When Worship Interrupts Business

The merchants cannot wait for new moon and Sabbath observance to end so that business can resume. Their problem is not commerce but predatory commerce: they make the ephah small, the shekel great, falsify scales, buy the poor for money, and even sell the refuse of grain. Torah had explicitly condemned dishonest weights and exploitative treatment of the poor. Amos exposes a heart for which worship is merely an interruption between opportunities to cheat. The LORD swears not to forget these works. The land’s trembling in verse 8 links economic injustice to cosmic-scale judgment: private business practices are not morally private before God.