[652] By Lebanon in the fourteenth chapter and almost always in the Old Testament we must understand not the western range now called Lebanon, for that makes no impression on the Holy Land, its bulk lying too far to the north, but Hermon, the southmost and highest summits of Anti-Lebanon. See Hist. Geog., pp. 417 f.
[653] Full sixty miles off, in the Jebel Druze, the ancient Greek amphitheatres were so arranged that Hermon might fill the horizon of the spectators.
[654] Isa. lx. 13.
[655] Revelation of St. John xxi. 22.
[656] On all this exhortation see below, p. 343.
[657] LXX. fruit, פרי for פרים; the whole verse is obscure.
[658] So Guthe; some other plant Wellhausen, who for ויך reads וילכו.
[659] Ver. 8 obviously needs emendation. The Hebrew text contains at least one questionable construction, and gives no sense: "They that dwell in his shadow shall turn, and revive corn and flourish like the vine, and his fame," etc. To cultivate corn and be themselves like a vine is somewhat mixed. The LXX. reads: ἐπιστρέψουσιν καὶ καθιοῦνται ὑπὸ τὴν σκέπην αὐτοῦ, ζήσονται καὶ μεθυσθήσονται σίτῳ· καὶ ἐξανθήσει ἄμπελος μνημόσυνην αὐτοῦ ὡς οῖνος Διβάνου. It removes the grammatical difficulty from clause 1, which then reads בְצִלּוֹ יָשֻׁבוּ ויָשְׁבוּ; the supplied vau may easily have dropped after the final vau of the previous word. In the 2nd clause the LXX. takes יהיו as an intransitive, which is better suited to the other verbs, and adds καὶ μεθυσθήσονται, ורויו (a form that may have easily slipped from the Hebrew text, through its likeness to the preceding ויהיו). And they shall be well-watered. After this it is probable that דגן should read כַגַּן. In the 3rd clause the Hebrew text may stand. In the 4th זכר may not, as many propose, be taken for זכרם and translated their perfume; but the parallelism makes it now probable that we have a verb here; and if זכר in the Hiph. has the sense to make a perfume (cf. Isa. lxvi. 3), there is no reason against the Kal being used in the intransitive sense here. In the LXX. for μεθυσθήσονται Qa reads στηριχθήσονται.
[660] LXX.
[661] This alternative, which Robertson Smith adopted, "though not without some hesitation" (Prophets, 413) is that which follows the Hebrew text, reading in the first clause לִי, and not, like LXX., לוֹ, and avoids the unusual figure of comparing Jehovah to a tree. But it does not account for the singular emphasis laid in the second clause on the first personal pronoun, and implies that God, whose name has not for several verses been mentioned, is meant by the mere personal suffix, "I will look to Him." Wellhausen suggests changing the second clause to I am his Anat and his Aschera.
[662] ענה, ii. 23.
[663] i. 2.
[664] iv. 6.
[665] iv. 1.
[666] v. 4.
[667] ii. 10.
[668] xi. 3.
[669] iv. 6.
[670] vi. 6.
[671] ii. 22.
[672] viii. 2.
[673] ידע.
[674] The Latin videre, scire, noscere, cognoscere, intelligere, sapere and peritus esse.
[675] Cf. the Greek οἰδα from εἰδειν.
[676] vi. 9.
[677] See above, pp. 258, 275; and below, p. 323.
[678] viii. 5: cf. xxix. 3 (Eng. 4), Jehovah did not give you a heart to know.
[679] Job xix. 13: still more close, of course, the intimacy between the sexes for which the verb is so often used in the Old Testament.
[680] xix. 25: cf. Gen. xx. 6.
[681] viii. 9.
[682] viii. 5: cf. Hosea ix. 7.
[683] ix. 21.
[684] 1 Sam. ii. 12. A similar meaning is probably to be attached to the word in Gen. xxxix. 6: Potiphar had no thought or care for anything that was in Joseph's hand. Cf. Prov. ix. 13; xxvii. 23; Job xxxv. 15.
[685] Gen. iii. 7.
[686] Gen. iii. 5; Isa. vii. 15, etc.
[687] iv. 14, עם לא־יבין: if the original meaning of בין be to get between, see through or into, so discriminate, understand, then intelligence is its etymological equivalent.
[688] vii. 11. See above, p. 321, n. 677.
[689] vii. 9.
[690] iv. 1.
[691] v. 4.
[692] For exposition of this chapter see above, pp. 256 ff.
[693] iv. 11, 12, LXX.
[694] iv. 14 f. See above, pp. 258 f.
[695] vii. passim.
