[235] 2 Sam. viii. 13, with 1 Kings xi. 16.
[236] 1 Kings xi. 14-25.
[237] 2 Kings iii.
[238] 2 Kings viii. 20-22.
[239] 2 Kings xiv. 10.
[240] 2 Chron. xxvi. 2.
[241] See, however, Buhl, op. cit., 67.
[242] It is, however, no reason against the authenticity of the oracle to say that Edom lay outside the path of Assyria. In answer to that see the Assyrian inscriptions, e.g. Asarhaddon's: cf. above, p. 129, n. 233.
[243] Notably in the recent Armenian massacres.
[244] 2 Kings viii. 12.
[245] xxviii. 2, xxvii. 7, 8, where the Assyrian and another invasion are both described in terms of tempest.
[246] The LXX. reading, their priests and their princes, must be due to taking Malcam = their king as Milcom = the Ammonite god. See Jer. xlix. 3.
[248] 2 Kings iii. 26. So rightly Pusey.
[249] Jer. xlviii. 24 without article, but in 41 with.
[250] Though this is claimed by most for Ḳiriathaim.
[251] Moabite Stone, l. 13.
[252] xlviii. 45.
[253] The land's.
[254] The king's.
[256] δυσσεβίας μὲν ὕβρις τέκος (Æschylus, Eumen., 534): cf. Odyssey, xiv. 262; xvii. 431.
[257] I.e. a tribe; Doughty, Arabia Deserta, I. 335.
[258] Judges xix., xx.
[259] Duhm was the first to publish reasons for rejecting the passage (Theol. der Propheten, 1875, p. 119), but Wellhausen had already reached the same conclusion (Kleine Propheten, p. 71). Oort and Stade adhere. On the other side see Robertson Smith, Prophets of Israel, 398, and Kuenen, who adheres to Smith's arguments (Onderzoek).
[260] "It is plain that Amos could not have excepted Judah from the universal ruin which he saw to threaten the whole land; or at all events such exception would have required to be expressly made on special grounds."—Robertson Smith, Prophets, 398.
[261] Ibid.
[262] צדיק, righteous: hardly, as most commentators take it, the legally (as distinguished from the morally) righteous; the rich cruelly used their legal rights to sell respectable and honest members of society into slavery.
[263] By adapting the LXX. So far as we know Wellhausen is right in saying that the Massoretic text, which our English version follows, gives no sense. LXX. reads, also without much sense as a whole, τὰ πατοῦντα ἐπὶ τὸν χοῦν τῆς γῆς, καὶ ἐκονδύλιζον εἰς κεφαλὰς πτῶχων.
[264] So rightly the LXX. Or the definite article may be here used in conformity with the common Hebrew way of employing it to designate, not a definite individual, but a member of a definite, well-known genus.
[265] On the use of Amorite for all the inhabitants of Canaan see Driver's Deut., pp. 11 f.
[266] The verb עוק of the Massoretic text is not found elsewhere, and whether we retain it, or take it as a variant of, or mistake for, צוק, or adopt some other reading, the whole phrase is more or less uncertain, and the exact shade of meaning has to be guessed, though the general sense remains pretty much the same. The following is a complete note on the subject, with reasons for adopting the above conclusion.
(1) LXX.: Behold, I roll (κυλίω) under you as a waggon full of straw is rolled. A.V.: I am pressed under you as a cart is pressed. Pusey: I straiten myself under you, etc. These versions take עוּק in the sense of צוּק, to press, and תחת in its usual meaning of beneath; and the result is conformable to the well-known figure of the Old Testament by which God is said to be laden and weary with the transgressions of His people. But this does not mean an actual descent of judgment, and yet vv. 14-16 imply that such an intimation has been made in ver. 13; and besides טעיק and תעיק are both in the Hiphil, the active, to press, or causative, make to press. (2) Accordingly some, adopting this sense of the verb, take תחת in an unusual sense of down upon. Ewald: I press down upon you as a cart that is full of sheaves presseth. Guthe (in Kautzsch's Bibel): Ich will euch quetschen. Rev. Eng. Ver.: I will press you in your place.—But עוק has been taken in other senses. (3) Hoffmann (Z.A.T.W., III. 100) renders it groan in conformity with Arab. 'îḳ. (4) Wetzstein (ibid., 278 ff.) quotes Arab. 'âḳ, to stop, hinder, and suggests I will bring to a stop. (5) Buhl (12th Ed. of Gesenius' Handwört, sub עוּק), in view of possibility of עגלה being threshing-roller, recalls Arab. 'aḳḳ, to cut in pieces. (6) Hitzig (Exeg. Handbuch) proposed to read מפיק and תפיק: I will make it shake under you, as the laden waggon shakes (the ground). So rather differently Wellhausen: I will make the ground quake under you, as a waggon quakes under its load of sheaves.
