[1] J. J. P. Valeton, jun., Amos en Hosea, 1894: quoted by Budde in the Theologische Literaturzeitung, September, 1894.
[2] This date is very uncertain. It may have been 690, or according to some 685.
[3] Including, of course, the historical books, Joshua to 2 Kings, which were known as "the Former Prophets"; while what we call the prophets Isaiah to Malachi were known as "the Latter."
[4] ספר תרי עשר, the Aramaic form of the Hebrew עשר שנים, which appears with the other in the colophon to the book. A later contraction is תריסר. This is the form transliterated in Epiphanius: δαθαριασαρα.
[5] See Ryle, Canon of the O.T., p. 105.
[6] So Josephus, Contra Apion, i. 8 (circa 90 a.d.), reckons the prophetical books as thirteen, of which the Minor Prophets could only have been counted as one—whatever the other twelve may have been. Melito of Sardis (c. 170), quoted by Eusebius (Hist. Eccl., iv. 26), speaks of τῶν δώδεκα ἐν μονοβίβλῳ. To Origen (c. 250: apud Ibid., vi. 25) they could only have been one out of the twenty-two he gives for the O.T. Cf. Jerome (Prolog. Galeatus), "Liber duodecim Prophetarum."
[7] Οἱ Δώδεκα Προφῆται: Jesus son of Sirach xlix. 10; Τὸ δωδεκα-πρόφητον.
[8] Augustine, De Civ. Dei, xviii. 29: cf. Jerome, Proem. in Esaiam.
[9] The German usage generally preserves the numeral, "Die zwölf kleinen Propheten."
[10] See Vol. II. on Zech. ix. ff.
[11] Talmud: Baba Bathra, 14a: cf. Rashi's Commentary.
[12] Talmud, ibid.
[13] So the Codices Vaticanus and Alexandrinus, but not Cod. Sin. So also Cyril of Jerusalem († 386), Athanasius (365), Gregory Naz. († 390), and the spurious Canon of the Council of Laodicea (c. 400) and Epiphanius (403). See Ryle, Canon of the O.T., 215 ff.
[14] By a forced interpretation of the phrase in chap. i. 2, When the Lord spake at the first by Hosea (R.V.), Talmud: Baba Bathra, 14a.
[15] For further considerations on this point see pp. 142, 194, 202 ff., 223 ff., 308, etc.
[16] Psalm lxxiv. 9.
[17] Herodotus, viii. 36, 37.
[18] Timæus, 71, 72. The whole passage is worth transcribing:—
"No man, when in his senses, attains prophetic truth and inspiration; but when he receives the inspired word either his intelligence is enthralled by sleep, or he is demented by some distemper or possession. And he who would understand what he remembers to have been said, whether in dream or when he was awake, by the prophetic and enthusiastic nature, or what he has seen, must recover his senses; and then he will be able to explain rationally what all such words and apparitions mean, and what indications they afford, to this man or that, of past, present, or future, good and evil. But, while he continues demented, he cannot judge of the visions which he sees or the words which he utters; the ancient saying is very true that 'only a man in his senses can act or judge about himself and his own affairs.' And for this reason it is customary to appoint diviners or interpreters as discerners of the oracles of the gods. Some persons call them prophets; they do not know that they are only repeaters of dark sayings and visions, and are not to be called prophets at all, but only interpreters of prophecy."—Jowett's Translation.
[19] Nik., i. 91.
[20] Phædrus, 262 D.
[21] It is still a controversy whether the original meaning of the Semitic root KHN is prophet, as in the Arabic KâHiN, or priest, as in the Hebrew KôHeN.
[22] Cf. Jer. ii. 10: For pass over to the isles of Chittim, and see; and send unto Kedar, and consider diligently; and see if there be such a thing. Hath a nation changed their gods? From the isles of Chittim unto Kedar—the limits of the Semitic world.
[23] Numbers xxiv. 4, falling but having his eyes open. Ver. 1, enchantments ought to be omens.
[24] Instanced by Wellhausen, Skizzen u. Vorarb., No. v.
