Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Starting from the saying of Joel (iii. 16), “ Jehovah will roar out of Zion, and utter His voice from Jerusalem,” Amos announces the wrath of the Lord, which will discharge itself upon Damascus (i. 3-5), Philistia (i. 6-8), Tyre (@. 9, 10), Edom (i. 11, 12), Ammon (i. 13-15), Moab (i. 1-3), Judah (ii. 4, 5), and Israel (ii. 6-16). The announcement of this judgment maintains a certain uniformity throughout; every one of these nations being threatened with the destruction of the kingdom, or with ruin and exile, “for three or four transgressions;” and the threat, as Riickert has well expressed it, “rolling like a storm, in strophe after strophe, over all the surrounding kingdoms,” touching Judah as it passes along, and eventually resting over Israel. The six heathen nations mentioned, three of which are related to the covenant nation, represent all the Gentile nations, which rise up in hostility to the people or kingdom of God. For the sins on account of which they are to be punished, are not certain general breaches of morality, but.crimes which they have committed against the people of God; and in the case of Judah, contempt of the commandments of the Lord, and idolatry. The whole section, not merely ch. i. 2-i1. 5, but also ch. ii, 6-16, has an introductory character. Whilst, on the one hand, the extension of the prediction of judgment to the Gentile nations indicates the necessity and universality of the judgment, which is sent to promote the interests of the kingdom of God, and preaches the truth that every one will be judged according to his attitude towards the living God; on the other hand, the place assigned to the Gentile nations, viz. before the covenant nation, not only sharpened the conscience, but taught this lesson, that if even the nations which had only sinned indirectly against the living God:were visited with severe punishment, those to whom God had so gloriously revealed Himself (ch. 11. 9-11, iii. 1) would be punished still more surely for their apostasy (ch. iii. 2). It is with this design that Judah is also mentioned along with Israel, and in fact before it.

“The intention was to impress this truth most strongly upon the people of the ten tribes, that not even the possession of such glorious prerogatives as the temple and the throne of David could avert the merited punishment. If this be the energy of the justice of God, what have we to look for?” (Hengstenberg.)

Ch. i. Ver. 1 contains the heading, which has already been discussed in the Introduction; and Tn Ws (“which he saw”) refers to DIDY "39 (the words of Amos). Ver. 2 forms the Introduction, which is attached to the heading by 728%, and announces a revelation of the wrath of God upon Israel, or a theocratic judgment. Ver. 2. “Jehovah roars out of Zion, and He utters His voice from Jerusalem; and the pastures of the shepherds mourn, and the head of Carmel withers.” The voice of Jehovah is the thunder, the earthly substratum in which the Lord manifests His coming to judgment (see at Joel ii. 16). By the adoption of the first half of the verse word ‘for word from Joel, Amos connects his prophecy with that of his predecessor, not so much with the intention of confirming the latter, as for the purpose of alarming the sinners who were at ease in their security, and overthrowing the delusive notion that the judgment of God would only fall upon the heathen world. This delusion he meets with the declaration, that at the threatening of the wrath of God the pastures of the shepherds, 2.¢. the pasture-ground of the land of Israel (cf. Joel i. 19), and the head of the forest-crowned Carmel, will fade and wither. Carmel is the oft-recurring promontory at the mouth of the Kishon on the Mediterranean (see the comm. on Josh. xix. 26 and 1 Kings xviii. 19), and not the place called Carmel on the mountains of Judah (Josh. xv. 55), to which the term win (head) is inapplicable (vid. ch. ix. 3 and Mic. vu. 14). Shepherds’ pastures and Carmel individualized the land of Israel ina manner that was very natural to Amos the shepherd. With this introduction, Amos announces the theme of his prophecies. And if, instead of proceeding at once to describe still further the judgment that threatens the kingdom of Israel, he first of all enumerates the surrounding nations, including Judah, as objects of the manifestation of the wrath f God, this enumeration cannot have any other object than the one described in our survey of the contents of the book. The enumeration opens with the kingdoms of Aram, Philistia, and Tyre (Phenicia), which were not related to Israel by any ties of kinship whatever.

Vers. 3-5. Aram-Damascus.—Ver. 3. “Thus saith Jehovah, For three transgressions of Damascus, and for four, I shall not reverse it, because they have threshed Gilead with won rollers, Ver. 4. [send fire into the house-of Hazael, and tt will eat the palaces of Ben-hadad, Ver. 5. And break in pieces the bolt of Damascus, and root out the inhabitant from the valley of Aven, and the sceptre-holder out of Beth-Eden: and the people of Aram will wander into captivity to Kir, saith Jehovah.” In the formula, which is repeated in the case of every people, “ for three transgressions, and for four,” the numbers merely serve to denote the multiplicity of the sins, the exact number of which has no bearing upon the matter. “The number four is added to the number three, to characterize the latter as simply set down at pleasure; in other words, it is as much as to say that the number is not exactly three or four, but probably a still larger number” (Hitzig). The expression, therefore, denotes not a small but a large number of crimes, or “ ungodliness in its worst form” (Luther; see at Hos. vi. 2"). That these numbers are to be understood in this way, and not to be taken in a literal sense, is unquestionably evident from the fact, that in the more precise account of the sins which follows, as a rule, only one especially grievous crime is mentioned by way of example. 22S s? (I will not reverse it) is inserted before the more minute description of the crimes, to show that the threat is irrevocable. 21 signifies to turn, ze. to make a thing go back, to withdraw it, as in Num. xxiii. 20, fsa. xliii. 13. The suffix attached to 32WS refers neither to gold (his voice), nor “to the idea of 723 which is implied in 128 75 (thus saith), or the substance of the threatening thunder-voice” (Baur); for héshibh dabhar signifies to give an answer, and never to make a word ineffectual. The reference is to the punishment threatened afterwards, where the masculine stands in the place of the neuter. Consequently the close of the verse contains the epexegesis of

1 J. Marck has correctly explained it thus: ‘‘ When this perfect number (three) is followed by four, by way of gradation, God not only declares that the measure of iniquity is full, but that it is filled to overflowing and beyond all measure.”