I have only to add that, in the Alex. Cod. of LXX., which reads κωλύω for κυλίω, we have an interesting analogy to Wetzstein's proposal; and that in support of the rendering of Ewald, and its unusual interpretation of תחתיכם which seems to me on the whole the most probable, we may compare Job xxxvi. 16, לא מוצק תחתיה. This, it is true, suggests rather the choking of a passage than the crushing of the ground; but, by the way, that sense is even more applicable to a harvest waggon laden with sheaves.
[267] Waggon full of sheaves.—Wellhausen goes too far when he suggests that Amos would have to go outside Palestine to see such a waggon. That a people who already knew the use of chariots for travelling (cf. Gen. xlvi. 5, JE) and waggons for agricultural purposes (1 Sam. vi. 7 ff.) did not use them at least in the lowlands of their country is extremely improbable. Cf. Hist. Geog., Appendix on Roads and Wheeled Vehicles in Syria.
[268] See above, pp. 82 ff. and pp. 89 ff.
[269] With the LXX. באשור for באשדוד.
[270] שד (ver. 10).
[271] Singular as in LXX., and not plural as in the M.T. and English versions.
[272] Juvenal, Satires, I.
[273] Vision of Piers Plowman. Burgages=tenements.
[274] Or The Enemy, and that right round the Land!
[275] In Damascus on a couch: on a Damascus couch: on a Damascus-cloth couch: or Damascus-fashion on a couch—alternatives all equally probable and equally beyond proof. The text is very difficult, nor do the versions give help. (1) The consonants of the word before a couch spell in Damascus, and so the LXX. take it. This would be in exact parallel to the in Samaria of the previous half of the clause. But although Jeroboam II. is said to have recovered Damascus (2 Kings xiv. 28), this is not necessarily the town itself, of whose occupation by Israel we have no evidence, while Amos always assumes it to be Aramean, and here he is addressing Israelites. Still retaining the name of the city, we can take it with couch as parallel, not to in Samaria, but to on the side of a diwan; in that case the meaning may have been a Damascus couch (though as the two words stand it is impossible to parse them, and Gen. xv. 2 cannot be quoted in support of this, for it is too uncertain itself, being possibly a gloss, though it is curious that as the two passages run the name Damascus should be in the same strange grammatical conjunction in each), or possibly Damascus-fashion on a couch, which (if the first half of the clause, as some maintain, refers to some delicate or affected posture then come into fashion) is the most probable rendering. (2) The Massoretes have pointed, not bedammeseq = in Damascus, but bedemesheq, a form not found elsewhere, which some (Ges., Hitz., Ew., Rev. Eng. Ver., etc.) take to mean some Damascene stuff (as perhaps our Damask and the Arabic dimshaq originally meant, though this is not certain), e.g. silk or velvet or cushions. (3) Others rearrange the text. E.g. Hoffmann (Z. A. T. W., III. 102) takes the whole clause away from ver. 12 and attaches it to ver. 13, reading O those who sit in Samaria on the edge of the diwan, and in Damascus on a couch, hearken and testify against the house of Jacob. But, as Wellhausen points out, those addressed in ver. 13 are the same as those addressed in ver. 9. Wellhausen prefers to believe that after the words children of Israel, which end a sentence, something has fallen out. The LXX. translator, who makes several blunders in the course of this chapter, instead of translating ערשׂ couch, the last word of the verse, merely transliterates it into ἱερεῖς!!
[276] Cf. vi. 4: that lie on ivory diwans and sprawl on their couches.
[277] Van Lennep, Bible Lands and Customs, p. 460.
[279] The words for hook in Hebrew—the two used above, צִנּוֹת and סִירות; and a third, חוֹחַ—all mean originally thorns, doubtless the first hooks of primitive man; but by this time they would signify metal hooks—a change analogous to the English word pen.
[280] Cf. Isa. xxxvii. 29; 2 Chron. xxxiii. 11. On the use fish-hooks, Job xl. 26 (Heb.), xli. 2 (Eng.); Ezek. xxix. 4.