[25] איש אלהים
[26] רֹאֶה
[27] חזֶה
[28] Deut. xiii. 1 ff. admits that heathen seers were able to work miracles and give signs, as well as the prophets of Jehovah.
[29] Cf. Mesha's account of himself and Chemosh on the Moabite Stone, with the narrative of the taking of Ai in the Book of Joshua.
[30] Cf. Kuenen: Gesammelte Alhandlungen (trans. by Budde), p. 461.
[31] So in Deborah's Song.
[32] 1 Sam. ix. 9.
[33] 1 Sam. x. 1-16, xi. 1-11, 15. Chap. x. 17-27, xi. 12-14, belong to other and later documents. Cf. Robertson Smith, Old Testament in the Jewish Church, 135 ff.
[34] 1 Sam. xix. 20-24.
[35] What seemed most to induce the frenzy of the dervishes whom I watched was the fixing of their attention upon, the yearning of their minds after, the love of God. "Ya habeebi!"—"O my beloved!"—they cried.
[36] Cornill, in the first of his lectures on Der Israelitische Prophetismus, one of the very best popular studies of prophecy, by a master on the subject. See p. 73 n.
[37] It is now past doubt that these were two sacred stones used for decision in the case of an alternative issue. This is plain from the amended reading of Saul's prayer in 1 Sam. xiv. 41, 42 (after the LXX.): O Jehovah God of Israel, wherefore hast Thou not answered Thy servant this day? If the iniquity be in me or in Jonathan my son, O Jehovah God of Israel, give Urim: and if it be in Thy people Israel, give, I pray Thee, Thummim.
[38] Hosea iii. 4. See next chapter, p. 38.
[39] Cf. Deut. xxviii. 34.
[40] 2 Sam. xii. 1 ff.
[41] 1 Kings xi. 29; xii. 22.
[42] 1 Kings xiv. 2, 7-11; xix. 15 f.; 2 Kings ix. 3 ff.
[43] 1 Kings xxii. 5 ff.; 2 Kings iii. 11 ff.
[44] 1 Kings xxi. 1 ff.
[45] 2 Kings vi.-viii., etc.
[46] 1 Kings xviii. 46; 2 Kings iii. 15.
[47] 3 Kings ix. 11. Mad fellow, not necessarily a term of reproach.
[48] 1 Kings xviii. 4, cf. 19; 2 Kings ii. 3, 5; iv. 38-44; v. 20 ff.; vi. 1 ff.; viii. 8 f., etc.
[49] 1 Kings xviii. 19; xxii. 6.
[50] So Elijah, 2 Kings i. 8: cf. John the Baptist, Matt. iii. 4.
[51] Hosea ix. 7.
[52] Jer. xxix. 26: Every man that is mad, and worketh himself into prophecy (מתנבא, the same form as is used without moral reproach in 1 Sam. x. 10 ff.).
[53] 1 Kings xxii.
[54] Amos vii. 12.
[55] He died in 798 or 797.
[56] 2 Kings x. 32, xiii. 20, 22.
[57] 2 Kings xiii. 14.
[58] vi. 12 ff., etc.
[59] viii., etc.
[60] xiii. 17 ff.
[61] 2 Kings xiii. 22-25.
[62] xiv. 28, if not Damascus itself.
[63] 2 Kings xv.: cf. 2 Chron. xxvi.
[64] xii. 7 (Heb. ver. 8). Trans., As for Canaan, the balances, etc.
[65] Amos, passim. Hosea viii. 14, etc.; Micah iii. 12; Isa. ix. 10.
[66] ארמון, a word not found in the Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges, or Samuel, is used in 1 Kings xvi. 18, 2 Kings xv. 25, for a citadel within the palace of the king. Similarly in Isa. xxv. 2; Pro. xviii. 19. But in Amos generally of any large or grand house. That the name first appears in the time of Omri's alliance with Tyre, points to a Phœnician origin. Probably from root ארם, to be high.
[67] Isa. ix. 10.
[68] 1 Kings xii. 25 ff., and Amos and Hosea passim.