[696] iv. 4-9. Above, pp. 257 f.
[697] vi. 1 ff. See above, pp. 263 ff.
[698] vi. 4.
[699] iv. 6. See above, p. 257.
[700] See above, pp. 97 f. On the other doubtful phrase, viii. 12—literally I write multitudes of My Torah, as a stranger they have reckoned it—no argument can be built; for even if we take the first clause as conditional and render, Though I wrote multitudes of My Torôth, yet as those of a stranger they would regard them, that would not necessarily mean that no Torôth of Jehovah were yet written, but, on the contrary, might equally well imply that some at least had been written.
[701] Or was overcome.
[702] xii. 4-6. See above, p. 302. LXX. reads they supplicated Me ... they found Me ... He spoke with them. Many propose to read the last clause with him. The passage is obscure. Note the order of the events—the wrestling at Peniel, the revelation at Bethel, then in the subsequent passage the flight to Aram. This however does not prove that in Hosea's information the last happened after the two first.
[703] שׂדה, field, here used in its political sense: cf. Hist. Geog., p. 79. Our word country, now meaning territory and now the rural as opposed to the urban districts, is strictly analogous to the Hebrew field.
[704] xii. 13, 14.
[705] A youth.
[706] LXX., followed by many critics, his sons. But My son is a better parallel to young in the preceding clause. Or trans.: to be My son.
[708] So rightly LXX.
[709] xi. 1-3.
[710] ix. 10.
[711] xiii. 4-6.
[712] xii. 10. Other references to the ancient history are the story of Gibeah and the Valley of Achor.
[713] ii. 10.
[715] iv. 6.
[716] xiii. 5.
[717] With Wellhausen read אֶהְיֶה for וָאֱהִי.
[718] See above, p. 305, n. 638.
[719] xiii. 7 ff.
[720] vi. 3.
[721] viii. 2.
[722] i. 16, 18, 21, 22.
[724] vii. 16, They turn, but not upwards; xiv. 5, Mine anger is turned away.
[725] ii. 9.
[726] viii. 13; ix. 3; xi. 5.
[727] iv. 9: cf. xii. 3, 15.
[728] xi. 9: cf. ii. 11.
[729] This may be further seen in the very common phrase עמי שוב שבות, to turn again the captivity of My people (see Hosea vi. 11); or in the use of שוב in xiv. 8, where it has the force, auxiliary to the other verb in the clause, of repeating or coming back to do a thing. But the text here needs emendation: cf. above, p. 315. Cf. Amos' use of the Hiphil form to draw back, withdraw, i. 3, 6, 9, 11, 13; ii. 1, 4, 6.
[730] Cf. xi. 5, they refused to return.
[731] vi. 1, Come and let us return to Jehovah; vii. 10, They did not return to Jehovah; xiv. 2, 3, Return, O Israel, to Jehovah.
[732] iii. 5, They shall return and seek Jehovah their God; v. 4, Their deeds do not allow them to return to their God.
[733] v. 12, etc.
[734] iv. 2 ff.; vi. 7 ff., etc.
[735] vii. 7.
[736] ix. 11 ff.
[737] xii. 2.
[738] vii. 7.
[739] v. 5; vii. 10.
[741] vii. 16.
[742] x. 5.
[743] vii. 10.
[744] ii. 16, etc.; ix. 2 ff., etc.
[745] ix. 4.
[746] xii. 10.
[747] iv. 6, 8, 9, 10, 11.
[748] ix. 1. See above, p. 279.
[749] See above, p. 279, n. 560.
[750] v. 26.
[751] עֵצֶב from עָצַב, which in Job x. 8 is parallel to עשה.
[752] ii. 8.
[753] viii. 4.
[754] viii. 5.
[755] x. 5.
[756] xiii. 2.
[757] Isa. xli. ff.
[758] iv. 17.
[759] Amos v.
[760] vi. 6.
[761] xiv. 2. Perhaps the curious expression at the close of the verse, so will we render the calves of our lips, or (as a variant reading gives) fruit of our lips, has the same intention. Articulate confession (or vows), these are the sacrifices, the calves, which are acceptable to God.
[762] vi. 1-4.
[763] For the reasons for this interpretation see above, pp. 263 ff.
[764] x. 11.
[766] x. 12.
[767] xii. 7.
[768] x. 17.
[769] vii. 13.
[770] ix. 10.
[771] xi. 1, 2.
[772] xi. 4.
[773] xi. 8; xii. 1.
[775] Note that the Hebrew and English divisions do not coincide between chaps. iv. and v. In the Hebrew chap. iv. includes a fourteenth verse, which in the English stands as the first verse of chap. v. In this the English agrees with the Septuagint.
