Read the passage and its setting
Amos 2:6-8, King James Version
Italic words were supplied in the English translation for clarity.
Amos 2:6-8
Israel Sells the Innocent and Profanes Worship
The Main Point
Israel's courts, economy, sexuality, and sanctuary life converge in exploitation: people are sold cheaply, the poor and meek are crushed, a vulnerable young woman is used, and worship rests on seized goods.
What Is Happening Here?
Israel's courts, economy, sexuality, and sanctuary life converge in exploitation: people are sold cheaply, the poor and meek are crushed, a vulnerable young woman is used, and worship rests on seized goods.
What Came Before—and What Comes Next?
Judah's inherited religious identity failed to exempt it from judgment.
The LORD recalls conquest, Exodus, wilderness leading, prophets, and Nazirites as gifts Israel resisted.
Follow the Prophecy's Movement
See why this section appears here and how the author's oracle leads to its meaning.
Why Is This Passage Here?
The eight-oracle sequence reaches its intended hearers and shows their domestic social violence judged with the same seriousness as foreign atrocities.
Follow the Movement
The innocent or righteous and poor are sold for money and sandals.
The poor and meek are crushed or diverted from justice.
A man and his father exploit the same young woman and profane the holy name.
Pledged garments and wine from fines are used at altars.
What Is the Author Saying?
Why This Interpretation Fits
Movement 1
The innocent or righteous and poor are sold for money and sandals.
Movement 2
The poor and meek are crushed or diverted from justice.
Movement 3
A man and his father exploit the same young woman and profane the holy name.
Movement 4
Pledged garments and wine from fines are used at altars.
Understand the Meaning and Its Boundaries
Clarify the words that matter and keep the conclusion no broader than the passage allows.
Words That Matter
righteous
צַדִּיק · tsaddiq
An innocent or legally right person in the sale or court setting; it does not mean a flawless person.
What the Passage Is Not Saying
Reading Amos 2:6-8 inside Amos's complete judgment-restoration movement rules out these uses:
The passage does not teach that poverty proves moral failure.
The sexual charge does not authorize shaming a girl or survivor or assuming consent.
The indictment of Israel does not authorize antisemitism or replacement theology.
Context check: Religious practice profanes God's name when courts, markets, households, and altars are financed by the humiliation of vulnerable people.
What Remains True Today
Worship cannot be separated from the means by which wealth, access, and pleasure are obtained.
Respond and Remember
Let the meaning shape life carefully, then practice explaining the section in context.
How This Should Shape Us
Why these applications follow
Israel's courts, economy, sexuality, and sanctuary life converge in exploitation: people are sold cheaply, the poor and meek are crushed, a vulnerable young woman is used, and worship rests on seized goods.
Religious practice profanes God's name when courts, markets, households, and altars are financed by the humiliation of vulnerable people.
Worship cannot be separated from the means by which wealth, access, and pleasure are obtained.
How should this shape us today?
Review courts, lending, safeguarding, pledges, and religious spending together, centering those with least power.
A Concrete Example
A church can prohibit leader relationships where power blocks consent and independently audit whether benevolence recipients are pressured for repayment or access.
Teach It Back
Explain Amos 2:6-8 in your own words. Include its place in Amos's judgment-restoration movement, one material uncertainty, and one use the context rules out.
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Go Deeper
The main explanation above stands on its own. Open these optional sections for fuller language, history, disagreements, and source locations.
Read it sentence by sentenceEach line inside the larger movement
Movement 1
The innocent or righteous and poor are sold for money and sandals.
Movement 2
The poor and meek are crushed or diverted from justice.
Movement 3
A man and his father exploit the same young woman and profane the holy name.
Movement 4
Pledged garments and wine from fines are used at altars.
Original-language wording and grammarTechnical detail appears only where it helps
righteous
An innocent or legally right person in the sale or court setting; it does not mean a flawless person.
How certain? probableWhat the first readers would have understoodRelevant history and culture
Israel, Judah, empire, land, and the limits of reconstruction
Debt, legal decisions at gates, pledge practices, household power, and sanctuary feasting form plausible northern Israelite settings. The text does not blame poverty on laziness or imply consent where power is unequal.
How certain? probableWhy translations sometimes differMaterial translation choices
KJV wording and material alternatives
Several clauses are difficult: the dust image may mean trampling or intense greed; 'maid' need not identify a cult prostitute; 'condemned' wine may be bought with fines. The cumulative exploitation is clearer than one full social reconstruction.
How certain? probableEarlier Scripture and inherited backgroundSupported quotations, allusions, and inherited ideas
Amos among Israel's Scriptures
Torah protects pledged clothing, fair judgment, the poor, and sexual boundaries; Amos presents worship that contradicts those protections.
How certain? strongHow this connects with the rest of ScriptureThe passage's own meaning remains primary
Responsible canonical connections
Amos applies the victim-centered standard used for nations to Israel itself, preventing chosenness from becoming immunity.
How certain? probableTextual variantsManuscript differences only when they affect meaning
No textual variant materially changes this unit's responsible reader-facing explanation; translation and historical uncertainties remain documented elsewhere.
Where careful interpreters disagreeThe strongest options and their difficulties
Where do careful interpreters disagree?
Best judgment: Debt sale versus corrupt conviction, the dust idiom, the young woman's status, and the source of the wine remain debated; exploitation across connected institutions is explicit.