[281] The verb, which in the text is active, must be taken in the passive. The word not translated above is הַהַרְמוֹנָה unto the Harmôn, which name does not occur elsewhere. LXX. read εἰς τὸ ὄρος τὸ Ῥομμάν, which Ewald renders ye shall cast the Rimmon to the mountain (cf. Isa. ii. 20), and he takes Rimmon to be the Syrian goddess of love. Steiner (quoted by Wellhausen) renders ye shall be cast out to Hadad Rimmon, that is, violated as קדשֹות Hitzig separates ההר from מונה, which he takes as contracted from מענה, and renders ye shall fling yourselves out on the mountains as a refuge. But none of these is satisfactory.
[282] I have already treated this passage in connection with Isaiah's prophecies on women in the volume on Isaiah i.-xxxix. (Expositor's Bible), Chap. XVI.
[283] Cf. chap. vi. 4.
[284] v. 11.
[285] vi. 8, 11.
[286] Cf. what was said on building above, p. 33.
[288] v. 26.
[289] v. 25.
[290] Another proof of how the spirit of ritualism tends to absorb morality.
[291] Ver. 4: cf. 1 Sam. i.; Deut. xiv. 28. Wellhausen offers another exegesis: Amos is describing exactly what took place at Bethel—sacrifice on the morning, i.e. next to the day of their arrival, tithes on the third day thereafter.
[292] See Wellhausen's note, and compare Lev. vii. 13.
[293] Matt. vi. 2.
[294] גֶשֶׁם: Hist. Geog., p. 64. It is interesting that this year (1895) the same thing was threatened, according to a report in the Mittheilungen u. Nachrichten des D.P.V., p. 44: "Nachdem es im December einigemal recht stark geregnet hatte besonders an der Meeresküste ist seit kurz vor Weihnachten das Wetter immer schön u. mild geblieben, u. wenn nicht weiterer Regen fällt, so wird grosser Wassermangel entstehen denn bis jetzt (16 Febr.) hat Niemand Cisterne voll." The harvest is in April-May.
[295] Or in the fashion of Egypt, i.e. a thoroughly Egyptian plague; so called, not with reference to the plagues of Egypt, but because that country was always the nursery of the pestilence. See Hist. Geog., p. 157 ff. Note how it comes with war.
[296] Apertly, openly.
[297] Men.
[298] Undo.
[299] Hist. Geog., Chap. iii., pp. 73 f.
[300] This and similar passages are dealt with by themselves in Chap. XI.
[301] Cf. LXX.: Βαιθὴλ ἔσται ὡς οὐχ ὑπάρχουσα.
[302] The name Bethel is always printed as one word in our Hebrew texts. See Baer on Gen. xii. 8.
[303] Wellhausen thinks at Bethel not genuine. But Bethel has been singled out as the place where the people put their false confidence, and is naturally named here. LXX.: τῷ οἴκῳ Ἰσραήλ.
[304] Ver. 7 is plainly out of place here, as the LXX. perceived, and therefore tried to give it another rendering which would make it seem in place: ὁ ποιῶν εἰς ὕψος κρίμα, καὶ δικαιοσύνην εἰς γὴν ἔθηκεν. So Ewald removed it to between vv. 9 and 10. There it begins well another oracle; and it may be that we should insert before it הוי, as in vv. 18, vi. 1.
[305] Literally the Group and the Giant. כימה, Kimah, signifies group, or little heap. Here it is rendered by Aq. and at Job ix. 9 by LXX. Ἀρκτοῦρος; and here by Theod. and in Job xxxviii. 31, the chain, or cluster, of the group Πλειάδες. The Targ. and Pesh. always give it as Kima, i.e. Pleiades. And this is the rendering of most moderns. But Stern takes it for Sirius with its constellation of the Great Dog, for the reason that this is the brightest of all stars, and therefore a more suitable fellow for Orion than the dimmer Pleiades can be. כסיל, the Fool or Giant, is the Hebrew name of Ὠρίων, by which the LXX. render it. Targum ניפלא. To the ancient world the constellation looked like the figure of a giant fettered in heaven, "a fool so far as he trusted in his bodily strength" (Dillmann). In later times he was called Nimrod. His early setting came at the time of the early rains. Cf. with the passage Job ix. 9 and xxxviii. 31.
[306] The abstract noun meaning deep shadow, LXX. σκιά, and rendered shadow of death by many modern versions.
[307] So LXX., reading שׁבר for שׁד; it improves the rhythm, and escapes the awkward repetition of שׁד.
[308] So LXX.
[309] Possible alternative: make stagnant.
[310] Vision of Piers Plowman, Passus IV., l. 52. Cf. the whole passage.