[776] Caspari.
[777] In the fourth edition of Bleek's Introduction.
[778] Z.A.T.W., Vols. I., III., IV.
[779] See also Cornill, Einleitung, 183 f. Stade takes iv. 1-4, iv. 11-v. 3, v. 6-14, as originally one prophecy (distinguished by certain catchwords and an outlook similar to that of Ezekiel and the great Prophet of the Exile), in which the two pieces iv. 5-10 and v. 4, 5, were afterwards inserted by the author of ii. 12, 13.
[780] Einleitung in das A.T., pp. 690 ff.
[781] Einleitung.
[782] Untersuchungen über dis Textgestalt u. die Echtheit des Buches Micha, 1887.
[783] De Profetie van Micha, 1891, which I have not seen. It is summarised in Wildeboer's Litteratur des A.T., 1895.
[784] Introduction, 1892.
[785] Litteratur des A.T., pp. 148 ff.
[786] Wildeboer (De Profet Micha), Von Ryssel and Elhorst.
[787] Cheyne, therefore, is not correct when he says ("Introduction" to second edition of Robertson Smith's Prophets, p. xxiii.) that it is "becoming more and more doubtful whether more than two or three fragments of the heterogeneous collection of fragments in chaps. iv.-vii. can have come from that prophet."
[789] Wildeboer seems to me to have good grounds for his reply to Stade's assertion that the occurrence of promises after the threats only blunts and nullifies the latter. "These objections," says Wildeboer, "raise themselves only against the spoken, but not against the written word." See, too, the admirable remarks he quotes from De Goeje.
[791] x. 18.
[792] Smend assigns the prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem in iii. 14, along with Isaiah xxviii.-xxxii., to 704-701, and suggests that the end of chap. i. refers to Sennacherib's campaign in Philistia in 701 (A. T. Religionsgeschichte, p. 225, n.). The former is possible, but the latter passage, following so closely on i. 6, which implies the fall of Samaria to be still recent, if not in actual course, is more suitably placed in the time of the campaign of Sargon over pretty much the same ground.
[793] See above, p. 363, n. 791.
[794] So Hitzig ("ohne Zweifel"), and Cheyne, Introduction to the Book of Isaiah; Ryssel, op. cit., pp. 218 f. Hackmann (Die Zukunftserwartung des Jesaia, 127-8, n.) prefers the Greek of Micah. Ewald is doubtful. Duhm, however, inclines to authorship by Isaiah, and would assign the composition to Isaiah's old age.
[795] Hitzig; Ewald.
[796] As against Duhm.
[797] So rightly Duhm on Isa. ii. 2-4.
[798] Amos i. and ii. See above, pp. 124, 133.
[799] Isa. xxiii. 17 f.
[800] Jer. xvii.
[801] Wellhausen indeed thinks that ver. 8 presupposes that Jerusalem is already devastated, reduced to the state of a shepherd's tower in the wilderness. This, however, is incorrect. The verse implies only that the whole country is overrun by the foe, Jerusalem alone standing, with the flock of God in it, like a fortified fold (cf. Isaiah i.).
[802] Roorda, reasoning from the Greek text, takes House of Ephratha as the original reading, with Bethlehem added later; and Hitzig properly reads Ephrath, giving its final letter to the next word which improves the grammar, thus: אפרת הצעיר
[803] Isa. xix. 19.
[804] So also Wellhausen.
[805] E.g. Ewald and Driver.
[806] For עמי read עמים with the LXX.
[807] Wellhausen states four. But תושיה of ver. 9 is an uncertain reading. רמיה is found in Hosea vii. 16, though the text of this, it is true, is corrupt. זכה in another verbal form is found in Isa. i. 16. There only remains מטה, but again it is uncertain whether we should take this in its late sense of tribe.
[808] And also Giesebrecht, Beiträge, p. 217.
[809] Micah i.; Jer. xxvi. 18.
[810] i. 14.
[811] Ataroth (Numb. xxxii. 3) is Atroth-Shophan (ib. 35); Chesulloth (Josh. xix. 18) is Chisloth-Tabor (ib. 12); Iim (Numb. xxxiii. 45) is Iye-Abarim (ib. 44).