the first clause, and vers. 4 and 5 follow with the explanation of avs xd (I will not turn it). The threshing of the Gileadites with iron threshing-machines is mentioned as the principal transgression of the Syrian kingdom, which is here named after the capital Damascus (see at 2 Sam. viii. 6). This took place at the conquest of the Israclitish land to the east of the Jordan by Hazael during the reign of Jehu (2 Kings x. 32, 33, cf. ch. xi. 7), when the conquerors acted so cruelly towards the Gileadites, that they even crushed the prisoners to pieces with iron threshing-machines, according to a barbarous war-custom that is met with elsewhere (see at 2 Sam. xii. 31). Chérats (= charits, 2 Sam. xii. 31), lit. sharpened, is a poetical term applied to the threshing-roller, or threshing-cart (morag chdrits, Isa, xli. 15). According to Jerome, it was “a kind of cart with toothed iron wheels underneath, which was driven about to crush the straw in the threshing-floors after the grain had been beaten out.” The threat is individualized historically thus: in the case of the capital, the burning of the palaces is predicted; and in that of two other places, the destruction of the people and their rulers; so that both of them apply to both, or rather to the whole kingdom. The palaces of Hazael and Benhadad are to be sought for in Damascus, the capital of the kingdom (Jer. xlix. 27). Hazael was the murderer of Benhadad 1., to whom the prophet Elisha foretold that he would reign over Syria, and predicted the cruelties that he would practise towards Israel (2 Kings viii. 7 sqq.). Benhadad is generally regarded as his son; but the plural “ palaces” leads us rather to think of both the first and second Benhadad, and this is favoured by the circumstance that it was only during his father’s reign that Benhadad 11. oppressed Israel, whereas after his death, and when he himself ascended the throne, the conquered provinces were wrested from him by Joash king of Israel (2 Kings xiii. 22-25). The breaking of the bar (the bolt of the gate) denotes the conquest of the capital; and the cutting off of the inhabitants of Big'ath-Aven indicates the slaughter connected with the capture of the towns, and not their deportation; for hikhrith means to exterminate, so that galah (captivity) in the last clause applies to the remainder of the population that had not been slain in war. In the parallel clause Daw JIN, the sceptre-holder, ic. the ruler (either the king or his deputy), corresponds to yoshebh (the inhabitant); and the thought expressed is, that both prince and people, both high and low, shall perish. The two places, Valley-Aven and Beth- Eden, cannot be discovered with any certainty; but at any rate they were capitals, and possibly they may have been the seat of - royal palaces as well as Damascus, which was the first capital of the kingdom.)8 Nypa, valley of nothingness, or of idols, is supposed by Ewald and Hitzig to be a name given to Heliopolis or Baalbek, after the analogy of Beth-Aven —Bethel (see at Hos. v. 8). They base their opinion upon the Alex. rendering é« mediov *Qy, taken in connection with the Alex. interpretation of the Egyptian On (Gen. xli. 45) as Heliopolis. But as the LX _X. have interpreted j& by Heliopolis in the book of Genesis, whereas here they have merely reproduced the Hebrew letters 8 by *Qyv, as they have in other places as well (e.g. Hos. iv. 15, v. 8, x. 5, 8), where Heliopolis cannot for a moment be thought of, the wédvov *Qvy of the LX X. furnishes no evidence in favour of Heliopolis, still less does it warrant an alteration of the Hebrew pointing (into }ix). Even the Chaldee and Syriac have taken [I$ NYP as a proper name, and Ephraem Syrus speaks of it as “a place in the neighbourhood of Damascus, distinguished for idol-chapels.” The supposition that it is a city is also favoured by the analogy of the other threatenings, in which, for the most part, cities only are mentioned. Others understand by it the valley near Damascus, or the present Bekaa between Lebanon and Antilibanus, in which Heliopolis was always the most distinguished city, and Robinson has pronounced in favour of this (Bibl. Res. p. 677). Beth- Eden, i.e. house of delight, is not to be sought for in the present village of Eden, on the eastern slope of Lebanon, near to the cedar forest of Bshirrai, as the Arabic name of this village yoda! has nothing in common with the Hebrew fly (see at 2 Kings xix. 12); but it is the TTapddeucos of the Greeks, which Ptolemy (v. 15, 20) places ten degrees south and five degrees east of Laodicea, and which Robinson imagines that he has found in Old Jusieh, not far from Ribleh, a place belonging to the times before the Saracens, with very extensive ruins (see Bibl. Researches, pp. 542-6, and 556). The rest of the population of Aram would be carried away to Kir, i.e. to the country on the banks of the river Kur, from which, according to ch. ix. 7, the Syrians originally emigrated. This prediction was fulfilled when the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser conquered Damascus in the time of Ahaz, and broke up the kingdom of Syria (2 Kings xvi. 9). The closing words, ’dmar Y‘hovdh (saith the Lord), serve to add strength to the threat, and therefore recur in vers. 8, 15, and ch. ii. 3.