[69] Hosea v. 1.
[70] 1 Kings xviii. 30 ff.
[71] 1 Kings xii. 25.
[72] Originally so called from their elevation (though oftener on the flank than on the summit of a hill); but like the name High Street or the Scottish High Kirk, the term came to be dissociated from physical height and was applied to any sanctuary, even in a hollow, like so many of the sacred wells.
[73] The sanctuary itself was probably on the present site of the Burj Beitin (with the ruins of an early Christian Church), some few minutes to the south-east of the present village of Beitin, which probably represents the city of Bethel that was called Luz at the first.
[74] 1 Kings xii. 25 ff.; Amos vii.
[75] Amos iv. 4.
[76] Amos vii. 13.
[77] 1 Kings xii. 25 ff.
[78] Curiously enough conceived by many of the early Christian Fathers as containing the second of the calves. Cyril, Comm. in Hoseam, 5; Epiph., De Vitis Proph., 237; Chron. Pasc., 161.
[79] Josh. iv. 20 ff., v. 2 ff.; 1 Sam. xi. 14, 15, etc.; 2 Sam. xix. 15, 40. This Gilgal by Jericho fell to N. Israel after the Disruption; but there is nothing in Amos or Hosea to tell us, whether it or the Gilgal near Shiloh, which seems to have absorbed the sanctity of the latter, is the shrine which they couple with Bethel—except that they never talk of "going up" to it. The passage from Epiphanius in previous note speaks of the Gilgal with the calf as the "Gilgal which is in Shiloh."
[80] Site uncertain. See Hist. Geog., pp. 579, 586.
[81] Amos ix. 3. But cf. i. 2.
[82] 2 Kings xii. 28.
[84] The Ephod, the plated thing; presumably a wooden image covered either with a skin of metal or a cloak of metal. The Teraphim were images in human shape.
[85] The menhir of modern Palestine—not a hewn pillar, but oblong natural stone narrowing a little towards the top (cf. W. R. Smith, Religion of the Semites, 183-188). From Hosea x. 1, 2, it would appear that the maççeboth of the eighth century were artificial. They make good maççeboth (A.V. wrongly images).
[86] So indeed Hosea iii. 4 implies. The Asherah, the pole or symbolic tree of Canaanite worship, does not appear to have been used as a part of the ritual of Jehovah's worship. But, that there was constantly a temptation so to use it, is clear from Deut. xvi. 21, 22. See Driver on that passage.
[88] Amos iv. 4 ff.
[89] Amos vii. 4: cf. 2 Kings v. 23.
[90] Amos iv. 4 f.
[92] But whether these be by Amos see Chap. XI.
[93] Isa ix. 10.
[94] "The house of Omri": so even in Sargon's time, 722-705.
[95] The Black Obelisk of Salmanassar in the British Museum, on which the messengers of Jehu are portrayed.
[96] 2 Kings x. 32 f.; xiii. 3.
[97] 2 Kings xiii. 14 ff.
[98] The phrase in 2 Kings xiii. 5, Jehovah gave Israel a saviour, is interpreted by certain scholars as if the saviour were Assyria. In xiv. 27 he is plainly said to be Jeroboam.
[99] The entering in of Hamath (2 Kings xiv. 25).
[100] Salmanassar II. in 850, 849, 846 to war against Dad'idri of Damascus, and in 842 and 839 against Hazael, his successor.
[101] See in this series Isaiah, Vol. I., pp. 359 ff.
[103] To use the term which Amos adopts with such ironical force: vi. 14.
[104] When we get down among the details we shall see clear evidence for this fact, for instance, that Amos prophesied against Israel at a time when he thought that the Lord's anger was to be exhausted in purely natural chastisements of His people, and before it was revealed to him that Assyria was required to follow up these chastisements with a heavier blow. See Chap. VI., Section 2.
[105] That is, of course, not the Nile, but the great Wady, at present known as the Wady el 'Arish, which divides Palestine from Egypt.
[106] So already in the JE narratives of the Pentateuch.
[107] Lecky: History of European Morals, I.
