[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.
[83] See above, p. 37, n. 78.
[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.
[87] See below, p. 99.
[88] Amos iv. 4 ff.
[89] Amos vii. 4: cf. 2 Kings v. 23.
[90] Amos iv. 4 f.
[91] See below, p. 185.
[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.
[102] See above, pp. 35 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.
[111] See below, Chap. XI.
[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 (?).
[129] See below, p. 221.
[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.
[142] See p. 36.
[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.
[151] See pp. 136 f.
[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.
[157] See Chap. IV.
[158] See pp. 53 ff.
[159] See pp. 69 f.
[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.
[165] See above, p. 10.
[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.
[177] See above, p. 18.
[178] iii. 2.
[179] v. 21 ff.
[180] Jer. vii. 22 f.
[181] See above, p. 23.
[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.
[199] See Chap. IV., p. 51.
[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.
[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.
[247]
"Great Cæsar dead and turned to clay
Might stop a hole to turn the wind away."
[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.
[255] See above, p. 126.
[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.
[278] See p. 205, n. 393.
[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.
[287] See p. 141.
[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.
[312] See above, p. 33.
[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.
[343] Pp. 141 f.
[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.
[394] See below, pp. 213 f.
[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.
[423] Cf. W. R. Smith, Prophets, 157: Hosea's "language and the
movement of his thoughts are far removed from the simplicity and
self-control which characterise the prophecy of Amos. Indignation
and sorrow, tenderness and severity, faith in the sovereignty of
Jehovah's love, and a despairing sense of Israel's infidelity are woven
together in a sequence which has no logical plan, but is determined
by the battle and alternate victory of contending emotions; and
the swift transitions, the fragmentary unbalanced utterance, the
half-developed allusions, that make his prophecy so difficult to the
commentator, express the agony of this inward conflict."
[424] See above, p. 114.
[425] Præf. in Duod. Prophetas.
[426] Especially in chap. vii.
[427] As in xi. 2 b.
[428] This is especially the case in x. 11-13; xi. 4; xiv. 5.
[429] E.g. vi. 5 b: M.T. משפטיך אור יצא which is nonsense; LXX.
משפטי כאור, My judgment shall go forth like light. xi. 2: M.T.
מִפְּנֵיהֶם; LXX. מִפָּנַי הֵם.
[430] iv. 4, עמי for עמך; 8, נפשם for נפ—perhaps; 13, צִלָּה for צִלָּהּ;
v. 2; vi. 2 (possibly); viii. 4, read יכרתוּ; ix. 2; xi. 2, 3; xi. 5, 6,
where for לא read לו; 10, read לֵֶךְ; xii. 9; xiv. 9 a, לוֹ for לִי.
On the other hand, they are either improbable or quite wrong, as in
v. 2 b; vi. 2 (but the LXX. may be right here); vii 1 b; xi. 1, 4;
xii. 5; xiii. 14, 15 (ter.).
[431] v. 5 (so as to change the tense: and Judah shall stumble);
xii. 3, etc.
[432] vi. 3; viii. 10, 13; ix. 2; x. 4, 13 b, 15 (probably); xii. 2; xiii. 9;
xiv. 3. Wrong tense, xii. 11. Cf. also vi. 3.
[433] E.g. viii. 13.
[434] Cf. the Hebrew and Greek, of e.g., iv. 10, 11, 12; vi. 9, 10; viii. 5, 6;
ix. 8, 9.
[435] viii. 13 (14 must be omitted); ix. 17.
[436] Introd. 284.
[437] E.g. iv. 15 (?); vi. 11-vii. 1 (?); vii. 4; viii. 2; xii. 6.
[438] Einl., 323.
[439] אשם, v. 15; x. 2; xiii. 1; xiv. 1.
[440] P. 313.
[441] viii. 14 is also rejected by Wellhausen and Cornill.
[442] Loc. cit.
[443] See above, pp. 193 ff.
[444] v. 4.
[445] Deut. xxxii. 10-12: a song probably earlier than the eighth
century. But some put it later.
[446] Psalm xviii.
[447] ii. 10 f.
[448] iii. 2.
[449] Matt. xi. 12.
