Amos 4:5

Offer. Literally, “send [sacrifices] up in smoke.”

With leaven. The law provided that no leaven should be used in connection with any meal offering consumed by fire (see Lev. 6:17; 7:12; see on Lev. 2:11; 23:6). When cakes of leavened bread were offered on any occasion, they were not to be placed upon the altar and burned, but one was to be for the officiating priest and the rest eaten at the sacrificial meal (see Lev. 7:13, 14). Here again in irony the prophet charges that the people in their unlicensed zeal not only would burn on the altar that which was leavened but, to show how bountiful they were, would also offer by fire what was to be set apart for other uses.

Proclaim and publish. See on ch. 3:9. The prophet’s message continues in a tone of irony. Apparently the people of Amos’ day, like the Pharisees of Christ’s time (see Matt. 6:2), ostentatiously declared to their fellows that they were about to offer what they considered a freewill, not a compulsory, offering.

This liketh you. That is, you love this way of doing things. Israel clung to the false idea that religion consisted in the proper external forms of worship, oblivious to the fact that “to obey is better than sacrifice” (1 Sam. 15:22).