[108] The present writer has already pointed out this with regard to Egypt and Phœnicia in Isaiah (Expositor's Bible Series), I., Chaps. XXII. and XXIII., and with regard to Philistia in Hist. Geog., p. 178.
[109] I put it this way only for the sake of making the logic clear; for it is a mistake to say that the prophets at any time held merely theoretic convictions. All their conviction was really experimental—never held apart from some illustration or proof of principle in actual history.
[110] יהוה צבאות: 1 Sam. i. 3; iv. 4; xvii. 45, where it is explained by the parallel phrase God of the armies of Israel; 2 Sam. vi. 2, where it is connected with Israel's battle emblem, the Ark (cf. Jer. xxii. 18); and so throughout Samuel and Kings, and also Chronicles, the Psalms, and most prophets. The plural צבאות is never used in the Old Testament except of human hosts, and generally of the armies or hosts of Israel. The theory therefore which sees the same meaning in the Divine title is probably the correct one. It was first put forward by Herder (Geist der Eb. Poesie, ii. 84, 85), and after some neglect it has been revived by Kautzsch (Z. A. T. W., vi. ff.) and Stade (Gesch., i. 437, n. 3). The alternatives are that the hosts originally meant those of heaven, either the angels (so, among others, Ewald, Hist., Eng. Ed., iii. 62) or the stars (so Delitzsch, Kuenen, Baudissin, Cheyne, Prophecies of Isaiah, i. 11). In the former of these two there is some force; but the reason given for the latter, that the name came to the front in Israel when the people were being drawn into connection with star-worshipping nations, especially Aram, seems to me baseless. Israel had not been long in touch with Aram in Saul's time, yet even then the name is accepted as if one of much earlier origin. A clear account of the argument on the other side to that taken in this note will be found in Smend, Altiestamentliche Religionsgeschichte, pp. 185 ff.
[112] The full list of suspected passages is this: (1) References to Judah—ii. 4, 5; vi. 1, in Zion; ix. 11, 12. (2) The three Outbreaks of Praise—iv. 13; v. 8, 9; ix. 5, 6. (3) The Final Hope—ix. 8-15, including vv. 11, 12, already mentioned. (4) Clauses alleged to reflect a later stage of history—i. 9-12; v. 1, 2, 15; vi. 2, 14. (5) Suspected for incompatibility—viii. 11-13.
[113] So designated to distinguish him from the first Jeroboam, the son of Nebat.
[114] Apart from the suspected parentheses already mentioned.
[115] Chap. vii.
[116] And, if vi. 2 be genuine, Hamath.
[117] 2 Chron. xxvi. 6. In the list of the Philistine cities, Amos i. 6-8, Gath does not occur, and in harmony with this in vi. 2 it is said to be overthrown; see pp. 173 f.
[118] 2 Kings. In Amos ii. 3 the ruler of Moab is called, not king, but שׁופט, or regent, such as Jeroboam substituted for the king of Moab.
[119] According to Grätz's emendation of vi. 13: we have taken Lo-Debar and Karnaim. Perhaps too in iii. 12, though the verse is very obscure, some settlement of Israelites in Damascus is implied. For Jeroboam's conquest of Aram (2 Kings xiv. 28), see p. 177.
[120] In 775 to Erini, "the country of the cedars"—that is, Mount Amanus, near the Gulf of Antioch; in 773 to Damascus; in 772 to Hadrach.
[121] vi. 1.
[122] vii. 9.
[123] Even König denies that the title is from Amos (Einleitung, 307); yet the ground on which he does so, the awkwardness of the double relative, does not appear sufficient. One does not write a title in the same style as an ordinary sentence.
[124] Zech. xiv. 5, and probably Isa. ix. 9, 10 (Eng.).
[125] iv. 11.