[311] Uncertain; Hitzig takes it as the apodosis of the previous clause: Ye shall have to take from him a present of corn, i.e. as alms.
[313] Cf. "Pecca fortiter."
[314] As, for instance, the prophet looks forward to in iii. 12.
[315] God of Hosts, perhaps an intrusion (?) between אדני and יהוה.
[316] I have ventured to rearrange the order of the clauses, which in the original is evidently dislocated.
[317] Lit. the house.
[318] Eph. v. 2; etc.
[319] No one doubts that this verse is interrogative. But the Authorised Eng. Ver. puts it in a form—Have ye brought unto Me? etc.—which implies blame that they did not do so. Ewald was the first to see that, as rendered above, an appeal to the forty years was the real intention of the verse. So after him nearly all critics, also the Revised Eng. Ver.: Did ye bring unto Me? On the whole question of the possibility of such an appeal see above, pp. 100 ff., and cf. Jer. vii. 22, which distinctly declares that in the wilderness God prescribed no ritual to Israel.
[320] Ver. 26 is very difficult, for both the text and the rendering of all the possible alternatives of it are quite uncertain. (1) As to the text, the present division into words must be correct; at least no other is possible. But the present order of the words is obviously wrong. For your images is evidently described by the relative clause which you have made, and ought to stand next it. What then is to be done with the two words that at present come between—star of your god? Are they both a mere gloss, as Robertson Smith holds, and therefore to be struck out? or should they precede the pair of words, כיון צלמיכם, which they now follow? This is the order of the text which the LXX. translator had before him, only for כון he misread רֵיפָן or רֵיוָן: καὶ ἀνελάβετε τὴν σκηνὴν τοῦ Μωλὸχ καὶ τὸ ἄστρον τοῦ Θεοῦ ὑμῶν Ῥαιφάν [Ῥεφάν, Q], τοὺς τύπους αὐτῶν [om. AQ] οὓς ἐποιήσατε ἑαυτοῖς. This arrangement has the further evidence in its favour, that it brings your god into proper parallel with your king. The Hebrew text would then run thus:—
[כוכב אלהיכם] ונשאתם את סכות מלככם ואת
כיון צלמיכם אשר עשיתם לכם
(2) The translation of this text is equally difficult: not in the verb ונשאתם, for both the grammar and the argument oblige us to take it as future, and ye shall lift up; but in the two words סכות and כיון. Are these common nouns, or proper names of deities in apposition to your king and your god? The LXX. takes סכות as = tabernacle, and כיון as a proper name (Theodotion takes both as proper names). The Auth. Eng. Ver. follows the LXX. (except that it takes king for the name Moloch). Schrader (Stud. u. Krit., 1874, 324; K.A.T., 442 f.) takes them as the consonants of Sakkut, a name of the Assyrian god Adar, and of Kewan, the Assyrian name for the planet Saturn: Ye shall take up Sakkut your king and Kewan your star-god, your images which... Baethgen goes further and takes both the מלך of מלכיכם and the צלם of צלמיכם as Moloch and Ṣelam, proper names, in combination with Sakkut and Kewan (Beitr. z. Sem. Rel., 239). Now it is true that the Second Book of Kings implies that the worship of the host of heaven existed in Samaria before its fall (2 Kings xvii. 16), but the introduction into Samaria of Assyrian gods (among them Adar) is placed by it after the fall (2 Kings xvii. 31), and besides, Amos does not elsewhere speak of the worship of foreign gods, nor is the mention of them in any way necessary to the argument here. On the contrary, even if Amos were to mention the worship of idols by Israel, would he have selected at this point the Assyrian ones? (See, however, Tiele, Revue de l'Histoire des Religions, III., p. 211, who makes Koun and the planet Keiwan purely Phœnician deities.) Some critics take סכות and כיון as common nouns in the construct state. So Ewald, and so most recently Robertson Smith (O.T.J.C., 2): the shrine of your king and the stand of your images. This is more in harmony with the absence from the rest of Amos of any hint as to the worship of idols, but an objection to it, and a very strong one, is that the alleged common nouns are not found elsewhere in Hebrew. In view of this conflicting evidence it is best therefore to leave the words untranslated, as in the text above. It is just possible that they may themselves be later insertions, for the verse would read very well without them: And ye shall lift up your king and your images which you have made to yourselves.