[450] ii. 23, Heb.
[451] ii. 20, Heb.
[452] vi. 3, 4; vii. 8; ix. 10; xiv. 6, 7, 8.
[453] vii. 11, 12; x. 11; xi. 4, etc.
[454] Pregnant construction, hath committed great harlotry from after
Jehovah.
[455] These personal names do not elsewhere occur. גֹּמֶר; Γομερ. דִּבְלַיִם; Δεβηλαιμ B; Δεβηλαειμ, AQ. They have, of course, been interpreted
allegorically in the interests of the theory discussed below.
גמר has been taken to mean "completion," and interpreted as various
derivatives of that root: Jerome, "the perfect one"; Raschi, "that
fulfilled all evil"; Kimchi, "fulfilment of punishment"; Calvin,
"consumptio," and so on. דבלים has been traced to דִּבלה, Pl.
דִּבְלִים, cakes of pressed figs, as if a name had been sought to connect
the woman at once with the idol-worship and a rich sweetness;
or to an Arabic root, דבל, to press, as if it referred either to the
plumpness of the body (cf. Ezek. xvi. 7; so Hitzig) or to the woman's
habits. But all these are far-fetched and vain. There is no reason
to suppose that either of the two names is symbolic. The alternative
(allowed by the language) naturally suggests itself that דבלים is the
name of Gomer's birthplace. But there is nothing to prove this.
No such place-name occurs elsewhere: one cannot adduce the
Diblathaim in Moab (Num. xxxiii. 46 ff.; Jer. xlviii. 2).
[456] Hist. Geog., Chap. XVIII.
[457] לֹא רֻחָמָה, probably 3rd pers. sing. fem. Pual (in Pause
cf. Prov. xxviii. 13); literally, She is not loved or pitied. The word
means love as pity: "such pity as a father hath unto his children
dear" (Psalm ciii.), or God to a penitent man (Psalm xxviii. 13).
The Greek versions alternate between love and pity. LXX. οὐκ
ἠλεημένη διότι οὐ μὴ προσθήσω ἔτι ἠλεῆσαι, for which the Complutensian
has ἀγαπῆσαι, the reading followed by Paul (Rom. ix, 25: cf.
1 Peter ii. 10).
[458] Here ver. 7 is to be omitted, as explained above, p. 213.
[459] Do not belong to you; but the I am, אהיה, recalls the I am that
I am of Exodus.
[460] Augustine, Ambrose, Theodoret, Cyril Alex. and Theodore of
Mopsuestia.
[461] It is interesting to read in parallel the interpretations of Matthew
Henry and Dr. Pusey. They are very alike, but the latter has the
more delicate taste of his age.
[462] i. 2.
[463] The former is Matthew Henry's; the latter seems to be implied
by Pusey.
[464] Robertson Smith, Prophets of Israel.
[465] Apparently it was W. R. Smith's interpretation which caused
Kuenen to give up the allegorical theory.
[466] Two instances are usually quoted. The one is Isaiah vi., where
most are agreed that what Isaiah has stated there as his inaugural
vision is not only what happened in the earliest moments of his
prophetic life, but this spelt out and emphasised by his experience
since. See Isaiah I.-XXXIX. (Exp. Bible), pp. 57 f. The other
instance is Jeremiah xxxii. 8, where the prophet tells us that he
became convinced that the Lord spoke to him on a certain occasion
only after a subsequent event proved this to be the case.
[467] An Eastern woman seldom weans her child before the end of its
second year.
[468] iii. 2.
[469] From a speech by John Bright.
[470] iv. 13, 14.
[471] Cf. the spiritual use of the term, Isa. lxii. 4.
[472] For proof and exposition of all this see Robertson Smith, Religion
of the Semites, 92 ff.
[473] ii. 8.
[474] So best is rendered חסד, ḥesedh, which means always not merely
an affection, "lovingkindness," as our version puts it, but a relation
loyally observed.
[475] An expansion of this will be found in the present writer's
Isaiah XL.-LXVI. (Expositor's Bible Series), pp. 398 ff.
[476] ii. 13.
[477] ii. 5, 13.
[478] ii. 5.
