"Woe unto those that desire the Day of God! Wherefore would ye have the Day of God? It is darkness and not light. It is when one flees from a lion, And a bear meets him; Or goes into a house and leans his hand upon a wall, And a serpent bites him. Shall not the Day of God be darkness and not light, Yea, murky darkness, without a ray of light?" That is why, retorted the High Priest, the people come to Bethel and Gilgal and the other sanctuaries. They bring their sacrifices to God, that He may forgive their sins, against the coming of the Day of God, when all the guilty shall be judged and punished. Amos did not interrupt Amaziah because he was an old man, and Amos knew what courtesy was due the aged. But when the Priest had finished, the Prophet, with fine sarcasm, showed the uselessness and selfishness of the whole artificial scheme as practiced at the sanctuaries: "Come to Bethel and transgress, At Gilgal increase your transgressions, And bring in the morning your sacrifices, And every third day your tithes! Burn some leaven bread as a thanks-offering, And proclaim aloud the voluntary offerings, For you love to do so, O Israelites!" The sarcastic smile, however, suddenly faded from the speaker's lips, as he asked: "Did ye bring me sacrifices and meal-offerings in the wilderness, forty years, O House of Israel?" Then, with the power and fervor of the God-inspired man he was, Amos denounced bitterly the whole system of worshiping God by means of sacrifices, and delivered a message, new to his hearers, relating to what God really expected from Israel: "I hate, I despise your feasts, And I will take no delight in your festivals; With your meal-offerings I will not be pleased, And the peace-offerings of your fattlings I will not regard with favor. Banish from me the noise of your songs; To the melody of your viols I will not listen. But let justice roll down as waters, And righteousness as a never-failing stream." These concluding sentences literally stunned the crowd. Priest and people gasped at the Prophet's proclamation that God did not command the sacrifices at Sinai and did not care for them, but that, instead, He demanded justice and righteousness on the part of His people. The Prophet had upset all their ideas and traditions regarding their religious forms and practices, and he claimed God for his authority! No one can tell just what might have happened, there and then, had not a company of the royal guard, in answer to Amaziah's note to the king, rushed upon the crowd and dispersed it "in the name of the king."