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Artwork for Let Judgment Run Down as Waters

Amos 5:1-6:14

Let Judgment Run Down as Waters

Lyrics · Amos

Let Judgment Run Down as Waters

Amos 5:1-6:14

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About this song

About this song

This song belongs to the Amos collection. One recording is available to play here, with the complete lyrics below.

Bible book
Amos
Collection
Amos
Musical styles
Uncategorized
[Lament I] Hear the funeral while the city still sings, A nation has fallen beneath pleasant things. Seek me and live, not Bethel’s crowded stone, Not Gilgal’s road where the heart stays alone. [Refrain] You hate the rebuke that stands in the gate, Build houses of stone on the backs of the poor. [Lament II] Your songs fill the room, but I will not hear, When bribes close the court and the weak disappear. Let judgment run down as waters, Righteousness surge like a never-failing stream. [Hope Turn] Woe to the ease that reclines beside sorrow, Drinks from full bowls and forgets Joseph’s wound. Seek good, hate evil, establish the right, Or the day you desire will arrive without light. [Final Chorus] You hate the rebuke that stands in the gate, Build houses of stone on the backs of the poor. Seek good, hate evil, establish the right, Or the day you desire will arrive without light.

Named in this songBethelGilgal

About the passage

Amos 5: A funeral song before the feasting has ended

The Book of Amos turns chapter 5 into a funeral song while Israel’s ordinary life is still moving. The lament announces collapse, yet the chapter also repeats a narrow opening toward life: seek the LORD, seek good, establish judgment in the gate. That path is carefully distinguished from merely reaching Bethel, Gilgal, or Beersheba. Sacred destinations cannot substitute for justice where bribes are taken and the poor are denied their case. The expected day of the LORD is also overturned, becoming darkness rather than light, with one apparent refuge after another removed. Then worship itself comes under the same pressure. Feasts, offerings, songs, and instruments are rejected while judgment and righteousness are demanded like flowing water. The wilderness past supplies no automatic defense, and the chapter ends with captivity beyond Damascus rather than confidence in inherited religious forms.

Study Amos 5 in depth

Amos 6: First in comfort, first in captivity

The chapter opens on people who have learned to place the dangerous day conveniently far away while keeping violence close at hand. Zion and Samaria are both addressed, and rank, territory, and public importance are tested against the fate of other kingdoms. The most memorable room in the chapter is the banquet: ivory beds, carefully chosen food, invented music, bowls of wine, and fine ointments, all paired with one absence, grief over Joseph’s affliction. Their claim to precedence is answered with a bitter reversal as they become first in captivity. The crowded house then empties into death and frightened silence, and both great and little houses are struck. Finally, Amos compares corrupted justice to farming on rock and poisonous fruit. Boasts about self-made strength cannot survive the nation the LORD says he will raise against Israel across the length of its land.

Study Amos 6 in depth