[321] The last clause is peculiar. Two clauses seem to have run into one—saith Jehovah, God of Hosts, and God of Hosts is His Name. The word שמו = His Name, may have been added to give the oracle the same conclusion as the oracle at the end of the preceding chapter; and it is not to be overlooked that שמו at the end of a clause does not occur elsewhere in the book outside the three questioned Doxologies iv. 13, v. 8, ix. 6. Further, see below, pp. 204 f.
[322] In Zion: "very suspicious," Cornill. But see pp. 135 f.
[323] I remove ver. 2 to a note, not that I am certain that it is not by Amos—who can be dogmatic on such a point?—but because the text of it, the place which it occupies, and its relation to the facts of current history, all raise doubts. Moreover it is easily detached from the context, without disturbing the flow of the chapter, which indeed runs more equably without it. The Massoretic text gives: Pass over to Calneh, and see; and go thence to Hamath Rabbah, and come down to Gath of the Philistines: are they better than these kingdoms, or is their territory larger than yours? Presumably these kingdoms are Judah and Israel. But that can only mean that Israel is the best of the peoples, a statement out of harmony with the irony of ver. 1, and impossible in the mouth of Amos. Geiger, therefore, proposes to read: "Are you better than these kingdoms—i.e. Calneh, Hamath, Gath—or is your territory larger than theirs?" But this is also unlikely, for Israel's territory was much larger than Gath's. Besides, the question would have force only if Calneh, Hamath and Gath had already fallen. Gath had, but it is at least very questionable whether Hamath had. Therefore Schrader (K.A.T., 444) rejects the whole verse; and Kuenen agrees that if we are to understand Assyrian conquests, it is hardly possible to retain the verses. Bickell's first argument against the verse, that it does not fit into the metrical system of Amos vi. 1-7, is precarious; his second, that it disturbs the grammar, which it makes to jump suddenly from the third person in ver. 1 to the second in ver. 2, and back to the third in ver. 3, is not worth anything, for such a jump occurs within ver. 3 itself.
[324] Davidson, Syntax, § 100, R. 5.
[325] שׁבת חמם; LXX. σαββάτων ψευδῶν, on which hint Hoffmann renders the verse: "you that daily demand the tribute of evil (cf. Ezek. xvi. 33), and every Sabbath extort by violence." But this is both unnecessary and opposed to viii. 5, which tells us no trade was done on the Sabbath. שבת is to be taken in the common sense of sitting in judgment (rather than with Wellhausen), in the sense of the enthronement of wrong-doing.
[326] To this day, in some parts of Palestine, the general fold into which the cattle are shut contains a portion railed off for calves and lambs (cf. Dr. M. Blanckenhorn of Erlangen in the Mittheilungen u. Nachrichten of the D.P.V., 1895, p. 37, with a sketch). It must be this to which Amos refers.
[327] Or perhaps melodies, airs.
[328] Of course, it is possible that here again, as in v. 15 and 16, we have prophecy later than the disaster of 734, when Tiglath-Pileser made a great breach or havoc in the body politic of Israel by taking Gilead and Galilee captive. But this is scarcely probable, for Amos almost everywhere lays stress upon the moral corruption of Israel, as her real and essential danger.
[329] מתאב for מתעב.
[330] Some words must have dropped out here. For these and the following verses 9 and 10 on the pestilence see pp. 178 ff.
[331] So Michaelis, בְּבָקָר יָם for בִּבְקָרִים.
[332] Gen. xiv. 5; 1 Macc. v. In the days of Eusebius and Jerome (4th century) there were two places of the name: one of them doubtless the present Tell Ashtara south of El-Merkez, the other distant from that fourteen Roman miles.
[333] Along this ridge ran, and still runs, one of the most important highways to the East, that from Beth-Shan by Gadera to Edrei. About seven miles east from Gadera lies a village, Ibdar, "with a good spring and some ancient remains" (Schumacher, N. Ajlun, 101). Lo-Debar is mentioned in 2 Sam. ix. 45; xvii. 27; and doubtless the Lidebir of Josh. xiii. 26 on the north border of Gilead is the same.
[334] With the article, an unusual form of the title. LXX. here κύριος τῶν δυνάμεων.
[335] 2 Kings xiv. 25. The Torrent of the 'Arabah can scarcely be the Torrent of the 'Arabim of Isa. xv. 7 for the latter was outside Israel's territory, and the border between Moab and Edom. The LXX. render Torrent of the West, τῶν δυσμῶν.
[336] Here there is evidently a gap in the text. The LXX. insert καὶ ὑπολειφθήσονται οἱ κατάλοιποι; perhaps therefore the text originally ran and the survivors die.