Vers. 6-8. Puitistra.—Ver. 6. “ Thus saith Jehovah, Fer three transgressions of Gaza, and for four, I shall not reverse tt, because they carried away captives in full number to deliver them up to Edom, Ver. 7. I send fire into the wall of Gaza, and it will eat their palaces; Ver. 8. And I exterminate the inhabitant from Ashdod, and the sceptre-holder from Askelon, and turn my hand against Ekron, and the remnant of the Philistines will perish, saith the Lord Jehovah.” Instead of the Philistines generally, the prophet mentions Gaza in ver. 6. ‘This is still a considerable town, bearing the old name Guzzeh (see the comm. on Josh. xili. 3), and was the one of the five capitals of the Philistines which had taken the most active part as a great commercial town in handing over the Israelitish prisoners to the Kdomites. For it is evident that Gaza is simply regarded as a representative of Philistia, from the fact that in the announcement of the punishment, the other capitals of Philistia are also mentioned. Gdlath sh’lemah is correctly explained by Jerome thus: “a captivity so perfect and complete, that not a single captive remained who was not delivered to the Idumzans.” The reference is to captive Israelites, who were carried off by the Philistines, and disposed of by them to the Edomites, the archenemies of Israel. Amos no doubt had in his mind the invasion of Judah by the Philistines and tribes of Arabia Petraea in the time of Joram, which is mentioned in 2 Chron. xxi. 16, and to which Joel had already alluded in Joel iv. 3 sqq., where the Pheenicians and Philistines are threatened with divine retribution for having plundered the land, and sold the captive Judeans to the Javanites (Ionians). But it by no means follows from this, that the “sons of Javan” mentioned in Joel iv. 6 are not Greeks, but the inhabitants of the Arabian Javan noticed in Ezek. xxvii. 19. The fact was simply this: the Philistines sold one portion of the many prisoners, taken at that time, to the Edomites, and the rest to the Phcenicians, who disposed of them again to the Greeks. Joel simply mentions the latter circumstance, because, in accordance with the object of his prophecy, his design was to show the wide dispersion of the Jews, and their future gathering out of all the lands of their banishment. Amos, on the other hand, simply condemns the delivering of the captives to Edom, the arch-foe of Israel, to indicate the greatness of the sin involved in this treatment of the covenant nation, or the hatred which the Philistines had displayed thereby. As a punishment for this, the cities of Philistia would be burned by their enemies, the inhabitants would be exterminated, and the remnant perish. Here again, as in vers. 4, 5, the threat is rhetorically individualized, so that in the case of one city the burning of the city itself is predicted, and in that of another the destruction of its inhabitants. (On Ashdod, Askelon, and Ekron, see the comm. on Josh. xiii. 3.) 7° 24, to return the hand, Ze. to turn or stretch it out again (see comm. on 2 Sam. viii. 3). The use of this expression may be explained on the ground, that the destruction of the inhabitants of Ashdod and Askelon has already been thought of as a stretching out of the hand. The fifth of the Philistian capitals, Gath, is not mentioned, though not for the reason assigned by Kimchi, viz. that it belonged to the kings of Judah, or had been conquered by Uzziah, for Uzziah had not only conquered Gath and Jabneh, but had taken Ashdod as well, and thrown down the walls (2 Chron. xxvi. 6), and yet Amos mentions Ashdod; nor because Gath had been taken by the Syrians (2 Kings xii. 18), for this Syrian conquest was not a lasting one, and in the prophet’s time (cf. ch. vi. 2), and even later (cf. Mic. i. 10), it still maintained its independence, and was a very distinguished city; but for the simple reason that the individualizing description given by the prophet did not require the complete enumeration of all the capitals, and the idea of Gath being excepted from the fate with which the other cities are threatened, is precluded by the comprehensive terms in which the threat is concluded. For whilst “the remnant of the Philistines” does indeed denote “not the remaining Philistines who had not yet been named, but all that was still in existence, and had escaped destruction” (ch. ix. 12 and Jer. vi. 9), it nevertheless includes not merely the four states just named, but every part of Philistia that had hitherto escaped destruction, so that Gath must be included.

Vers. 9, 10. Tyre or PHamnicta.—Ver. 9. “Thus saith Jehovah: For three transgressions of Tyre, and for four, £ shall not reverse ut, because they have delivered up prisoners in full number to Edom, and have not remembered the brotherly covenant, Ver. 10. I send fire into the wall of Tyrus, and it will devour their palaces.” In the case of Pheenicia, the capital only (Tzor, i.e. Tyrus; see at Josh. xix. 29) is mentioned. The crime with which it is charged is similar to the one for which the Philistines were blamed, with this exception, that instead of IDHe pnipan-by (ver. 6) we have simply pyaDAn by, If, therefore, Tyre is only charged with delivering up the captives to Edom, and not with having carried them away, it must have bought the prisoners from an enemy of Israel, and then disposed of them to Edom. From what enemy they were purchased, it is impossible to determine with certainty. Probably from the Syrians, in the wars of Hazael and Benhadad with Israel; for there is nothing at variance with this in the fact that, when they purchased Israelitish captives in the time of Joram, they sold them to Javan. For a commercial nation, carrying on so extensive a trade as the Pheenicians did, would have purchased prisoners in more than one war, and would also have disposed of them as slaves to more nations than one. Tyre had contracted all the more guilt through this trade in Tsraelitish slaves, from the fact that it had thereby been unmindful of the brotherly covenant, i.e. of the friendly relation existing between Israel and itself—for example, the friendly alliance into which David and Solomon had entered with the king of Tyre (2 Sam. v.11; 1 Kings v.15 sqq.)—and also from the fact that no king of Israel or Judah had ever made war upon Pheenicia.

Vers. 11, 12. Epom.—Ver. 11. “ Thus saith Jehovah: For three transgressions of Edom, and for four, I shall not reverse it, because tt pursues its brother with the sword, and stifles its com- v D passion, and its anger tears in pieces for ever, and it keeps its wrath for ever, Ver. 12. L send fire into Teman, and it will devour the palaces of Bozrah.’? Edom andthe two following nations were related to Israel by lineal descent. In the case of Edom, Amos does not condemn any particular sins, but simply its implacable, mortal hatred towards its brother nation Israel, which broke out into acts of cruelty at every possible opportunity. "201 nw, he annihilates, i.e. suppresses, stifles his sympathy or his compassionate love; this is still dependent upon i577 >Y, the preposition oy continuing in force as a conjunction before the infinitive (i.c. as equivalent to Wis by), and the infinitive passing into the finite verb (cf. ch. 1. 4). In the next clause 128 is the subject: its wrath tears in pieces, i.e. rages destructively (compare Job xvi. 9, where téraph is applied to the wrath of God). In the last clause, on the other hand, Edom is again the subject; but it is now regarded as a kingdom, and construed as a feminine, and consequently i129 is the object, and placed at the head as an absolute noun. mY, with the tone upon the penwit. (milel) on account of netsach, which follows with the tone upon the first syllable, stands for AMY (it preserves it), the mappik being omitted in the toneless syllable (compare Mwald, § 249, 6). If N72) were the subject, the verb would have to be pointed 79¥. Again, the rendering proposed by Ewald, “his fury lies in wait for ever,” is precluded by the fact that 12¥, when applied to wrath in Jer. il. 5, signifies to keep, or preserve, and also by the fact that lying in wait is generally inapplicable to an emotion. Teman, according to Jerome (ad h. l.), is Idumaorum regio que vergit ad australem partem, so that here, just as in ch. ii. 2 and 5, the land is mentioned first, and then the capital." Bozrah, an important city, supposed to be the capital of Idumza (sce comm. on Gen. xxxvi. 33). It was to the south of the Dead Sea, and has been preserved in ¢el-Buseireh, a village with ruins in Jebal (see Robinson, Pal. ii. p. 570), and must not be confounded with Bossra in Hauran (Burckhardt, Syr.

1 It is true that, according to Eusebius, Jerome does also mention in the Onom. a villa (on) named Teman, which was five Roman miles from Petra, and in which there was a Roman garrison,; and also that there is a Teman in Eastern Hauran (see Wetzstein in Delitzsch’s Comm. on Job, i. 73); but in the Old Testament Teman is never to be understood as referring to a city.