[126] Of course it is always possible to suspect—and let us by all means exhaust the possibilities of suspicion—that the title has been added by a scribe, who interpreted the forebodings of judgment which Amos expresses in the terms of earthquake as if they were the predictions of a real earthquake, and was anxious to show, by inserting the title, how they were fulfilled in the great convulsion of Uzziah's days. But to such a suspicion we have a complete answer. No later scribe, who understood the book he was dealing with, would have prefixed to it a title, with the motive just suspected, when in chap. iv. he read that an earthquake had just taken place. The very fact that such a title appears over a book, which speaks of the earthquake as past, surely attests the bona fides of the title. With that mention in chap. iv. of the earthquake as past, none would have ventured to say that Amos began to prophesy before the earthquake unless they had known this to be the case.
[127] Except for the later additions, not by Amos, to be afterwards noted.
[128] Cf. ii. 13; v. 11.; vi. 8, 10; vii. 9, 16; viii. 8 (?).
[130] Cornill: Der Israelitische Prophetismus. Five Lectures for the Educated Laity. 1894.
[131] Amos vii. 14. See further pp. 76 f.
[132] Khurbet Taḳûa', Hebrew Teḳôa', תְּקֹוע, from תקע, to blow a trumpet (cf. Jer. vi. 1, Blow the trumpet in Tekoa) or to pitch a tent. The latter seems the more probable derivation of the name, and suggests a nomadic origin, which agrees with the position of Tekoa on the borders of the desert. Tekoa does not occur in the list of the towns taken by Joshua. There are really no reasons for supposing that some other Tekoa is meant. The two that have been alleged are (1) that Amos exclusively refers to the Northern Kingdom, (2) that sycomores do not grow at such levels as Tekoa. These are dealt with on pp. 79 and 77 respectively.
[133] 2 Chron. xx. 20.
[134] נֹקֵד, nôḳêd, is doubtless the same as the Arabic "naḳḳâd," or keeper of the "naḳad," defined by Freytag as a short-legged and deformed race of sheep in the Bahrein province of Arabia, from which comes the proverb "viler than a naḳad"; yet the wool is very fine. The king of Moab is called נוֹקֵד in 2 Kings iii. 4 (A.V. sheep-master). In vii. 14 Amos calls himself בּוֹקֵר, cattleman, which there is no reason to alter, as some do, to נֹוקֵד.
[135] בֹּולֵס, bôlês, probably from a root (found in Æthiopic) balas, a fig; hence one who had to do with figs, handled them, ripened them.
[136] The Egyptian sycomore, Ficus sycomorus, is not found in Syria above one thousand feet above the sea, while Tekoa is more than twice as high as that. Cf. 1 Kings x. 27, the sycomores that are in the vale or valley land, עֵמֶק; 1 Chron. xxvii. 28, the sycomores that are in the low plains. "The sycamore grows in sand on the edge of the desert as vigorously as in the midst of a well-watered country. Its roots go deep in search of water, which infiltrates as far as the gorges of the hills, and they absorb it freely even where drought seems to reign supreme" (Maspero on the Egyptian sycomore; The Dawn of Civilization, translated by McClure, p. 26). "Everywhere on the confines of cultivated ground, and even at some distance from the valley, are fine single sycamores flourishing as though by miracle amid the sand.... They drink from water, which has infiltrated from the Nile, and whose existence is nowise betrayed upon the surface of the soil" (ib., 121). Always and still reverenced by Moslem and Christian.
[137] So practically Oort (Th. Tjidsch., 1891, 121 ff.), when compelled to abandon his previous conclusion (ib., 1880, 122 ff.) that the Tekoa of Amos lay in Northern Israel.
[138] In 1891 we met the Rushaideh, who cultivate Engedi, encamped just below Tekoa. But at other parts of the borders between the hill-country of Judæa and the desert, and between Moab and the desert, we found round most of the herdsmen's central wells a few fig-trees or pomegranates, or even apricots occasionally.
[139] Luke i. 80.
[140] Mark i. 18.
[141] v. 5; viii. 14.
[143] Prov. xxxi. 24.
[144] vi. 10.
[145] i. 9.
[146] v. 16.
[147] v. 21 ff.
[148] li. 7, 8.
[149] viii. 4 ff.
[150] vi. 1, 4-7.
[152] i. 2.
