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Ye who turn judgment to wormwood - Who pervert judgment; causing him who obtains his suit to mourn sorely over the expenses he has incurred in gaining his right.

Ye who turn - Those whom he calls to seek God, were people filled with all injustice, who turned the sweetness of justice into the bitterness of wormwood. Moses had used “gall” and “wormwood” as a proverb; “lest there be among you a root that beareth gall and wormwood; the Lord will not spare him, but then the anger of the Lord and His jealousy shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him” Deuteronomy 29:18, Deuteronomy 29:20. The word of Amos would remind them of the word of Moses.

And leave off righteousness in the earth - Better, “and set righteousness to rest on the ground”. They dethroned righteousness, the representative and vice-gerent of God, and made it rest on the ground. The “little horn,” Daniel says, should “cast truth to the ground” Daniel 8:12. These seem to have blended outrage with insult, as when “the Lord our Righteousness” Jeremiah 23:6 took our flesh, “they put on Him” the “scarlet robe, and the crown of thorns” upon His Head, and bowed the knee before Him, and mocked Him,” and then “crucified Him.” They “deposed” her, “set her down,” it may be, with a mock make-believe deference, as people now-a-days, in civil terms, depose God, ignoring Him and His right over them. They set her on the ground and so left her, the image of God. This they did, not in one way only, but in all the ways in which they could. He does not limit it to the “righteousness” shown in doing justice. It includes all transactions between man and man, in which right enters, all buying and selling, all equity, all giving to another his due. All the bands of society were dissolved, and righteousness was placed on the ground, to be trampled on by all in all things.

The same almighty power can, for repenting sinners, easily turn affliction and sorrow into prosperity and joy, and as easily turn the prosperity of daring sinners into utter darkness. Evil times will not bear plain dealing; that is, evil men will not. And these men were evil men indeed, when wise and good men thought it in vain even to speak to them. Those who will seek and love that which is good, may help to save the land from ruin. It behoves us to plead God's spiritual promises, to beseech him to create in us a clean heart, and to renew a right spirit within us. The Lord is ever ready to be gracious to the souls that seek him; and then piety and every duty will be attended to. But as for sinful Israel, God's judgments had often passed by them, now they shall pass through them.