I hate, I despise your feasts, And I can't stand your solemn assemblies.
The words in this verse carry the thought expressed in the King James Version, that "I will not smell in your solemn assemblies," reminding Israel of that threat in the law  (Leviticus 26:31).  Although the outward forms of the worship in Israel carried many distinctive likenesses to the true Mosaic Law from which much of it had been originally derived and later perverted, there were also radical and presumptuous departures from it. "So secure were they that the only sacrifice which they did not offer was the sin or trespass offering."[49]  "Amos stripped away all of Israel's false hopes."[50]  Here it was their trust in an inadequate, incomplete, unauthorized, perverted, and innovated worship.  In  Amos 3, he took away their vain trust in the doctrine of election.  In  Amos 4, he took away their trust in tithes and offerings; and also in this chapter (Amos 5:18-20), he took away their trust in the future destruction of their enemies by God Himself.