[479] See above, p. 235.
[480] The participle Qal, used by God of Himself in His proclamations
of grace or of punishment, has in this passage (cf. ver. 16) and elsewhere
(especially in Deuteronomy) the force of an immediate future.
[481] So LXX.; Mass. Text, thy.
[482] The reading גְּדֵרָהּ is more probable than גְּדֵרָה.
[483] Or they made it into a Ba'al image. So Ew., Hitz., Nowack.
But Wellhausen omits the clause.
[484] Wellhausen thinks that up to ver. 14 only physical calamities are
meant, but the הצלתו of ver. 11, as well as others of the terms used,
imply not the blighting of crops before their season, but the carrying
of them away in their season, when they had fully ripened, by
invaders. The cessation of all worship points to the removal of the
people from their land, which is also implied, of course, by the
promise that they shall be sown again in ver. 23.
[485] Cf. Isa. xl. 1: which to the same exiled Israel is the fulfilment of
the promise made by Hosea. See Isaiah XL.-LXVI. (Expositor's
Bible), pp. 75 ff.
[486] Wellhausen calls ver. 18 a gloss to ver. 19.
[487] Massoretic Text, her.
[488] It is at this point, if at any, that i. 10, 11, ii. 1 (Eng., but ii. 1-3 Heb.)
ought to come in. It will be observed, however, that even here they
are superfluous: And the number of the children of Israel shall be as
the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured nor counted; and it shall
be in the place where it was said to them, No People of Mine are ye! it
shall be said to them, Sons of the Living God! And the children of
Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together, and they shall
appoint themselves one head, and shall go up from the land: for great is
the day of Jezreel. Say unto your brothers, My People, and to your
sisters (LXX. sister), She-is-Pitied. On the whole passage see
above, p. 213.
[489] Or that is loved of her husband though an adulteress.
[490] So LXX. The homer was eight bushels. The lethech is a
measure not elsewhere mentioned.
[491] On these see above, Introduction, Chap. III., p. 38.
[492] On the text see above, p. 214.
[493] xi. 9.
[494] As the stories all written down before this had made familiar to
Israel.
[495] כי formally introduces the charge.
[496] Lit. swearing and falsehood.
[497] Ninth, sixth, eighth and seventh of the Decalogue.
[498] Amos vi. 1.
[499] iv. 4. According to the excellent emendation of Beck (quoted by
Wünsche, p. 142), who instead of ועמככמריב proposes ועמי ככמריו,
for the first word of which there is support in the LXX. ὁ λαός μου.
The second word, כמר, is used for priest only in a bad sense by
Hosea himself, x. 5, and in 2 Kings xxiii. 5 of the calf-worship and
in Zech. i. 4 of the Baal priesthood. As Wellhausen remarks, this
emendation restores sense to a passage that had none before.
"Ver. 4 cannot be directed against the people, but must rather furnish
the connection for ver. 5, and effect the transference from the reproof
of the people (vv. 1-3) to the reproof of the priests (5 ff.)." The
letters יכהן which are left over in ver. 4 by the emendation are then
justly improved by Wellhausen (following Zunz) into the vocative
הכהן and taken with the following verse.
[500] The application seems to swerve here. Thy children would seem
to imply that, for this clause at least, the whole people, and not the
priests only, were addressed. But Robertson Smith takes thy mother
as equivalent, not to the nation, but to the priesthood.
[501] A reading current among Jewish writers and adopted by Geiger,
Urschrift, 316.
[502] Heb. the heart, which ancient Israel conceived as the seat of the
intellect.
[503] Wellhausen thinks this third place-name (cf. Amos v. 5) has been
dropped. It certainly seems to be understood.
[504] But see above, p. 224.
[505] So all critics since Hitzig.
[506] Mal. ii. 4.
[507] Isa. xliv. 11.
[508] The verse is very uncertain. LXX. read a different and a fuller
text from Ephraim in the previous verse to harlotry in this: "Ephraim
hath set up for himself stumbling-blocks and chosen Canaanites."
In the first of alternate readings of the latter half of the verse omit
הבו as probably a repetition of the end of the preceding word; the
second alternative is adapted from LXX., which for מגיניה must
have read מגאונה.