[337] Or uncle—that is, a distant relative, presumably because all the near ones are dead.
[338] Literally bones.
[339] LXX. τοῖς προεστηκόσι: evidently in ignorance of the reading or the meaning.
[340] The burning of a body was regarded, as we have seen (Amos ii. 1), as a great sacrilege; and was practised, outside times of pestilence only in cases of great criminals: Lev. xx. 14; xxi. 9; Josh. vii. 25. Doughty (Arabia Deserta, 68) mentions a case in which, in Medina, a Persian pilgrim was burned to death by an angry crowd for defiling Mohammed's tomb.
[341] The Assyrian inscriptions record at least three—in 803, 765, 759.
[342] As in Psalm lxxviii. 50. הִסְגִּיר, to give up, is so seldom used absolutely (Deut. xxxii. 30 is poetry and elliptic) that we may well believe it was followed by words signifying to what the city was to be given up.
[344] See Chapter VI., Section 3.
[345] The phrase is uncertain.
[346] Wellhausen thinks that the prophet could not have put the parenthesis in the mouth of the traders, and therefore regards it as an intrusion or gloss. But this is hypercriticism. The last clause, however, may be a mere clerical repetition of ii. 6.
[347] Isa. lviii. See the exposition of the passage in the writer's Isaiah xl.-lxvi. (Expositor's Bible Series), pp. 417 ff.: "Our prophet, while exalting the practical service of man at the expense of certain religious forms, equally exalts the observance of the Sabbath; ... he places the keeping of the Sabbath on a level with the practice of love."
[348] She shall rise, etc.—The clause is almost the same as in ix. 5b, and the text differs from the LXX., which omits and heave. Is it an insertion?
[349] Literally in the day of light.
[350] That is, Samaria is used in the wider sense of the kingdom, not the capital, and there is no need for Wellhausen's substitution of Bethel for it.
[351] This in answer to Gunning (De Godspraken van Amos, 1885), Wellh. in loco, and König (Einleitung, p. 304, d), who reckon vv. 11 and 12 to be the insertion: the latter on the additional ground that the formula of ver. 13, in that day, points back to ver. 9; but not to the Lo, days are coming of ver. 11. But thus to miss out vv. 11 and 12 leaves us with greater difficulties than before. For without them how are we to explain the thirst of ver. 13. It is left unintroduced; there is no hint of a drought in 9 and 10. It seems to me then that, since we must omit some verse, it ought to be ver. 13; and this the rather that if omitted it is not missed. It is just the kind of general statement that would be added by an unthinking scribe; and it does not readily connect with ver. 14, while ver. 12 does do so. For why should youths and maids be specially singled out as swearing by Samaria, Dan and Beersheba? These were the oaths of the whole people, to whom vv. 11 and 12 refer. I see a very clear case, therefore, for omitting ver. 13.
[352] LXX. here gives a mere repetition of the preceding oath.
[353] Doughty: Arabia Deserta I. 269.
[354] Since it is the capital that has been struck, and the command is given to break the thresholds on the head of all of them, many translate lintels or architraves instead of thresholds (e.g. Hitzig, and Guthe in Kautzsch's Bibel). But the word סִפִּים always means thresholds and the blow here is fundamental.
[355] LXX. adds of Hosts: on the whole passage see next chapter.
[356] We should have expected a grain, but the word צְרֹור only means small stone: cf. 2 Sam. xvii. 13. The LXX. has here σύντριμμα, fracture, ruin. Cf. Z.A.T.W., III. 125.
[357] The text has been disturbed here; the verbs are in forms not possible to the sense. For תַּגִּישׁ read either תָּשׂיג with Hitzig or תִּגַּשׁ with Wellhausen. תַּקְדִּים, Hiph., is not impossible in an intransitive sense, but probably Wellhausen is right in reading Pi, תְּקַדֵּם. The reading עדינו which the Greek suggests and Hoffmann and Wellhausen adopt is not so appropriate to the preceding verb as בעדינו of the text.
[358] The text reads their breaches, and some accordingly point סֻכַּת hut, as if it were the plural huts (Hoffmann, Z.A.T.W., 1883, 125; Schwally, id., 1890, 226, n. 1; Guthe in Kautzsch's Bibel). The LXX. has the sing., and it is easy to see how the plur. fem. suffix may have risen from confusion with the following conjunction.
[359] This against Cornill, Einleitung, 176.
[360] iii. 1.
[361] III. Wars, x. 8. With the above verses of the Book of Amos Lev. xxvi. 5 has been compared: "your threshing shall reach to the vintage and the vintage to the sowing time." But there is no reason to suppose that either of two so natural passages depends on the other.