Vers. 13-15. AmmMon.—Ver. 13. “Thus saith Jehovah: Lor three transgressions of the sons of Ammon, and for four, I shall not reverse it, because they have ripped up the pregnant women of Gilead, to widen their border, Ver. 14. I kindle fire in the wall of Rabbah, and tt will devour its palaces, with the warery on the day of slaughter, in the storm on the day of the tempest. Ver. 15. And their king shall go into captivity, he and his princes all at once, saith Jehovah.” The occasion on which the Ammonites were guilty of such cruelty towards the Israelites as is here condemned, is not recorded in the historical books of the Old Testament; possibly during the wars of Hazael with Israel, when they availed themselves of the opportunity to widen their territory by conquering back the land which had been wrested from them by Sihon king of the Amorites, and was then taken possession of by the Israelites, when he was overcome by them,—a thing which they had attempted once before in the time of Jephthah the judge (Judg. xi. 12 sqq.). We may see from Jer. xlix. 1 sqq. that they had taken possession of the territory of the tribe of Gad, which lay nearest to them, though probably not till after the carrying away of the tribes beyond Jordan by the Assyrians (2 Kings xv. 29). The ripping up of the women with child (see at 2 Kings viii. 12) is singled out as the climax of the cruelties which the Ammonites inflicted upon the Israelites during the war. <As a punishment for this, their capital was to be burned, and the king, with the princes, to wander into exile, and consequently their kingdom was to be destroyed. Rabbah, i.e. the great one, is the abbreviated name of the capital; Rabbah of the children of Ammon, which has been preserved in the ruins of Aurdn fc at Deut. iii. 11). The threat is sharpened by the clause ‘uy Ayn, at the war-cry on the field of battle, ze. an actual fact, hat the enemy shall take the city by storm. 1) “YD3 is a figurative expression ape to the storming of a city carried by ane like MBID3 in Num. xxi. 14. The reading Dard, “ their (the Ammonites’) king,” is confirmed by the UX. et the Chaldee, and required ie MW (cf. ch.-ii. 3), whereas Manryop, Melchom, which is found in Aq., Symm., Jerome, and the Syriac, rests upon a false interpretation.

For three transgressions of Moab, and for four,I shall not reverse it, because it has burned the bones of the king of Edom into lime, Ver. 2. I send fire into Moab, and it will devour the palaces of Kivioth, and Moab will perish in the tumult, in the war-cry, in the trumpet-blast. Ver. 3. And I cut off the judge from the midst thereof, and all its princes do I strangle with it, saith Jehovah.” The burning of the bones of the king of Edom is not burning while he was still alive, but the burning of the corpse into lime, 7.e. so completely that the bones turned into powder like lime (D. Kimchi), to cool his wrath still further upon the dead man (cf. 2 Kings xxiii. 16). This is the only thing blamed, not his having put him to death. No record has been preserved of this event in the historical books of the Old Testament; but it was no doubt connected with the war referred to in 2 Kings iii., which Joram of Israel and Jehoshaphat of Judah waged against the Moabites in company with the king of Edom; so that the Jewish tradition found in Jerome, viz. that after this war the Moabites dug up the bones of the king of Edom from the grave, and heaped insults upon them by burning them to ashes, is apparently not without foundation. As Amos in the case of all the other nations has mentioned only crimes that were committed against the covenant nation, the one with which the Moabites are charged must have been in some way associated with either Israel or Judah, that is to say, it must have been committed upon a king of Edom, who was a vassal of Judah, and therefore not very long after this war, since the Edomites shook off their dependence upon Judah in less than ten years from that time (2 Kings viii. 20). Asa punishment for this, Moab was to be laid waste by the fire of war, and Keriyoth with its palaces to be burned down. MiP is not an appellative noun (Tov wércwv adThs, LXX.), but a proper name of one of the chief cities of Moab (cf. Jer. xlviii, 24, 41), the ruins of which have been discovered by Burckhardt (Syr. p. 630) and Seetzen (ii. p. 342, ef. iv. p. 384) in the decayed town of Kereyat or Korridt. The application of the term M2 to Moab is to be explained on the supposition that the nation is personified. jiN¥ signifies war tumult, and YN2 is explained asin ch. i. 14 by 7Biv ipa, blast of the trumpets, the signal for the assault or for the commencement of the battle. The judge with all the princes shall be cut off miggirbah, i.e. out of the land of Moab. The feminine suffix refers to Moab asa land or kingdom, and not to Keriyoth. From the fact that the shdphét is mentioned instead of the king, it has been concluded by some that Moab had no king at that time, but had only a shdphét as its ruler; and they have sought to account for this on the ground that Moab was at that time subject to the kingdom of the ten tribes (Hitzig and Ewald). But there is no notice in the history of anything of the kind, and it cannot possibly be inferred from the fact that Jeroboam restored the ancient boundaries of the kingdom as far as the Dead Sea (2 Kings xiv. 25). Shophét is analogous to tamékh shébhet in ch. i. 5, andi is probably nothing more than a rhetorical expression applied to the 79, who is so called in the threat against Ammon, and simply used for the sake of variety. The threatening prophecies concerning all the nations and kingdoms mentioned from ch. i. 6 onwards were fulfilled by the Chaldeans, who conquered all these kingdoms, and carried the people themselves into captivity. For fuller remarks upon this point, see at Jer. xlvii. 49 and Ezek. xxv. 28.

Vers. 4, 5. Jupan.—Ver. 4. “ Thus saith Jehovah: For three transgressions of Judah, and for four, I shall not reverse tt, because they have despised the law of Jehovah, and have not kept His ordinances, and their lies led them astray, after which their fathers walked, Ver. 5. I send fire into Judah, and it will devour the palaces of Jerusalem.” With the announcement that the storm of the wrath of God will also burst upon Judah, Amos prepares the way for passing on to Israel, the principal object of his prophecies. In the case of Judah, he condemns its contempt of the law of its God, and also its idolatry. Torah is the sum and substance of all the instructions and all the commandments which¢Jehovah had given to His people as the rule of life. Chuggim are the separate precepts contained in the thoréh, including not only the ceremonial commands, but the moral commandments also; for the two clauses are not only parallel, but synonymous. i312, their lies, are their idols, as we may see from the relative clause, since “ walking after” (hdlakh ’achdré) is the standing expression for idolatry. Amos calls the idols les, not only as ves gue fallunt (Ges.), but as fabrications and nonentities (élilim and habhdlim}, having no reality in themselves, and therefore quite unable to perform what was expected of them. The “fathers” who walked after these lies were their forefathers generally, since the nation of Israel practised idolatry even in the desert (cf. ch. v. 26), and was more or less addicted to it ever afterwards, with the sole exception of the times of Joshua, Samuel, David, and part of the reign of Solomon, so that even the most godly kings of Judah were unable to eradicate the worship upon the high places. The punishment threatened in consequence, namely, that Jerusalem should be reduced to ashes, was carried out by Nebuchadnezzar.