[509] So by slightly altering the consonants. But the text is uncertain.
[510] Note on the Pride of Israel.—גאון means grandeur, and is (1) so
used of Jehovah's majesty (Micah v. 3; Isa. ii. 10, 19, 21; xxiv. 14), and
(2) of the greatness of human powers (Zech. x. 11; Ezek. xxxii. 12).
In Psalm xlvii. 5 it is parallel to the land of Israel (cf. Nahum ii. 3).
(3) In a grosser sense the word is used of the rank vegetation of Jordan
(Eng. wrongly swelling) (Jer. xii. 5; Zech. xi. 3: cf. Job xxxviii. 11).
It would appear to be this grosser sense of rankness, arrogance, in
which Amos vi. 8 takes it as parallel to the palaces of Israel which
Jehovah loathes and will destroy. In Amos viii. 7 the phrase may be
used in scorn; yet some take it even there of God Himself (Buhl,
last ed. of Gesenius' Lexicon).
Now in Hosea it occurs twice in the phrase given above— גאון ישראל בפניו וענה
(v. 5, vii. 10). LXX., Targum and some Jewish
exegetes take ענה as a ל״ו verb, to be humbled, and this suits both
contexts. But the word בפניו to his face almost compels us to take ענה as a ל״י verb, to witness against (cf. Job xvi. 8; Jer. xiv. 7).
Hence Wellhausen renders "With his arrogance Israel witnesseth
against himself," and confirms the plaint of Jehovah—the arrogance
being the trust in the ritual and the feeling of no need to turn from
that and repent (cf. vii. 10). Orelli quotes Amos vi. 8 and
Nahum ii. 3, and says injustice cleaves to all Israel's splendour, so
it testifies against him.
But the context, which in both cases speaks of Israel's gradual
decay, demands rather the interpretation that Israel's material
grandeur shows unmistakable signs of breaking down. For the
ethical development of this interpretation, see below, pp. 337 f.
[511] Probably the ancient war-cry of the clan. Cf. Judg. v. 14.
[512] Yet ver. 9 goes with ver. 8 (so Wellhausen), and not with
ver. 10 (so Ewald).
[513] For צו read שׁוא.
[514] Wellhausen inserts Judah, with that desire to complete a parallel
which seems to me to be overdone by so many critics. If Judah be
inserted we should need to bring the date of these verses down to the
reign of Ahaz in 734.
[515] Guthe: "King Fighting-Cock."
[516] See Isaiah I.-XXXIX. (Expositor's Bible), pp. 242 ff.
[517] Cheyne indeed (Introduction to Robertson Smith's Prophets of
Israel) takes the prayer to be genuine, but an intrusion. His
reasons do not persuade me. But at least it is clear that there is
a want of connection between the prayer and what follows it, unless
the prayer be understood in the sense explained above.
[518] Isaiah ix. 10.
[519] Cf. Isaiah xviii. 4.
[520] Saying: so the LXX. adds and thereby connects chap. v. with
chap. vi.
[521] Read ויִךְ.
[522] Literally hunt, pursue. It is the same word as is used of the unfaithful
Israel's pursuit of the Ba'alim, chap. ii. 9.
[523] So by a rearrangement of consonants (כשחרנו כן נמצאהו) and
the help of the LXX. (εὑρήσομεν αὐτόν) Giesebrecht (Beiträge, p. 208)
proposes to read the clause, which in the traditional text runs, like the
morn His going forth shall be certain.
[524] Read מִשְׁפָּטִי כָאוֹר יֵצֵא.
[525] Or like Adam, or (Guthe) like the heathen.
[526] The verb means to prove false to any contract, but especially
marriage.
[527] Read מחכי.
[528] In several passages of the Old Testament the word means
unchastity.
[529] Here the LXX. close chap. vi., taking 11 b along with chap. vii.
Some think the whole of ver. 11 to be a Judæan gloss.
[530] Cf. Joel ii. 9, and the New Testament phrase to come as a thief.
[531] v. 4.
