Attributed commentary excerpt
Barnes' Notes on Amos 5:26
A historical reference excerpt for this verse. Read it alongside the biblical text and other available sources.
Notes on the Whole Bible
Albert Barnes (1798–1870) · 19th-century historical commentary
Source: BibleWord.ai's local reference edition of this named work.
But ye have borne - Literally, “And ye bare the tabernacle of your Moloch” (literally, “your king,” from where the idol Moloch had its name.) He assigns the reason, why he had denied that they sacririced to God in the wilderness. “Did ye offer sacrifices unto Me, and ye bare?” that is, seeing that ye bare. The two were incompatible. Since they did “carry about the tabernacle of their king,” they did not really worship God. He whom they chose as “their king,” was their god. The “tabernacle” or “tent” was probably a little portable shrine, such as Demetrius the silversmith and those of his craft made for the little statues of their goddess Diana Acts 19:24. Such are mentioned in Egyptian idolatry. “They carry forth” we are told , “the image in a small shrine of gilt wood.” Of your Moloch and Chiun - The two clauses must be read separately, the “tabernacles of Moloch” (strictly, “of your king,”) “and Chiun your images.” The two clauses, “the tabernacle of your king, and Chiun your images,” are altogether distinct. They correspond to one another, but they must not be read as one whole, in the sense, “the tabernacle of your king and of Chiun your images.” The rendering of the last clause is uncertain. God has so “utterly abolished the idols” Isaiah 2:18, through whom Satan contested with Him the allegiance of His people, that we have no certain knowledge, what they were. There may be some connection between the god whom the Israelites in the wilderness worshiped as “their king,” and him whose worship Solomon, in his decay, brought into Jerusalem, the god whom the Ammonites worshiped as “the king, Hammolech,” or, as he is once called, “Molech , and three times “Milchom” 1 Kings 11:5, 1Ki 11:33; 2 Kings 23:13 (perhaps an abstract, as some used to speak of “the Deity”). He is mostly called “Hammolech,” the Ammonite way of pronouncing what the Hebrews called “Hammelech, the king.” But since the name designates the god only as “the king,” it may have been given to different gods, whom the pagan worshiped as their chief god. In Jewish idolatry, it became equivalent to Baal Jeremiah 19:5; Jeremiah 32:35, “lord;” and to avert his displeasure, the Hebrews (as did the Carthaginians, a Phoenician people, down to the time of our Lord ), burned their own children, “their sons and their daughters,” alive to him. Yet, even in these dreadful rites, the Carthaginian worship was more cold-blooded and artificial than that of Phoenicia. But whether “the king,” whom the Israelites worshiped in the wilderness, was the same as the Ammonite Molech or no, those dreadful sacrifices were then no part of his worship; else Amos would not have spoken of the idolatry, “as the carrying about his tabernacle” only. He would have described it by its greatest offensiveness. “The king” was a title also of the Egyptian Deity, Osiris , who was identified with the sun, and whose worship Israel may probably have brought with them, as well as that of the calf, his symbol. Again most of the old translators have retained the Hebrew word Chiyyan , either regarding it as a proper name, or unable to translate it. Some later tradition identities it with tire planet Saturn , which under a different name, the Arabs propitiated as a malevolent being . In Ephrem’s time, the pagan Syrians worshiped “the child-devouring Chivan” . Israel however, did not learn the idolatry from the neighboring Arabs, since it is not the Arab name of that planet . In Egyptian, the name of Chunsu, one of the 12…
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