Therefore thus says Yahweh: 'Your wife shall be a prostitute in the city, and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword, and your land shall be divided by line; and you yourself shall die in a land that is unclean, and Israel shall surely be led away captive out of his land.'"
Behold in this terrible fate of Amaziah the utter worthlessness of a false religion.  The trouble in Israel was not merely their "insincerity" in their worship, and not even their "oppression of the poor," which is made out by most modern commentators to be the sum and substance of all that was wrong; but it was their total departure from the Word of God in (1) setting up shrines without divine authority; (2) commissioning priests who according to the Law of Moses were not legitimate; (3) installing idols, such as the golden calves of Jeroboam; (4) polluting their worship through the burning of "leavened bread" to produce an aromatic smell; (5) omitting all sin-offerings, as if they were not sinners; (6) introducing the unauthorized instruments of music "like David"; (7) committing fornication after the ancient pagan rites observed by the followers of Baal, and doing it in the very shrines and lying down by every altar (!) in Israel "upon the clothing" extorted from the poor; (8) drinking wine out of sacred vessels dedicated to God's service, etc. The very suggestion that a tender regard for the poor and a deep sincerity on the part of the people could have sanctified and legitimatized such a bastard religion as that is an affront to all that is written in the Holy Scriptures.  The religion by which men hope to receive and retain the favor of Almighty God must be something far more than a sensitive humanism with reference to the common needs and sufferings of mankind, and something far more than a "sincere" following of and participation in some traditional system of worship.  Just as ancient Israel had a plumb-line, by which they could have measured, corrected, and constructed a proper and obedient faith, our own generation has the same privilege, that plumb-line, of course, being the teaching of the Word of God. Despite this, many, it would appear, are still making the same fatal mistake as that of the ancient Israelites.