[532] The text is unsound. Heb.: "like an oven kindled by the baker,
the stirrer (stoker or kneader?) resteth from kneading the dough until
it be leavened." LXX.: ὡς κλίβανος καιόμενος εἰς πέψιν κατακαύματος ἀπὸ
τῆς φλογός ἀπὸ φυράσεως στέατος ἑῶς τοῦ ξυμωθῆναι αὐτό—i.e. for ישבת
they read אש לחבת. Oort emends Heb. to בוער הם אפהו, which gets
rid of the difficulty of a feminine participle with תנור. Wellhausen
omits whole clause as a gloss on ver. 6. But if there be a gloss it
properly commences with ישבת.
[533] LXX. μετατοιμῶν??
[534] LXX. kindled, בָּעְרַוּ. So Vollers, Z.A.T.W., III. 250.
[535] Lit. lurking.
[536] Massoretic Text with different vowels reads their baker. LXX. Εφραιμ!
[537] See below, Chap. XXII.
[538] See Chap. XXI.
[539] Numb. xxiii. 9 b; Josh. ii. 8.
[540] Deut. xxxiii. 27.
[541] Deut. xxxiii. 18, 19.
[542] יִתְבֹּלֵל from בלל. In Phœn. בלל seems to have been used as in
Israel of the sacrificial mingling of oil and flour (cf. Robertson Smith,
Religion of Semites, I. 203); in Arabic ball is to weaken a strong
liquid with water, while balbal is to be confused, disordered. The
Syriac balal is to mix. Some have taken Hosea's יתבלל as if from
בליל (Isa. xxx. 24; Job vi. 5), usually understood as a mixed crop
of wheat and inferior vegetables for fodder; but there is reason to
believe בליל means rather fresh corn. The derivation from בלה to
grow old, does not seem probable.
[543] xii. 8.
[544] ix. 9 f.
[545] See above, p. 261, and below, p. 337.
[546] But the reading is very doubtful.
[547] For יתגררו read יתגדדו.
[548] Wellhausen's objection to the first clause, that one does not set a
trumpet to one's gums, which חֵךְ literally means, is beside the mark.
חֵךְ is more than once used of the mouth as a whole (Job viii. 7;
Prov. v. 3). The second clause gives the reason of the trumpet, the
alarum trumpet, in the first. Read כי נשר (so also Wellhausen).
[549] Cf. Amos: Seek Me = Seek the good; and Jesus: Not every one
that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord; but he that doeth the will of My Father
in heaven.
[550] So LXX., but Hebrew it.
[551] Davidson's Syntax, § 136, Rem. 1, and § 71, Rom. 4.
[552] So by the accents runs the verse, but, as Wellhausen has pointed
out, both its sense and its assonance are better expressed by another
arrangement: Hath it grown up? then it hath no shoot, nor bringeth forth
fruit.
ên lo ṣemach,
b'li ya'aseh qemach.
Yet to this there is a grammatical obstacle.
[553] Wellhausen's reading to Egypt with love gifts scarcely suits the
verb go up. Notice the play upon P(h)ere', wild-ass and Ephra'[îm].
[554] So LXX. reads. Heb.: they shall involve themselves with tribute
to the king of princes, presumably the Assyrian monarch.
[555] So LXX.
[556] Text obscure.
[557] LXX. addition here is plainly borrowed from ix. 3. For the
reasons for omitting ver. 14 see above, p. 223.
[558] ii. 16.
[559] On this verse see more particularly below, pp. 340 ff.
[560] So LXX.
[561] Read יערכו. Cf. with the whole passage iii. 4 f.
[562] לחמם for להם.
[563] יָבִיאוּ.
[564] Plural: so LXX.
[565] Others read they are gone to Assyria.
[566] Literally knows. See below, p. 321, n. 682.
[567] See above, p. 28.
[568] So, after the LXX., by taking העמיקו with this verse, 8, instead
of with ver. 9.
[569] iv. 12.
[570] iv. 13, 14.
[571] Here, between vv. 11 and 12, Wellhausen with justice proposes
to insert ver. 16.
[572] So Wellhausen, after LXX.; probably correct.
[573] So we may attempt to echo the play on the words.
[574] Cf., e.g., the Proverbs of Ptah-Hotep the Egyptian, circa 2500 b.c.