Vers. 6-16. After this introduction, the prophet’s address turns to Israel of the ten tribes, and in precisely the same form as in the case of the nations already mentioned, announces the judgment as irrevocable. At the same time, he gives a fuller description of the sins of Israel, condemning first of all the prevailing crimes of injustice and oppression, of shameless immorality and daring contempt of God (vers. 6-8); and secondly, its scornful contempt of the benefits conferred by the Lord (vers. 9-12), and “threatening inevitable trouble in consequence (vers. 13-16). Ver. 6. “ Thus saith Jehovah: For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I shall not reverse tt, because they sell the vighteous for money, and the poor jor a pair of shoes. Ver. 7. They who pant after dust of the earth upon the head of the poor, and bend the way of the meek: andaman and his father go to the same girl, to desecrate my holy name. Ver. 8. And they stretch themselves upon pawned clothes by every altar, and they drink the wine of the punished in the house of their God.” 'The prophet condemns four kinds of crimes. The jirst is unjust treatment, or condemnation of the innocent in their administration of justice. Selling the righteous for silver, i.e. for money, refers to the judges, who were bribed to punish a man as guilty of the crime of which he was accused, when he was really tsaddiq, i.c. righteous in a judicial, not in a moral sense, or innocent of any punishable crime. Bakkeseph, for money, %.e. either to obtain money, or for the money which they had already received, viz. from the accuser, for condemning the innocent. WAYa, on account of, is not synonymous with 2 pretii; for they did not sell the poor man merely to get a pair of sandals for him, as the worst possible slave was certainly worth much more than this (cf. Ex. xxi. 32); but the poor debtor who could not pay for a pair of shoes, z.e. for the merest trifle, the judge would give up to the creditor for a slave, on the strength of the law in Lev. xxv. 39 (cf. 2 Kingsiv.1). As a second crime, Amos reproves in ver. 7a their thirst for the oppression of the quiet in the land. 05, TaTrewol, and 0)3Y, pacts. The address is carried on in participles, in the form of lively appeal, instead of quiet description, as is frequently the case in Amos (cf. ch. v. 7, vi. 3 sqq., 13, viii. 14), and also in other books (cf. Isa. xl. 22, 26; Ps. xix. 11). In the present instance, the article before the participle points back to the suffix in 0129, and the finite verb is not introduced till the second clause. 4M, to gasp, to pant, to long eagerly for earth-dust upon the head of the poor, 4.e. to long to see the head of the poor covered with earth or dust, or to bring them into such a state of misery, that they scatter dust upon their head (cf. Job ii. 12; 2 Sam. i. 2). The explanation given by Hitzig is too far-fetched and unnatural, viz. that they grudge the man in distress even the handful of dust that he has strewn upon his head, and avariciously long for it themselves. To bend the way of the meek, z.e. to bring them into a trap, or cast them headlong into destruction by impediments and stumblingblocks laid in their path. The way is the way of life, their outward course. The idea that the way refers to the judgment or legal process is too contracted. The third crime is their profanation of the name of God by shameless immorality (ver. 7b); and the fourth, desecration of the sanctuary by drinking carousals (ver. 8). A man and his father, 7.e. both son and father, go to the girl, i.e. to the prostitute. The meaning is, to one and the same girl; but ’achath is omitted, to preclude all possible misunderstanding, as though going to different prostitutes was allowed. This sin was tantamount to incest, which, according to the law, was to be punished with death (cf. Lev. xviii. 7,15, and xx. 11). Temple girls (q°déshoth) are not to be thought of here. The profanation of the name of God by such conduct as this does not indicate prostitution in the temple itself, such as was required by the licentious worship of Baal and Asherah (Ewald, Maurer, etc.), but consisted in a daring contempt of the commandments of God, as the original passage (Lev. xxii. 32) from which

Amos took the words clearly shows (cf. Jer. xxxiv. 16), By l’ma‘an, in order that (not “so that”), the profanation of the holy name of God is represented as intentional, to bring out the daring character of the sin, and to show that it did not arise from weakness or ignorance, but was practised with studious contempt of the holy God. B’gddim chabhulim, pawned clothes, ¢.e. upper garments, consisting of a large square piece of cloth, which was wrapt all around, and served the poor for a counterpane as well. If a poor man was obliged to pawn his upper garment, it was to be returned to him before night came on (Ex. xxii. 25), and a garment so pawned was not to be slept upon (Deut. xxiv. 12,13). But godless usurers kept such pledges, and used them as cloths upon which they stretched their limbs at feasts (yatta, hiphil, to stretch out, sc. the body or its limbs); and this they did by every altar, at sacrificial meals, without standing in awe of God. It is very evident that Amos is speaking of sacrificial feasting, from the reference in the second clause of the verse to the drinking of wine in the house of God. D'¥4Y, punished in money, Ze. fined. Wine of the punished is wine purchased by the produce of the fines. Here again the emphasis rests upon the fact, that such drinking carousals were held in the house of God. ’£ldhehem, not their gods (idols), but their God; for Amos had in his mind the sacred places at Bethel and Dan, in which the Israelites worshipped Jehovah as their God under the symbol of an ox (calf). The expression col-mizbédch (every altar) is not at variance with this; for even if col pointed to a plurality of altars, these altars were still bamoth, dedicated to Jehovah. If the prophet had also meant to condemn actual idolatry, i.e. the worship of heathen deities, he would have expressed this more clearly; to say nothing of the fact, that in the time of Jeroboam 11. there was no heathenish idolatry in the kingdom of the ten tribes, or, at any rate, it was not publicly maintained.