[812] "Michæam de Morasthi qui usque hodie juxta Eleutheropolim, haud grandis est viculus."—Jerome, Preface to Micha. "Morasthi, unde fuit Micheas propheta, est autem vicus contra orientem Eleutheropoleos."—Onomasticon, which also gives "Maresa, in tribu Juda: cuius nunc tantummodo sunt ruinæ in secundo lapide Eleutheropoleos." See, too, the Epitaphium S. Paulæ: "Videam Morasthim sepulchrum quondam Michææ, nunc ecclesiam, et ex latere derelinquam Choræos, et Gitthæos et Maresam." The occurrence of a place bearing the name Property-of-Gath so close to Beit-Jibrin certainly strengthens the claims of the latter to be Gath. See Hist. Geog., p. 196.
[814] For the situation of Adullam in the Shephelah see Hist. Geog., p. 229.
[815] Isa. x. 28 ff. This makes it quite conceivable that Micah i. 9, it hath struck right up to the gate of Jerusalem, was composed immediately after the fall of Samaria, and not, as Sinend imagines, during the campaign of Sennacherib. Against the latter date there is the objection that by then the fall of Samaria, which Micah i. 6 describes as present, was already nearly twenty years past.
[816] The address is either to the tribes, in which case we must substitute land for earth in the next line; or much more probably it is to the Gentile nations, but in this case we cannot translate (as all do) in the third line that the Lord will be a witness against them, for the charge is only against Israel. They are summoned in the same sense as Amos summons a few of the nations in chap. iii. 9 ff.—The opening words of Micah are original to this passage, and interpolated in the exordium of the other Micah, 1 Kings xxii. 28.
[817] Jehovah's Temple or Place is not, as in earlier poems, Sinai or Seir (cf. Deborah's song and Deut. xxxiii.), but Heaven (cf. Isaiah xix. or Psalm xxix.).
[818] So LXX. and other versions.
[819] Wellhausen's objections to this phrase are arbitrary and incorrect. A ruin in the midst of soil gone out of cultivation, where before there had been a city among vineyards, is a striking figure of desolation.
[820] Which is precisely how Herod's Samaria lies at the present day.
[821] So Ewald.
[822] It must be kept in mind that all the verbs in the above passage may as correctly be given in the future tense; in that case the passage will be dated just before the fall of Samaria, in 722-1, instead of just after.
[823] בנות יענה, that is, the ostriches: cf. Arab, wa'ana, "white, barren ground." The Arabs call the ostrich "father of the desert: abu sahârâ."
[824] LXX.
[825] Isa. x. 28 ff.
[826] It is well put by Robertson Smith's Prophets2, pp. 289 ff.
[827] iii. 12.
[828] LXX. ἐν Ἀκειμ; Heb. "weep not at all."
[829] לְֽעַפְרָה cannot be the Ophrah, עָפְרָה, of Benjamin. It may be connected with עֹפֶר, a gazelle; and it is to be noted that S. of Beit-Jibrin there is a wady now called El-Ghufr, the corresponding Arabic word. But, as stated in the text above, the name ought to be one of a Philistine town.
[830] Beauty town. This is usually taken to be the modern Suafîr on the Philistine plain, 4½ miles S.E. of Ashdod, a site not unsuitable for identification with the Σαφειρ of the Onom., "between Eleutheropolis and Ascalon," except that Σαφειρ is also described as "in the hill country." Guérin found the name Safar a very little N. of Beit-Jíbrin (Judée, II. 317).
[831] March-town: perhaps the same as Ṣenan (צֵנַן) of Josh. xv. 37; given along with Migdal-Gad and Hadashah; not identified.
[832] Unknown.
[833] "Bitternesses": unknown.
[834] Tell-el-Hesy.
[835] Ambassadors or letters of dismissal.
[837] Josh. xv. 44; mentioned with Keilah and Mareshah; perhaps the present Ain Kezbeh, 8 miles N.N.E. of Beit-Jibrin.
[838] מָרֵשָׁה, but in Josh. xv. 44 מראשה, which is identical with spelling of the present name of a ruin 1 mile S. of Beit-Jibrin. Μαρησα is placed by Eusebius (Onom.) 2 Roman miles S. of Eleutheropolis ( = Beit-Jibrin).
[839] 6 miles N.E. of Beit-Jibrin.
[840] Isa. v. 8.
[841] Mr. Congreve, in his Essay on Slavery appended to his edition of Aristotle's Politics, p. 496, points out that all the servile wars from which Rome suffered arose, not in the capital, but in the provinces, notably in Sicily.
[843] Isa. v. 8.
[844] Cf. Amos v. 13.
[845] "Fuit." But whether this is a gloss, as of the name of the dirge or of the tune, or a part of the text, is uncertain. Query: ונחה ינהה ואמר.
[846] So LXX., and adds: "with the measuring rope."