"There is no prudence in taking part in it, and thousands of men
destroy themselves in order to enjoy a moment, brief as a dream,
while they gain death so as to know it. It is a villainous ... that of a man who excites himself (?); if he goes on to carry it out, his
mind abandons him. For as for him who is without repugnance for
such an [act], there is no good sense at all in him."—From the
translation in Records of the Past, Second Series, Vol. III., p. 24.
[575] 2 Peter i.
[576] Doubtful. The Heb. text gives an inappropriate if not impossible
clause, even if ישׁוה be taken from a root שׁוח, to set or produce
(Barth, Etym. Stud., 66). LXX.: ὁ καρπὸς εὐθηνῶν αὐτῆς (A.Q. αὐτῆς
εὐθηνῶν), "her [the vine's] fruit flourishing." Some parallel is required
to בקק of the first clause; and it is possible that it may have been
from a root שׁוּחַ or שִׁיח, corresponding to Arabic sâḥ, "to wander"
in the sense of scattering or being scattered.
[577] After LXX.
[578] Doubtful. Lawsuits?
[579] "Calf," "inhabitants"—so LXX.
[580] LXX. supplies.
[581] See above, p. 263.
[582] Very uncertain. Wellhausen reads from his idol, מעצבו.
[583] קצף: compare Arabic qṣf, "to break"; but there is also the
assonant Arabic qṣb, "reed." The Rabbis translate foam: cf. the
other meaning of קצף—outbreak of anger, which suggests bubble.
[584] Rosenmüller: more than in. These days are evidently not the
beginning of the kingship under Saul (so Wellhausen), for with
that Hosea has no quarrel, but either the idolatry of Micah (Judg.
xvii. 3 ff.), or more probably the crime of Benjamin (Judg. xix. 22).
[585] Obscure; text corrupt, and in next verse uncertain.
[586] For the tense of the verse both participles are surely needed.
Wellhausen thinks two redundant.
[587] Deut. xxv. 4; 1 Cor. ix. 9; 1 Tim. v. 18.
[588] LXX.: fruit of life.
[589] צדק surely in the sense in which we find it in Isa. xl. ff. LXX.:
the fruits of righteousness shall be yours.
[590] We shall return to this passage in dealing with Repentance; see
p. 345.
[591] So LXX. Wellhausen suspects authenticity of the whole clause.
[592] Wellhausen proposes to read בעריד for בעמיך, but there is no
need.
[593] See above, p. 216, n. 411.
[594] So LXX.
[595] See above, p. 253.
[596] St. John's Gospel, i. 12, 13.
[597] Or occasionally for the king as the nation's representative.
[598] See below, pp. 321-3.
[599] 1 John iii.
[600] So rightly the LXX.
[601] LXX., rightly separating מִפְּנֵיהֶם into מִפָּנָי and הֵם, which
latter is the nominative to the next clause.
[602] So again rightly the LXX.
[603] The reading is uncertain. The לֹא of the following verse (6)
must be read as the Greek reads it, as לֹו, and taken with ver. 5.
[604] x. 11.
[605] Or lifted forward from the neck to the jaws.
[606] Isa. lxiii. 13, 14.
[607] Ver. 6 has an obviously corrupt text, and, weakening as it does
the climax of ver. 5, may be an insertion.
[608] Are hung or swung towards turning away from Me.
[609] This verse is also uncertain.
[610] For בעיר, which makes nonsense, read לבעור, to consume, or
with Wellhausen amend further לא אובה לבער, I am not willing to
consume.
[611] They will follow Jehovah; like a lion He will roar, and they shall
hurry trembling from the west. Like birds shall they hurry trembling
from Egypt, and like doves from the land of Assyria, and I will bring
them to their homes—'tis the oracle of Jehovah. Not only does this
verse contain expressions which are unusual to Hosea, and a very
strange metaphor, but it is not connected either historically or
logically with the previous verse. The latter deals with the people
before God has scattered them—offers them one more chance before
exile comes on them. But in this verse they are already scattered,
and just about to be brought back. It is such a promise as both in
language and metaphor was common among the prophets of the
Exile. In the LXX. the verse is taken from chap. xi. and put
with chap. xii.