[153] שׁופר, as has been pointed out, means in early Israel always the trumpet blown as a summons to war; only in later Israel was the name given to the temple trumpet.
[154] See further on this important passage pp. 89 ff.
[155] Shall a little bird fall on the snare earthwards and there be no noose about her? Shall a snare rise from the ground and not be taking something? On this see p. 82. Its meaning seems to be equivalent to the Scottish proverb: "There's aye some water whan the stirkie droons."
[156] There is thus no reason to alter the words who shall not prophesy to who shall not tremble—as Wellhausen does. To do so is to blunt the point of the argument.
[160] viii. 8.
[161] viii. 9.
[162] v. 14.
[163] How far Assyria assisted the development of prophecy we have already seen. But we have been made aware, at the same time, that Assyria's service to Israel in this respect presupposed the possession by the prophets of certain beliefs in the character and will of their God, Jehovah. The prophets' faith could never have risen to the magnitude of the new problems set to it by Assyria if there had not been already inherent in it that belief in the sovereignty of a Righteousness of which all things material were but the instruments.
[164] Compare, for instance, Hosea's condemnation of Jehu's murder of Joram, with Elisha's command to do it; also 2 Kings iii. 19, 25, with Deut. xx. 19.
[166] Isa. xxviii.
[167] Amos ii.
[168] Ante, p. 74.
[169] i. 2.
[170] Therefore we see at a glance how utterly inadequate is Renan's brilliant comparison of Amos to a modern revolutionary journalist (Histoire du Peuple Israel, II.). Journalist indeed! How all this would-be cosmopolitan and impartial critic's judgments smack of the boulevards!
[171] Exod. xx.; incorporated in the JE book of history, and, according to nearly all critics, complete by 750; the contents must have been familiar in Israel long before that. There is no trace in Amos of any influence peculiar to either the Deuteronomic or the Levitical legislation.
[172] See especially Schultz, O. T. Theol., Eng. Trans. by Paterson, I. 214.
[173] ii. 9-11. On this passage see further p. 137.
[174] If iv. 13, v. 8 and ix. 6 be genuine, this remark equally applies to belief in Jehovah as Creator.
[175] Kayser, Old Testament Theology.
[176] v. 6, 14.
[178] iii. 2.
[179] v. 21 ff.
[180] Jer. vii. 22 f.
[182] v. 21-23.
[183] vi. 8.
[184] ix. 8
[185] viii. 7.
[186] Chap. V., p. 71.
[187] vii. 11.
[188] On the ministry of eighth-century prophets to the people see the author's Isaiah, I., p. 119.
[189] So LXX., followed by Hitzig and Wellhausen, by reading יֵצֶר for יֹוצֵר.
[190] Cf. Hist. Geography of the Holy Land, pp. 64 ff. The word translated spring crop above is לקש, and from the same root as the name of the latter rain, מַלְקֹושׁ, which falls in the end of March or beginning of April. Cf. Zeitschrift des deutschen Palästina-Vereins, IV. 83; VIII. 62.
[191] Cf. 1 Kings xviii. 5 with 1 Sam. vii. 15, 17; 1 Kings iv. 7 ff. See Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, 228.
[192] LXX.: Who shall raise up Jacob again?
[193] So Professor A. B. Davidson. But the grammar might equally well afford the rendering one calling that the Lord will punish with the fire, the ל of לריב marking the introduction of indirect speech (cf. Ewald, § 338a). But Hitzig for קרא reads קרה (Deut. xxv. 18), to occur, happen. So similarly Wellhausen, es nahte sich zu strafen mit Feuer der Herr Jahve. All these renderings yield practically the same meaning.
[194] A. B. Davidson, Syntax, § 57, Rem. 1.
[195] i. 19 f.
[196] Cf. Micah ii. 3. חֵלֶק is the word used, and according to the motive given above stands well for the climax of the fire's destructive work. This meets the objection of Wellhausen, who proposes to omit חֵלֶק, because the heat does not dry up first the great deep and then the fields (Ackerflur). This is to mistake the obvious point of the sentence. The drought was so great that, after the fountains were exhausted, it seemed as if the solid framework of the land, described with very apt pathos as the Portion, would be the next to disappear. Some take הלק as divided, therefore cultivated, ground.
