[905] Probably a later parenthesis. The word תושׁיה is one which, unusual in the prophets, the Wisdom literature has made its own Prov. ii. 7, xviii. 1; Job v. 12, etc. For Thy LXX. read His.
[906] Translation of LXX. emended by Wellhausen so as to read מועד העיר, the עיר being obtained by taking and transferring the עוד of the next verse, and relieving that verse of an unusual formation, viz. עוד before the interrogative האש. But for an instance of עוד preceding an interrogative see Gen. xix. 12.
[907] The text of the two preceding verses, which is acknowledged to be corrupt, must be corrected by the undoubted 3rd feminine suffix in this one—"her rich men." Throughout the reference must be to the city. We ought therefore to change האזכה of ver. 11 into התזכה, which agrees with the LXX. δικαιωθήσεται. Ver. 10 is more uncertain, but for the same reason that "the city" is referred to throughout vv. 9-12, it is possible that it is the nominative to זעומה; translate "cursed with the short measure." Again for אצרות LXX. read אוֹצֶרֶת אֹצְרוֹת, to which also the city would be nominative. And this suggests the query whether in the letters האש בית, that make little sense as they stand in the Massoretic Text, there was not originally another feminine participle. The recommendation of a transformation of this kind is that it removes the abruptness of the appearance of the 3rd feminine suffix in ver. 12.
[908] The word is found only here. The stem יחשׁ is no doubt the same as the Arabic verb waḥash, which in Form V. means "Inami ventre fuit præ fame; vacuum reliquit stomachum" (Freytag). In modern colloquial Arabic waḥsha means a "longing for an absent friend."
[909] Jussive. The objects removed can hardly be goods, as Hitzig and others infer; for it is to the sword they afterwards fall. They must be persons.
[910] LXX. Zimri.
[911] So LXX.; but Heb. My people.
[912] Uncertain.
[913] Cf. Prov. xv. 19.
[914] Roorda, by rearranging letters and clauses (some of them after LXX.), and by changing points, gets a reading which may be rendered: For evil are their hands! To do good the prince demandeth a bribe, and the judge, for the reward of the great, speaketh what he desireth. And they entangle the good more than thorns, and the righteous more than a thorn hedge.
[915] Cf. Isa. xxii. 5.
[917] Cf. with it Exod. xxxiv. 6, 7 (J); Jer. iii. 5, l. 20; Isa. lvii. 16; Psalms ciii. 9, cv. 9, 10.
[918] It was a woman who spoke before, the People or the City. But the second personal pronouns to which this reply of the prophet is addressed are all masculine. Notice the same change in vi. 9-16 (above p. 427).
[919] ירחק־חק, Ewald: "distant the date." Notice the assonance. It explains the use of the unusual word for border. LXX. thy border. The LXX. also takes into ver. 11 (as above) the יום הוא of ver. 12.
[920] Something has probably been lost here.
[921] For ההר read מהר.
[922] It is difficult to get sense when translating the conjunction in any other way. But these two lines may belong to the following.
[923] The words omitted above are literally jungle in the midst of gardenland or Carmel. Plausible as it would be to take the proper name Carmel here along with Bashan and Gilead (see Hist. Geog., 338), the connection prefers the common noun garden or gardenland: translate "dwelling alone like a bit of jungle in the midst of cultivated land." Perhaps the clause needs rearrangement: יערבתוככרמל, with a verb to introduce it. Yet compare יַעַר כַּרְמִלּוֹ, 2 Kings xix. 23; Isa. xxxvii. 24.