[612] xi. 7.
[613] This is especially true of vv. 11 and 12.
[614] Even in the most detachable portion, vv. 8-10, where the און
of ver. 9 seems to refer to the באונו of ver. 4.
[615] Viz. in vv. 3 and 15.
[616] Beer indeed, at the close of a very ingenious analysis of the
chapter (Z.A.T.W., 1893, pp. 281 ff.), claims to have proved that it contains
"eine wohlgegliederte Rede des Propheten" (p. 292). But he
reaches this conclusion only by several forced and precarious arguments.
Especially unsound do his pleas appear that in 8b לעשק is
a play upon the root-meaning of כנען, "lowly"; that כנען, in
analogy to the בבטן of ver. 4, is the crude original, the raw material,
of the Ephraim of ver. 9; and that כימי מועד is "the determined time"
of the coming judgment on Israel.
[617] Something is written about Judah (remember what was said above
about Hosea's treble parallels), but the text is too obscure for translation.
The theory that it has been altered by a later Judæan writer
in favour of his own people is probably correct: the Authorised Version
translates in favour of Judah; so too Guthe in Kautzsch's
Bibel. But an adverse statement is required by the parallel clauses,
and the Hebrew text allows this: Judah is still wayward with God,
and with the Holy One who is faithful. So virtually Ewald, Hitzig,
Wünsche, Nowack and Cheyne. But Cornill and Wellhausen read the
second half of the clause as עם־קדשים נצמד, profanes himself with
Qedeshim (Z.A.T.W., 1887, pp. 286 ff.).
[618] Why should not Hosea, the master of many forced phrases, have
also uttered this one? This in answer to Wellhausen.
[619] So LXX., reading שוא for שד.
[620] Isa. xxx. 6.
[621] Heb. Judah, but surely Israel is required by the next verse, which
is a play upon the two names Israel and Jacob.
[622] Supplanted is 'aqab, the presumable root of Ja'aqab (Jacob).
Wrestled with God is Sarah eth Elohim, the presumable origin of
Yisra'el (Israel).
[623] Heb. us, LXX. them.
[624] Ver. 6—And Jehovah God of Hosts, Jehovah is His memorial,
i.e. name—is probably an insertion for the reasons mentioned
above, pp. 204 f.
[625] This, the most natural rendering of the Hebrew phrase, has been
curiously omitted by Beer, who says that באלהיך can only mean to
thy God. Hitzig: "durch deinen Gott."
[626] Some take these words as addressed by Jehovah at Bethel to the
Patriarch.
[627] So nearly all interpreters. Hitzig aptly quotes Polybius, De
Virtute, L. ix.:διὰ τὴν ἔμφυτον Φοίνιξι πλεονεξίαν, κ.τ.λ.. One might
also refer to the Romans' idea of the "Punica fides."
[628] Or, full man's strength: ct. ver. 4.
[629] But the LXX. reads: All his gains shalt not be found of him because
of the iniquity which he has sinned; and Wellhausen emends this to:
All his gain sufficeth not for the guilt which it has incurred.
[630] Others to demons.
[631] Field, but here in sense of territory. See Hist. Geog., pp. 79 f.
[632] Uncertain.
[633] נשיא for נשא.
[634] Read with Ewald כתבנתם. LXX. read כתמונת.
[635] Here the LXX. makes the insertion noted on pp. 203, 226.
[636] So LXX., רעיתיך.
[637] Read וֶאֱהִי.
[638] אשׁור, usually taken as first fut. of שור, to lurk. But there is a
root of common use in Arabic, sar, to spring up suddenly, of wine into
the head or of a lion on its prey; sawâr, "the springer," is one of the
Arabic names for lion.
[639] We shall treat this passage later in connection with Hosea's
doctrine of the knowledge of God: see pp. 330 f.
[640] After the LXX.
[641] Read with Houtsma וכל שריך וישפטוך.
[642] Literally a son not wise, perhaps a name given to children whose
birth was difficult.