[197] So for instance, Von Orelli.
[198] Chap. iv.
[200] Literally of the plummet, an obscure expression. It cannot mean plumb-straight, for the wall is condemned.
[201] 2 Kings xxi. 13: I will stretch over Jerusalem the line of Samaria and the plummet or weight (מִשְׁקֹלֶת) of the house of Ahab. Isa. xxxiv. 11: He shall stretch over it the cord of confusion, and the weights (literally stones) of emptiness.
[202] John xix. 12.
[203] The word seer is here used in a contemptuous sense, and has therefore to be translated by some such word as visionary.
[204] Literally eat.
[205] בֵּית מַמְלָכָה—that is, a central or capital sanctuary. Cf. הַמַּמְלָכָה עִיר (1 Sam. xxvii. 5), city of the kingdom, i.e. chief or capital town.
[206] 1 Kings xii. 26, 27.
[207] Prophet and prophet's son are equivalent terms, the latter meaning one of the professional guilds of prophets. There is no need to change herdsman, בוקר, as Wellhausen does, into נוקד, shepherd, the word used in i. 1.
[208] Cf. Wellhausen, Hist., Eng. Ed., § 6: "Amos was the founder and the purest type of a new order of prophecy."
[209] As is done in chap. vi. 2, ix. 7.
[210] So against Israel in chap. iv.
[211] So Isa. v. 25: לא שב אפו ועוד ידו נטויה Cf. Ezek. xx. 22: והשיבותי את ידי
[212] פשׁעים
[213] Called lûh, i.e. slab.
[214] These Syrian campaigns in Gilead must have taken place between 839 and 806, the long interval during which Damascus enjoyed freedom from Assyrian invasion.
[215] 2 Kings viii. 12; xiii. 7: cf. above, p. 31.
[216] He delivered them into the hand of Hazael king of Aram, and into the hand of Ben-Hadad the son of Hazael, continually (2 Kings xiii. 3).
[217] No need here to render prince, as some do.
[218] So the LXX.
[219] The present Baalbek (Baal of the Beḳ'a?). Wellhausen throws doubt on the idea that Heliopolis was at this time an Aramean town.
[220] ix. 7.
[221] Doughty: Arabia Deserta, I. 335.
[222] On the close connection of Edom and Gaza see Hist. Geog., pp. 182 ff.
[223] See Hist. Geog., pp. 194 ff. Wellhausen thinks Gath was not yet destroyed, and quotes vi. 2; Micah i. 10, 14. But we know that Hazael destroyed it, and that fact, taken in conjunction with its being the only omission here from the five Philistine towns, is evidence enough. In the passages quoted by Wellhausen there is nothing to the contrary: vi. 2 implies that Gath has fallen; Micah i. 10 is the repetition of an old proverb.
[224] Farrar, 53; Pusey on ver. 9; Pietschmann, Geschichte der Phönizier, 298.
[225] To which Wellhausen inclines.
[226] Gen. x.
[227] Under Asarhaddon, 678-676 b.c., and later under Assurbanipal (Pietschmann, Gesch., pp. 302 f.).
[228] And he omits it from his translation.
[229] So far from such an omission proving that the oracle is an insertion, is it not more probable that an insertor would have taken care to make his insertion formally correct?
[230] There seems no occasion to amend with Olshausen to the kept of Psalm ciii. 9.
[231] Read with LXX. שׁמר לנצח, though throughout the verse the LXX. translation is very vile.
[232] In other two passages, Boṣrah, the city, is placed in parallel not to another city, but just as here to a whole region: Isa. xxxiv. 6, where the parallel is the land of Edom, and lxiii. 1, where it is Edom. There is therefore no need to take Teman in our passage as a city, as which it does not appear before Eusebius.
[233] Under Rimmân-nirari III. (812-783). See Buhl's Gesch. der Edomiter, 65: this against Wellhausen.
[234] Wellhausen, in loco.