat like the festival of Sukkot, except it's not YHWH's idea. Do we want to have something in common with a man who caused all of Israel to walk in sin?

In the first golden calf story in Exodus 32 Israel did not mean to turn away from YHWH. They simply decided for themselves rather than following YHWH's instructions how they would worship. In verse five it says that all the golden calf business was meant to be "a festival to YHWH." Like Jeroboam, their plan wasn't to jump ship entirely and worship a false god. They just wanted to decide how they would serve the Living God. But YHWH has not left that up to us.

Jeroboam did not stop at offending YHWH with his disobedience. He made the culture of Israel one where it was easy to sin. He created a lifestyle of defying what YHWH said, while having it be close enough that people could think they were on the right track. Probably all of us were born into circumstances like that, where the decisions of those before us caused us to sin. A culture of celebrating Easter instead of Passover. Of worship on Sunday instead of Shabbat. Church potlucks serving ham. We were made to sin by those who came before us. We were born into traditions we never realized we should question. Like Israel's kings who had their walk after Jeroboam, YHWH wants us to turn away from that.

The story of Jehu is striking. Israel's 11th king lead a military coup against a corrupt ruler, put to death the infamously wicked Jezebel, killed all the relatives of perhaps Israel's most evil king Ahab, staged a coercive operation to destroy the temple of Baal and it's worshippers, and tore down graven images of Baal. YHWH was pleased with his actions and even said that Jehu "did well in executing that which is righteous in my eyes." But then, just one sentence later, in 2 Kings 10:31, it says, "But Jehu took no heed to have his walk in the Torah of YHWH Elohim of Israel with all his heart: for he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam, who made Israel to sin."

That sentence speaks a strong truth of YHWH that we often forget: he's not that interested in our resumes. Tales of grandeur are not what he's after. You can fight amazing battles, and accomplish the bravest of feats, and still hear, "Nevertheless, he didn't turn away from simple sins. He walked like a man who wasn't even willing to attend a party when I wanted." That sentence of not departing from Jeroboam's ways is used something like 17 times in Kings because YHWH wants us to see that no matter what he wants us to live according to his instructions. This is the point Samuel made to King Saul when he said, "Obedience is better than sacrifice." To depart from the sin of Jeroboam's walk we need to follow YHWH's paths.

Related posts:
The Two Houses: Israel and Judah in Scripture
Understanding the Other 88% of the Bible
Understanding the Golden Calf