And if this daring contempt of the commandments of God was highly reprehensible even in itself, it became perfectly inexcusable if we bear in mind that Israel was indebted to the Lord its God for its elevation into an independent nation, and also for its sacred calling. For this reason, the prophet reminds the people of the manifestations of grace which it had received from its God (vers. 9-11). Ver. 9. “ And yet I destroyed the Amorite before them, whose height was like the height of the cedars, and who was strong as the oaks; and I destroyed his fruit Jrom above, and his roots from beneath. Ver. 10. And yet I brought you up from the land of Egypt, and led you forty years in the desert, to take possession of the land of the Amorite.” The repeated *238) is used with peculiar emphasis, and serves to bring out the contrast between the conduct of the Israelites towards the Lord, and the fidelity of the Lord towards Israel. Of the two manifestations of divine grace to which Israel owed its existence as an independent nation, Amos mentions first of all the destruction of the former inhabitants of Canaan (Ex, xxiii. 27 sqq., xxxiv. 11); and secondly, what was earlier in point of time, namely, the deliverance out of Egypt and guidance through the Arabian desert; not because the former act of God was greater than the latter, but in order to place first what the Lord had done for the nation, and follow that up with what He had done to the nation, that he may be able to append to this what He still continues to do (ver. 11), The nations destroyed before Israel are called Amorites, from the most powerful of the Canaanitish tribes, as in Gen. xv. 16, Josh. xxiv. 15, etc. To show, however, that Israel was not able to destroy this people by its own strength, but that Jehovah the Almighty God alone could accomplish this, he proceeds to transfer to the whole nation what the Israelitish spies reported as to their size, more especially as to the size of particular giants (Num. xiii. 32, 33), and describes the Amorites as giants as lofty as trees and as strong as trees, and, continuing the same figure, depicts their utter destruction or extermination as the destruction of their fruit and of their roots. For this figure of speech, in which the posterity of a nation is regarded as its fruit, and the kernel of the nation out of which it springs as the root, see Ezek. xvii. 9, Hos. ix. 16, Job xviii. 16. These two manifestations of divine mercy Moses impressed more than once upon the hearts of the people in his last addresses, to urge them in consequence to hold fast to the divine commandments and to the love of God (cf. Deut. viii. 2 sqq., ix. 1-6, xxix. 1-8).

But Jehovah had not only put Israel into possession of Canaan; He had also continually manifested Himself to it as the founder and promoter of its spiritual prosperity. Ver. 11. “And I raised up some of your sons as prophets, and some of your young men as dedicated ones (Nazireans). Ah, is it not so, ye sons of Israel? is the saying of Jehovah. Ver. 12. But ye made the dedicated drink wine, and ye commanded the prophets, saying, Ye shall not prophesy.’ The institution of prophecy and the law of the Nazarite were gifts of grace, in which Tsrael had an advantage over every other nation, and by which it was distinguished above the heathen as the nation of God and the medium of salvation. Amos simply reminds the people _ of these, and not of earthly blessings, which the heathen also enjoyed, since the former alone were real pledges of the cove- /nant of grace made by Jehovah with Israel; and it was in the contempt and abuse of these gifts of grace that the ingratitude of the nation was displayed in the most glaring light. The Nazarites are placed by the side of the prophets, who proclaimed to the nation the counsel and will of the Lord, because, although as a rule the condition of a Nazarite was merely the consequence of his own free will and the fulfilment of a particular vow, it was nevertheless so far a gift of grace from the Lord, that the resolution to perform such a vow proceeded from the inward impulse of the Spirit of God, and the performance itself was rendered possible through the power of this Spirit alone. (Hor a general discussion of the law of the Nazarite, see the commentary on Num. vi. 2-12, and my Biblical Antiquities, § 67.) The raising up of Nazarites was not only intended to set before the eyes of the people the object of their divine calling, or their appointment to be a holy nation of God, but also to show them how the Lord bestowed the power to carry out this object. But instead of suffering themselves to be spurred on by these types to strive earnestly after sanctification of life, they tempted the Nazarites to break their vow by drinking wine, from which they were commanded. to abstain, as being irreconcilable with the seriousness of their sanctification (see my Bibl. Ant. § 67); and the prophets they prohibited from prophesying, because the word of God was burdensome to them (cf. ch. vii. 10 sqq.; Mic. ii. 6).

This base contempt of their covenant mercies the Lord would visit with a severe punishment. Ver. 13. “ Behold, I will press you down, as the cart presses that is filled with sheaves.

Ver. 14. And the flight will be lost to the swift, and the strong one will not fortify his strength, and the hero will not deliver his soul. Wer. 15. And the carrier of the bow will not stand, and the swift-footed will not deliver, and the rider of the horse will not save iis soul. Ver. 16. And the courageous one among the heroes will flee away naked in that day, ts the saying of Jehovah.” The Lord threatens as a punishment a severe oppression, which no one will be able to escape. The allusion is to the force of war, under which even the bravest and most able heroes will succumb. PY, from pry, Arameean for pry, to press, construed with ¢achath, in the sense of xara, downwards, to press down upon a person, z.e. to press him down (Winer, Ges., Ewald). This meaning is established by "PY in Ps. lv. 4, and by Py in Ps. Ixvi. 11; so that there is no necessity to resort to the Arabic, as Hitzig does, or to alterations of the text, or to follow Baur, who gives the word the meaning, “ to feel one’s self pressed under another,’ for which there is no foundation in the language, and which does not even yield a suitable sense. The comparison instituted here to the pressure of a cart filled with sheaves, does not warrant the conclusion that Jehovah must answer to the cart; the simile is not to be carried out to this extent. The object to PYN is wanting, but may easily be supplied from the thought, namely, the ground over which the cart is driven. The rp attached to “N27 belongs to the latitude allowed in ordinary speech, and gives to AN? the reflective meaning, which is full in itself, has quite filled itself (cf. Ewald, § 315, a). In vers. 14-16 the effects of this pressure are individualized. No one will escape from it. DiI T2N, flight is lost to the swift, zc. the swift will not find time enough to flee. The allusion to heroes and bearers of the bow shows that the pressure is caused by war. poms OP belong together: “ He who is light in his feet.” The swift-footed will no more save his life than the rider upon a horse. 4W5) in ver. 15 belongs to both clauses, ja ox, the strong in his heart, i.e. the hearty, courageous. OY, naked, ze. so as to leave behind him his garment, by which the enemy seizes him, like the young man in Mark xiv. 52. This threat, which implies that the kingdom will be destroyed, is carried out still further in the prophet’s following addresses.

