Amos 5:25
Did you offer victims and sacrifices to me in the desert for forty years, O house of Israel?
The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Numquid hostias et sacrificium obtulistis mihi in deserto quadraginta annis, domus Israël ?
- Septuagint (Swete)
- μὴ σφάγια καὶ θυσίας προσηνέγκατέ μοι ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ μ᾽ ἔτη, οἶκος Ἰσραήλ;
- Hebrew (WLC)
- הַזְּבָחִ֨ים וּמִנְחָ֜ה הִֽגַּשְׁתֶּם לִ֧י בַמִּדְבָּ֛ר אַרְבָּעִ֥ים שָׁנָ֖ה בֵּ֥ית יִשְׂרָאֵֽל
Haydock's commentary
Did you offer, &c. Except the sacrifices that were offered at the first, in the dedication of the tabernacle, the Israelites offered no sacrifices in the desert. (Challoner)
They ceased after the beginning of the second year. (St. Augustine, q. 47 in Exodus, Leviticus vii., &c.) (Worthington)
God did not require sacrifices when the people came out of Egypt, Jeremias vii. 22., and Deuteronomy xii. 8. They were not performed so regularly in the desert, (Calmet) and the people still bore a secret affection for idols, (ver. 26.) which rendered all their victims useless. (Haydock)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St Irenaeus Against Heresies: Book IV, Chapter XV. At first God deemed it
1. They (the Jews) had therefore a law, a course of discipline, and a prophecy of future things. For God at the first, indeed, warning them by means of natural precepts, which from the beginning He had implanted in mankind, that is, by means of the Decalogue (which, if any one does not observe, he has no salvation), did then demand nothing more of them. As Moses says in Deuteronomy, “These are all the words which the Lord spake to the whole assembly of the sons of Israel on the mount, and He added no more; and He wrote them on two tables of stone, and gave them to me.” For this reason [He did so], that they who are willing to follow Him might keep these commandments. …
St John Chrysostom A Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, Homily XVII on Acts vii. 35
This is very suitable to the matter in hand. “This Moses,” he says. “This,” the man who had been in danger of losing his life; the man who had been set at naught by them; “this” the man whom they had declined: “this” same, God having raised up, sent unto them. “Whom they refused, saying, Who made thee a ruler?” just as they themselves (the hearers) said, “We have no king, but Cæsar.” ( John xix. 15 .) He here shows also, that what was then done, was done by Christ. “The same did God send by the hand of the Angel,” who said unto him, “I am the God of Abraham.” “This” same Moses, he says, and observe how he points to his renown, “this” same Moses, he says, “brought them out, after that he had showed wonders and signs in the land of Egypt, and in the Red sea, and in the wilderness forty years. …
The Fathers are given as they wrote. Where a passage lays the Passion on the Jewish people, the Church teaches that it cannot be charged against all the Jews then living, nor against the Jews of today, and that all sinners were its authors (CCC 597, 598).