[643] The LXX. reads: Ποῦ ἡ δίκη σου, θάνατε; ποῦ τὸ κέντρον σου, ᾅδη;
But Paul says: Ποῦ σου, θάνατε, τὸ νῖκος; ποῦ σου, θάνατε, τὸ κέντρον;
I Cor. xv. 55 (Westcott and Hort's Ed.).
[644] The following is a list of the interpretations of verse 14.
A. Taken as a threat 1. "It is I who redeemed you from the
grip of the grave, and who delivered you from death—but now I will
call up the words (sic) of death against you; for repentance is hid
from My eyes." So Raschi. 2. "I would have redeemed them from
the grip of Sheol, etc., if they had been wise, but being foolish I will
bring on them the plagues of death." So Kimchi, Eichhorn, Simson,
etc. 3 "Should I" or "shall I deliver them from the hand of Sheol, redeem them from death?" etc., as in the text above. So Wünsche,
Wellhausen, Guthe in Kautzsch's Bibel. etc.
B. Taken as a promise. "From the hand of Sheol I will deliver
them, from death redeem them," etc. So Umbreit, Ewald, Hitzig and
Authorised and Revised English Versions. In this case repentance
in the last clause must be taken as resentment (Ewald). But, as
Ewald sees, the whole verse must then be put in a parenthesis, as an
ejaculation of promise in the midst of a context that only threatens.
Some without change of word render: "I will be thy plagues, O
death? I will be thy sting, O hell." So the Authorised English
Version.
[645] Text doubtful.
[646] Cf. vi. 6, etc.
[647] Cf. xii. 2, etc.
[648] Cf. i. 7; ii. 22, 25.
[649] Cf. xi. 4.
[650] Cf. xi. 8, 9.
[651] Since preparing the above for the press there has come into
my hands Professor Cheyne's "Introduction" to the new edition
of Robertson Smith's The Prophets of Israel, in which (p. xix.) he
reaches with regard to Hosea xiv. 2-10 conclusions entirely opposite
to those reached above. Professor Cheyne denies the passage to
Hosea on the grounds that it is akin in language and imagery and
ideas to writings of the age which begins with Jeremiah, and which
among other works includes the Song of Songs. But, as has been
shown above, the "language, imagery and ideas" are all akin to
what Professor Cheyne admits to be genuine prophecies of Hosea;
and the likeness to them of, e.g., Jer. xxxi. 10-20 may be explained on
the same ground as so much else in Jeremiah, by the influence of
Hosea. The allusion in ver. 3 suits Hosea's own day more than
Jeremiah's. Nor can I understand what Professor Cheyne means by
this: "The spirituality of the tone of vers. 1-3 is indeed surprising
(contrast the picture in Hos. v. 6)." Spirituality surprising in the book that contains "I will have love and not sacrifice, and the knowledge
of God rather than burnt-offerings"! The verse, v. 6, he would
contrast with xiv. 1-3 is actually one in which Hosea says that when
they go "with flocks and herds" Israel shall not find God! He says
that "to understand Hosea aright we must omit it" (i.e. the whole
epilogue). But after the argument I have given above it will be plain
that if we "understand Hosea aright" we have every reason not "to
omit it." His last contention, that "to have added anything to the
stern warning in xiii. 16 would have robbed it of half its force," is
fully met by the considerations stated above on p. 310.
[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.
[707] So LXX. See p. 293.
[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.
[714] See above, p. 302.
[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.
[723] See above, p. 320.
[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.
[740] See above, p. 261.
[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.
[765] See above, p. 288.
[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.
[774] See above, pp. 6 f.
[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."
[788] See above, p. 311.
[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.
[790] See below, pp. 383 ff.
[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.
[813] See above, pp. 74 ff.
[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.
[836] See above, p. 376.
[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.
[842] See above, pp. 32 ff.
[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.
[859]
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.
[860] See above, p. 33.
[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.
[873] See above, pp. 365 ff.
[874] See above, Chap. VII.
[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.
[882] See above, pp. 276 ff.
[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!
[884] See above, p. 32.
[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.
[898] See above, pp. 369 ff.
[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.
[901] See above, p. 161.
[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.
[904] See above, pp. 370 ff.
[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.
[916] Above, pp. 372 ff.
[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.