Bible Strands
Amos 8:6
Let us buy the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, selling even the chaff with the wheat!”
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The merchants address each other, impatient for religious observances to end so they can resume dishonest trade practices.
The words — The verb לִ/קְנ֤וֹת (li/k.Not) means "to buy," directly linked to נַעֲלָ֑יִם (na.'a.La.yim), literally "a pair of sandals."
The thread — This reduction of human worth to trivial currency parallels the exploitation condemned in Amos 2:6 and the creditor oppression addressed in Leviticus 25:39 and Nehemiah 5:1.
Why it lands — The text records merchants pricing the destitute at the cost of silver and footwear, requiring readers to recognize how transactional greed replaces justice.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
That we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes; yea, and sell the refuse of the wheat?
Cross-references
- Amos 2:6 This is what the LORD says: “For three transgressions of Israel, even four, I will not revoke My judgment, because they sell the righteous for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals.
- Leviticus 25:39 If a countryman among you becomes destitute and sells himself to you, then you must not force him into slave labor.
- Nehemiah 5:1 About that time there was a great outcry from the people and their wives against their fellow Jews.
- Nehemiah 5:8 and said, “We have done our best to buy back our Jewish brothers who were sold to foreigners, but now you are selling your own brothers, that they may be sold back to us!” But they remained silent, for they could find nothing to say.
- Joel 3:3 They cast lots for My people; they bartered a boy for a prostitute and sold a girl for wine to drink.
- Joel 3:6 You sold the people of Judah and Jerusalem to the Greeks, to send them far from their homeland.
- Amos 8:4 Hear this, you who trample the needy, who do away with the poor of the land,