[362] LXX. God of Hosts.
[363] iii. 6b; iv. 9; vi. 14; iv. 12b.
[364] vi. 12.
[365] viii. 8.
[366] iii. 7: Jehovah God doeth nothing, but He hath revealed His secret to His servants the prophets.
[367] i. 2; iii. 9; ix. 3.
[368] ii. 9.
[369] viii. 12.
[370] v. 24; 19, 20, etc.; 7; vi. 12.
[371] i. 2.
[372] iv. 9 ff.
[373] iv. 6-11; vi. 11; viii. 8 ff.
[374] LXX. the thunder.
[375] Or spirit.
[376] I.e. God's; a more natural rendering than to take his (as Hitzig does) as meaning man's.
[377] See above, pp. 166 f. n.
[378] Text of last clause uncertain; see above, p. 167.
[379] LXX. Jehovah of Hosts.
[380] First in 1875 by Duhm, Theol. der Proph., p. 119; and after him by Oort, Theol. Tjidschrift, 1880, pp. 116 f.; Wellhausen, in locis; Stade, Gesch., I. 571; Cornill, Einleitung, 176.
[381] Hosea xiii. 4
[382] Smith, Prophets of Israel, p. 399; Kuenen, Hist. Krit. Einl. (Germ. Ed.), II. 347.
[383] v. 8, 9.
[384] Cornill, Einl., 176.
[385] Cf. viii. 8.
[386] v. 8; ix. 6, though here LXX. read Jehovah of Hosts is His Name.
[387] iv. 13. See previous note.
[388] v. 27. See above, pp. 172 f. n.: cf. Hosea xii. 6.
[389] xlvii. 4 and liv. 5.
[390] xlviii. 2: cf. Duhm, in loco, and Cheyne, Introduction to the Book of Isaiah, 301.
[391] x. 16; xxxi. 35; xxxii. 18; l. 34 (perhaps a quotation from Isa. xlvii. 4); li. 19, 57.
[392] xlvi. 18, where the words צבאות שמו fail in LXX.; xlviii. 15 b, where the clause in which it occurs is wanting in the LXX.
[393] But I have room at least for a bare statement of these remarkable facts:—
The titles for the God of Israel used in the Book of Amos are these: (1) Thy God, O Israel, אלהיך ישראל; (2) Jehovah, יהוה; (3) Lord Jehovah, אדני יהוה; (4) Lord Jehovah of the Hosts, צבאות אדני יהוה; (5) Jehovah God of Hosts or of the Hosts, יהוה אלהי צבאות or הצבאות.
Now in the First Section, chaps. i., ii., it is interesting that we find none of the variations which are compounded with Hosts, צבאות. By itself יהוה (especially in the phrase Thus saith Jehovah, יהוה כה אמר) is general; and once only (i. 8) is Lord Jehovah employed. The phrase, oracle of Jehovah, נְאֻם יהוה, is also rare; it occurs only twice (ii. 11, 16), and then only in the passage dealing with Israel, and not at all in the oracles against foreign nations.
In Sections II. and III. the simple יהוה is again most frequently used. But we find also Lord Jehovah, אדני יהוה (iii. 7, 8; iv. 2, 5; v. 3, with יהוה alone in the parallel ver. 4; vi. 8; vii. 1, 2, 4 bis, 5, 6; viii. 1, 3, 9, 11), used either indifferently with יהוה; or in verses where it seems more natural to emphasise the sovereignty of Jehovah than His simple Name (as, e.g., where He swears, iv. 2, vi. 8, yet when the same phrase occurs in viii. 7 יהוה alone is used); or in the solemn Visions of the Third Section (but not in the Narrative); and sometimes we find in the Visions Lord, אדני, alone without יהוה (vii. 7, 8; ix. 1). The titles containing צבאות or אלהי צבאות occur nine times. Of these five are in passages which we have seen other reasons to suppose are insertions: two of the Doxologies—iv. 13, יהוה אלהי צבאות and ix. 5, אדני יהוה הצבאות (in addition the LXX. read in ix. 6 יהוה צבאות), and in v. 14, 15 (see p. 168) and 27 (see p. 172), in all three יהוה אלהי צבאות. The four genuine passages are iii. 13, where we find יהוה אלהי הצבאות preceded by אדני; v. 16, where we have יהוה אלהי צבאות followed by אדני; vi. 8, צבאות יהוה אלהי, and vi. 14, יהוה אלהי צבאות. Throughout the last two sections of the book נְאֻם is used with all these forms of the Divine title.