Although the expression “Hear this word,” which is repeated at the commencement of ch. iii. iv. and v., suggests the idea of three addresses, the contents of these chapters show that they do not contain three separate addresses delivered to the people by Amos at different times, but that they group together the leading thoughts of appeals delivered by word of mouth, so as to form one long admonition to repentance. Commencing with the proofs of his right to predict judgment to the nation on account of its sins (ch. iii. 1-8), the prophet exposes the wickedness of Israel in general (ch. iii. 9-iv. 3), and then shows the worthlessness of the nation’s trust in idolatry (ch. iv. 4-13), and lastly announces the destruction of the kingdom as the inevitable consequence of the prevailing injustice and ungodliness (ch, v. and vi.).

Because the Lord has chosen Israel to be His people, He must visit all its sins (ver. 2), and has commissioned the prophet to announce this punishment (vers. 3-8). As Israel has heaped up oppression, violence, and wickedness, an enemy will come upon the land and plunder Samaria, and cause its inhabitants to perish, and demolish the altars of Bethel, and destroy the capital (vers. 9-15).

Vers. 1 and 2 contain the introduction and the leading thought of the whole of the prophetic proclamation. Ver. 1. “ Hear this word which Jehovah speaketh concerning you, O sons of Israel, concerning the whole family which I have brought up out of the land of Egypt, saying: Ver. 2. You only have I acknowledged of all the families of the earth; therefore will I visit all your imiquities upon you.’ The word of the Lord is addressed to all the family of Israel, which God had brought up out of Egypt, that is to say, to all the twelve tribes of the covenant nation, although in what follows it is the ten tribes of Israel alone who are primarily threatened with the destruction of the kingdom, to indicate at the very outset that Judah might anticipate a similar fate if it did not turn to its God with sincerity. The threat is introduced by the thought that its divine election would not secure the sinful nation against punishment, but that, on the contrary, the relation of grace into which the Lord had entered with Israel demanded the punishment of all evil deeds. This cuts off the root of all false confidence in divine election. “To whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required. The greater the measure of grace, the greater also is the punishment if it is neglected or despised.” This is the fundamental law of the kingdom of God. YT does not mean to know, to become acquainted with, or to take knowledge of a person (Hitzig), but to acknowledge. Acknowledgment on the part of God is not merely taking notice, but is energetic, embracing man in his inmost being, embracing and penetrating with anate love; so that yt not only includes the idea of love and care, as in Hos. xiii. 5, but expresses generally the gracious fellowship of the Lord with Tsrael, as in Gen. xviii. 19, and is practically equivalent to electing, including both the motive and the result of election. And because Jehovah had acknowledged, i.e. had singled out and chosen Israel as the nation best fitted to be the vehicle of His salvation, He must of necessity punish all its misdeeds, in order to purify it from the dross of sin, and make it a holy vessel of His saving grace.

Vers. 3-8. But this truth met with contradiction in the nation itself. The proud self-secure sinners would not hear such prophesying as this (compare ch. ii. 4, vii. 10 sqq.). Amos therefore endeavours, before making any further announcement of the judgment of God, to establish his right and duty to prophesy, by a chain-like series of similes drawn from life. Ver. 3. “Do two walk together without having agreed? Ver. 4. Does the lion roar in the forest, and he has no prey? does the young lion utter his cry out of his den, without having taken anything? Ver. 5. Does the bird fall into the trap on the ground, when there is no snare for him? does the trap rise up from the earth without making a capture? Ver. 6. Or is the trumpet blown in the city, and the people are not alarmed? or does misfortune happen in the city, and Jehovah has not done it? Ver. 7. For the Lord Jehovah does nothing at all, without having revealed His secret to His servants the prophets. Ver. 8. The lion has roared; who does not fear? the Lord Jehovah hath spoken; who must not prophesy?” The contents of these verses are not to be reduced to the general thought, that a prophet could no more speak without a divine impulse than any other effect could take place without a cause. There was certainly no need for a long series of examples, such as we have in vers. 3-6, to substantiate or illustrate the thought, which a reflecting hearer would hardly have disputed, that there was a connection between cause and effect. The examples are evidently selected with the view of showing that the utterances of the prophet originate with God. This is obvious enough in vers. 7, 8. The first clause, “ Do two men walk together, without having agreed as to their meeting?” (nd‘ad, to betake one’s self to a place, to meet together at an appointed place or an appointed time; compare Job ii. 11, Josh. xi. 5, Neh. vi. 2; not merely to agree together), contains something more than the trivial truth, that two persons do not take a walk together without a previous arrangement. The two who walk together are Jehovah and the prophet (Cyril); not Jehovah and the nation, to which the judgment is predicted (Cocceius, Marck, and others). Amos went as prophet to Samaria or Bethel, because the Lord had sent him thither to preach judgment to the sinful kingdom. But God would not threaten judgment if He had not a nation ripe for judgment before Him. The lion which roars when it has the prey before it is Jehovah (cf. ch. i. 2; Hos. xi. 10, etc.). 12 #8 42D is not to be interpreted according to the second clause, as signifying “without having got possession of its prey” (Hitzig), for the lion is accustomed to roar when it has the prey before it and there is no possibility of its escape, and before it actually seizes it (cf. Isa. v. 29). On the contrary, the perfect /ékhad in the second clause is to be interpreted according to the first clause, not as relating to the roar of satisfaction with which the lion devours the prey in its den (Baur), but as a perfect used to describe a thing which was as certain as if it had already occurred. A lion has made a capture not

1 The most terrible feature in the roaring of a lion is that with this clarigatio, or, if you prefer it, with this classicwm, it declares war. And after the roar there immediately follows both slaughter and laceration. For, as a rule, it only roars with that sharp roar when it has the prey in sight, upon which it immediately springs (Bochart, Hieroz. il. 25 seq., ed. Dna tos.).