How certain? probableTheology that emerges from this passageConclusions drawn after reading the complete section
Theological contribution
The LORD identifies holy-name profanation through what powerful worshipers do to poor, meek, indebted, and sexually vulnerable people.
How certain? strongTheological contribution
This unit contributes to Amos's movement from judgment through contested hope to covenant mercy: Israel's courts, economy, sexuality, and sanctuary life converge in exploitation: people are sold cheaply, the poor and meek are crushed, a vulnerable young woman is used, and worship rests on seized goods.
How certain? strongCommon ways this passage gets misusedFair explanation, context check, and stronger reading
The passage does not teach that poverty proves moral failure.
A vivid line can feel easier to reuse than the whole oracle's historical target and literary movement.
Religious practice profanes God's name when courts, markets, households, and altars are financed by the humiliation of vulnerable people.
Worship cannot be separated from the means by which wealth, access, and pleasure are obtained.
The passage does not teach that poverty proves moral failure.
The sexual charge does not authorize shaming a girl or survivor or assuming consent.
A strong prophetic claim can be detached from the LORD's role and the text's protection of harmed people.
Religious practice profanes God's name when courts, markets, households, and altars are financed by the humiliation of vulnerable people.
Worship cannot be separated from the means by which wealth, access, and pleasure are obtained.
The sexual charge does not authorize shaming a girl or survivor or assuming consent.
The indictment of Israel does not authorize antisemitism or replacement theology.
Readers may prefer a modern slogan where the passage preserves textual, historical, or ethical limits.
Religious practice profanes God's name when courts, markets, households, and altars are financed by the humiliation of vulnerable people.
Worship cannot be separated from the means by which wealth, access, and pleasure are obtained.
The indictment of Israel does not authorize antisemitism or replacement theology.
Research trail and exact locationsThe source record behind this section
Supports: Exact reader-facing Scripture wording, paragraph markers, supplied-word markup, and complete verse coverage.
Amos 2:6-8, pinned eng-kjv2006 USFM corpus
Supports: Masoretic Hebrew wording, morphology, clause relationships, wordplays, names, and the base text behind translation discussion.
Open Scriptures MorphHB v.2.2, commit 6a5db284c715c18b239422e57bb89684e6a19f00, wlc/Amos.xml, 2:6-8
Supports: Verse-level translation, syntax, textual, literary, historical, and uncertainty notes.
NET Bible Amos PDF, printed pp. 1708-1710, translation and notes on 2:6-8
Supports: Whole-book movement, eighth-century horizon, literary boundaries, composition, and verse-level alternatives.
Dines, 'Amos,' Oxford Bible Commentary, printed pp. 583-584, discussion of 2:6-8
Supports: Social injustice, cult criticism, gate practice, exploitation, and the justice-righteousness demand in Amos 5.
Groenewald, 'But let justice roll down…,' HTS 75.3 (2019), pp. 1-10, especially pp. 4-8; applied to 2:6-8
Sources for This Section
These records identify the source, the claim it supports, and the exact location used. A source remains evidence to evaluate; it does not replace the biblical text.
Biblical text
King James (Authorized) Version — eng-kjv2006
eBible.org and CrossWire Bible Society
USFM archive eng-kjv2006_usfm.zip; source files dated 2026-08-19; downloaded 2026-08-24; archive SHA-256 aec1b3b26c622fd3d963d2bbac963016b9513246ffbfa20da00bb100372ea007; normalized corpus SHA-256 09aef51d90488aa7b9722b3fd9a93f4b25f6bf2064c5fd798fb39673c300ddf2.
Supports: Exact reader-facing Scripture wording, paragraph markers, supplied-word markup, and complete verse coverage.
Exact location: Amos 2:6-8, pinned eng-kjv2006 USFM corpus
Open source ↗hebrew text and morphology
Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible: Amos
Open Scriptures
Open Scriptures, release 2.2
Supports: Masoretic Hebrew wording, morphology, clause relationships, wordplays, names, and the base text behind translation discussion.
Exact location: Open Scriptures MorphHB v.2.2, commit 6a5db284c715c18b239422e57bb89684e6a19f00, wlc/Amos.xml, 2:6-8
Open source ↗translation and translator notes
NET Bible: Amos with translators' notes
Biblical Studies Press
Biblical Studies Press, 2006
Supports: Verse-level translation, syntax, textual, literary, historical, and uncertainty notes.
Exact location: NET Bible Amos PDF, printed pp. 1708-1710, translation and notes on 2:6-8
Open source ↗modern critical commentary
Amos
Jennifer M. Dines
Oxford University Press, in The Oxford Bible Commentary, 2001
Supports: Whole-book movement, eighth-century horizon, literary boundaries, composition, and verse-level alternatives.
Exact location: Dines, 'Amos,' Oxford Bible Commentary, printed pp. 583-584, discussion of 2:6-8
Open source ↗peer reviewed journal article
'But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream' (Amos 5:24): Social justice versus cult criticism in Amos (5:21-24) and Isaiah (1:10-20)
Alphonso Groenewald
HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 75.3, 2019
Supports: Social injustice, cult criticism, gate practice, exploitation, and the justice-righteousness demand in Amos 5.
Exact location: Groenewald, 'But let justice roll down…,' HTS 75.3 (2019), pp. 1-10, especially pp. 4-8; applied to 2:6-8
Open source ↗