[395] Geschichte, pp. 93 ff., 214 ff., 439 f.
[396] A list of the more obvious is given by Kuenen, p. 324.
[397] The first chapter in the Hebrew closes with ver. 9.
[398] Cf. this with Amos; above, pp. 192 ff.
[399] König's arguments (Einleitung, 309) in favour of the possibility of the genuineness of the verse do not seem to me to be conclusive. He thinks the verse admissible because Judah had sinned less than Israel; the threat in vv. 4-6 is limited to Israel; the phrase Jehovah their God is so peculiar that it is difficult to assign it to a mere expander of the text; and if it was a later hand that put in the verse, why did he not alter the judgments against Judæa, which occur further on in the book?
[400] So Cheyne and others, Kuenen adhering. König agrees that they have been removed from their proper place and the text corrupted.
[401] Rom. ix. 25, 26, which first give the end of Hosea ii. 23 (Heb. 25), and then the end of i. 10 (Heb. ii. 2). See below, p. 249, n. 488.
[402] 721 b.c.
[403] Stade, Gesch., I. 577; Cornill, Einleitung, who also would exclude no king and no prince in iii. 4.
[404] This objection, however, does not hold against the removal of merely and David, leaving their king.
[405] ii. 7, 11, 14, 17 (Heb.). In i. 4 B-text reads Ἰούδα for יהוא while Qmq have Ἰηου.
[406] In determining the date of the Book of Hosea the title in chap. i. is of no use to us: The Word of Jehovah which was to Hosea ben Be'eri in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam ben Joash, king of Israel. This title is trebly suspicious. First: the given reigns of Judah and Israel do not correspond; Jeroboam was dead before Uzziah. Second: there is no proof either in the First or Second Section of the book that Hosea prophesied after the reign of Jotham. Third: it is curious that in the case of a prophet of Northern Israel kings of Judah should be stated first, and four of them be given while only one king of his own country is placed beside them. On these grounds critics are probably correct who take the title as it stands to be the work of some later Judæan scribe who sought to make it correspond to the titles of the Books of Isaiah and Micah. He may have been the same who added chap. i. 7. The original form of the title probably was The Word of God which was to Hosea son of Be'eri in the days of Jeroboam ben Joash, king of Israel, and designed only for the First Section of the book, chaps, i.-iii.
[407] vii. 7. There are also other passages which, while they may be referred, as they stand, to the whole succession of illegitimate dynasties in Northern Israel from the beginning to the end of that kingdom, more probably reflect the same ten years of special anarchy and disorder after the death of Jeroboam II. See vii. 3 ff.; viii. 4, where the illegitimate kingmaking is coupled with the idolatry of the Northern Kingdom; xiii. 10, 11.
[408] x. 3, 7, 8, 15.
[409] ix. 15.
[410] vi. 8, 9.
[411] vii. 1.
[412] vii. 11.
[413] x. 6.
[414] xiii. 12 f.
[415] The chronology of these years is exceedingly uncertain. Jeroboam was dead about 743; in 738 Menahem gave tribute to Assyria; in 734 Tiglath-Pileser had conquered Aram, Gilead and Galilee in response to King Ahaz, who had a year or two before been attacked by Rezin of Aram and Pekah of Israel.
[416] 2 Kings xv. 8-16. It may be to this appearance of three kings within one month that there was originally an allusion in the now obscure verse of Hosea, v. 7.
[417] 2 Kings xv. 17-22.
[418] Or prince, שׂר: cf. Hosea's denunciation of the שׂרים as rebels.
[419] Isa. vii.; 2 Kings xv. 37, 38.
[420] Some have found a later allusion in chap. x. 14: like unto the destruction of (?) Shalman (of ?) Beth' Arbe'l. Pusey, p. 5 b, and others take this to allude to a destruction of the Galilean Arbela, the modern Irbid, by Salmanassar IV., who ascended the Assyrian throne in 727 and besieged Samaria in 724 ff. But since the construction of the phrase leaves it doubtful whether the name Shalman is that or the agent or object of the destruction, and whether, if the agent, he be one of the Assyrian Salmanassars or a Moabite King Salman c. 730 b.c., it is impossible to make use of the verse in fixing the date of the Book of Hosea. See further, p. 289. Wellhausen omits.
[421] v. 1; vi. 8; xii. 12: cf. W. R. Smith, Prophets, 156.
[422] Cf. W. R. Smith, l.c.