[847] Or (after the LXX.) there is none to give it back to me.
[848] Uncertain. "Is the house of Jacob...?" (Wellhausen). "What a saying, O house of Jacob?" (Ewald and Guthe). In the latter case the interruption of the rich ceases with the previous line, and this one is the beginning of the prophet's answer to them.
[849] So we may conjecture the very obscure details of a verse whose general meaning, however, is evident. For ואתמול read ואתם ל. The LXX. takes שלמה as peace and not as cloak, for which there seems to be no place beside אדר (or אדרת). Wellhausen with further alterations renders: "But ye come forward as enemies against My people; from good friends ye rob their ..., from peaceful wanderers war-booty."
[850] Wellhausen reads בני for בית, "tenderly bred children," another of the many emendations which he proposes in the interests of complete parallelism. See the Preface to this volume.
[851] Little pigs.
[852] Fellows.
[853] A horse.
[854] Servants.
[855] Fairs, markets.
[856] A tally.
[857] Am not.
[858] Scarcely.
I will gather, gather thee, O Jacob, in mass,
I will bring, bring together the Remnant of Israel!
I will set them like sheep in a fold,
Like a flock in the midst of the pasture.
They shall hum with men!
The breach-breaker hath gone up before them:
They have broken the breach, have carried the gate, and are gone out by it;
And their king hath passed on before them, and Jehovah at their head.
[861] Nöldeke, Sketches from Eastern History, translated by Black, pp. 134 f.
[862] Arabia Deserta, I. 607.
[863] Id., II. 20.
[864] Ruins.
[865] Lieth.
[866] Course.
[867] Confusion.
[868] Summon.
[869] Pence.
[870] May.
[871] Complain.
[872] Substance or property.
[875] אחרית is the hindmost, furthest, ultimate, whether of space (Psalm cxxxix. 9: "the uttermost part of the sea"), or of time (Deut. xi. 12: "the end of the year"). It is the end as compared with the beginning, the sequel with the start, the future with the present (Job xlii. 12). In Proverbs it is chiefly used in the moral sense of issue or result. But it chiefly occurs in the phrase used here, אחרית הימים, not "the latter days," as A.V., nor ultimate days, for in these phrases lurks the idea of time having an end, but the after-days (Cheyne), or, better still, the issue of the days.
[876] LXX.
[877] Or arbitrate.
[878] Literally: "up to far away."
[879] That which shall abide and be the stock of the future.
[880] LXX. cast off.
[881] Schultz, A. T. Theol., p. 722.
[883] Wellhausen declares that this is unsuitable to the position of Jerusalem in the eighth century, and virtually implies her ruin and desolation. But, on the contrary, it is not so: Jerusalem is still standing, though alone (cf. the similar figure in Isa. i.). Consequently the contradiction which Wellhausen sees between this eighth verse and vv. 9, 10, does not exist. He grants that the latter may belong to the time of Sennacherib's invasion—unless it be a vaticinium post eventum!
[885] This in answer to Wellhausen, who thinks the two oracles incompatible, and that the second one is similar to the eschatological prediction common from Ezekiel onwards. Jerusalem, however, is surely still standing.
[886] Even Wellhausen agrees that this verse is most suitably dated from the time of Micah.
[887] Those who maintain the exilic date understand by this Jehovah Himself. In any case it may be He who is meant.
[888] The words in parenthesis are perhaps a gloss.
[889] Uncertain.
[890] The name Bethlehem is probably a later insertion. I read with Hitzig and others אפרת הצעיר, and omit להיות.
[891] Smallest form of district: cf. English hundreds.
[892] Cf. the prophecy of Immanuel, Isa. vii.
[893] This seems like a later insertion: it disturbs both sense and rhythm.
[894] So LXX.
[895] Take this clause from ver. 4 and the following oracle and put it with ver. 3.
[896] Wellhausen alleges in the numbers another trace of the late Apocalyptic writings—but this is not conclusive.
[897] So LXX. Cf. the refrain at the close.
[899] Omitted from the above is the strange clause from Shittim to Gilgal, which appears to be a gloss.
[900] See the passages on the subject in Professor Harper's work on Deuteronomy in this series.
[902] See above, p. 370, on the futility of the argument which because of this line would put the whole passage in Manasseh's reign.
[903] This word הצנע is only once used again, in Prov. xi. 2, in another grammatical form, where also it might mean humbly. But the root-meaning is evidently in secret, or secretly (cf. the Aram. צנע, to be hidden; צניע, one who lives noiselessly, humble, pious; in the feminine of a bride who is modest); and it is uncertain whether we should not take that sense here.