merely when it has actually seized the prey and torn it in pieces, but when the prey has approached so near that it cannot possibly escape. A‘phir is the young lion which already goes in pursuit of prey, and is to be distinguished from the young of the lion, gar (catulus leonis), which cannot yet go in search of prey (cf. Ezek. xix. 2,3). The two similes have the same meaning. The second strengthens the first by the assertion that God not only has before Him the nation that is ripe for judgement, but that He has it in His power. The similes in ver. 5'do not affirm the same as those in ver. 4, but contain the new thought, that Israel has deserved the destruction which threatens it. Pach, a snare, and maqésh, a trap, are frequently used synonymously; but here they are distinguished, pach denoting a birdnet, and mdqgésh a springe, a snare which holds the bird fast. The earlier translators have taken moyésh in the sense of yogesh, and understand it as referring to the bird-catcher; and Baur proposes to alter the text accordingly. But there is no necessity for this; and it is evidently unsuitable, since it is not requisite for a bird-catcher to be at hand, in order that the bird should be taken in a snare. The suffix lah refers to tstppor, and the thought is this: in order to catch a bird in the net, a springe (gin) must be laid for it. So far as the fact itself is concerned, mdgésh is “evidently that which is necessarily followed by falling into the net; in this instance it is sinfulness” (Ilitzig); so that the meaning of the figure would be this: “Can destruction possibly overtake you, unless your sin draws you into it?” (cf. Jer. ii. 35.) In the second clause pach is the subject, and ney is used for the ascent or springing up of the net. Hitzig has given the meaning of the words correctly: “ As the net does not spring up without catching the bird, that has sent it up by flying upon it, can ye imagine that when the destruction passes by, ye will not be seized by it, but will escape without injury?” (cf. Isa. xxviii. 15.) Jehovah, however, causes the evil to be foretold. As the trumpet, when blown in the city, frightens the people out of their self-security, so will the voice of the prophet, who proclaims the coming evil, excite a salutary alarm in the nation (cf. Ezek. xxxiii. 1-5). For the calamity which is bursting upon the city comes from Jehovah, is sent by Him as a punishment. This thought is explained in vers. 7, 8, and with this explanation the whole series of figurative sentences is made perfectly clear. ‘The approaching evil, which comes from the Lord, is predicted by the prophet, because Jehovah does not carry out His purpose without having (8 *3, for when, except when he has, as in Gen. xxxii. 27) first of all revealed it to the prophets, that they may warn the people to repent and to reform. Sod receives a more precise definition from the first clause of the verse, or a limitation to the purposes which God is about to fulfil upon His people. And since (this is the connection of ver. 8) the judgment with which the Lord is drawing near fills every one with fear, and Jehovah has spoken, ze. has made known His counsel to the prophets, they cannot but prophesy.

Amos has thus vindicated his own calling, and the right of all the prophets, to announce to the people the judgments of God; and now (vers. 9-15) he is able to proclaim without reserve what the Lord has resolved to do upon sinful Israel. Ver. 9. “ Make tt heard over the palaces in Ashdod, and over the palaces in the land of Egypt, and say, Assemble yourselves upon the mountains of Samaria, and behold the great tumult in the midst thereof, and the oppressed in the heart thereof. Ver. 10. And they know not to do the right, is the saying of Jehovah, who heap up violence and devastation in their palaces.” The speaker is Jehovah (ver. 10), and the prophets are addressed. Jehovah summons them to send out the cry over the palaces in Ashdod. and Heypt Oy as in Hos. vii. 1), and to call the inhabitants of these palaces to hear, (1) that they may see the acts of violence, and the abominations in the palaces of Samaria; and (2) that they may be able to bear witness against Israel (ver. 13). This turn in the prophecy brings out to view the overflowing excess of the sins and abominations of Israel. The call of the prophets, however, is not to be uttered upon the palaces, so as to be heard far and wide (Baur and others), but over the palaces, to cause the inhabitants of them to draw near. It is they alone, and not the whole population of Ashdod and Egypt, who are to be called nigh; because only the inhabitants of the palace could pronounce a correct sentence as to the mode of life commonly adopted in the palaces of Samaria. Ashdod, one of the Philistian capitals, is mentioned by way of example, as a chief city of the uncircumcised, who were regarded by Israel as godless heathen; and Egypt is mentioned along with it, as the nation whose unrighteousness and ungodliness had once been experienced by Israel to satiety. If therefore such heathen as these are called to behold the unrighteous and dissolute conduct to be seen in the palaces, it must have been great indeed. The mountains of Samaria are not the mountains of the kingdom of Samaria, or the mountains upon which the city of Samaria was situated—for Samaria was not built upon a plurality of mountains, but upon one only (ch. iv. 1, vi. 1)—but the mountains round about Samaria, from which you could look into the city, built upon one isolated hill. The city, built upon the hill of Semer, was situated in a mountain caldron or basin, about two hours in diameter, which was surrounded on all sides by lofty mountains (see at 1 Kings xvi. 24). M*hamdh, noise, tumult, denotes a state of confusion, in which everything is topsy-turvy, and all justice and order are overthrown by open violence (Maurer, Baur). “Ashagim, either the oppressed, or, taken as an abstract, the oppression of the poor (cf. ch. 1i. 6). In ver. 10 the description is continued in the finite verb: they do not know how to do right; that is to say, injustice has become their nature; they who heap up sins and violence in their palaces like treasures. Thus do they bring about the ruin of the kingdom. Ver. 11. “ Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah, An enemy, and that round about the land; and he will hurl down thy glory from thee, and thy palaces are plundered. Ver. 12. Thus saith Jehovah, As the shepherd delivers out of the mouth of the lion two shinbones or an ear-lappet, so will the sons of Israel deliver themselves; they who sit on the corner of the couch and on the damask of the bed.” The threat is introduced in the form of an aposiopesis. ¥, enemy, #787 22D:, and indeed round about the land () explic. as in ch. iv. 10, etc.; and 23D in the construct state construed as a preposition), ic. will come, attack the land on all sides, and take possession of it. Others regard "¥ as an abstract: oppression (from the Chaldee); but in this case we should have to supply Jehovah as the subject to TM; and although this is probable, it is by no means natural, as Jehovah is speaking. There is no foundation, on the other hand, for the 1 «¢ As the mountains round the hill of Semer are loftier than this hill itself, the enemy might easily discover the internal state of besieged Samaria.” — V. DE VELDE, R. i. p. 282.

remark, that if tsar signified the enemy, we should either find the plural O%¥, or 2¥7 with the article (Baumgarten). The very indefiniteness of tsar suits the sententious brevity of the clause. This enemy will hurl down the splendour of Samaria, “which ornaments the top of the mountain like a crown, Isa. xxviil. i. 38” (Hitzig: ty, might, with the subordinate idea of glory), and plunder the palaces in which violence, t.e. property unrighteously acquired, is heaped up (ver. 10). The words are addressed to the city of Samaria, to which the feminine suffixes refer. On the fall of Samaria, and the plundering thereof, the luxurious grandees, who rest upon costly pillows, will only be able to save their life to the very smallest extent, and that with great difficulty. In the simile used in ver. 12 there is a slight want of proportion in the two halves, the object of the deliverance being thrown into the background in the second clause by the passive construction, and only indicated in the verb, to deliver themselves, z.¢. to save their life. “ A pair of shin-bones and a piece (O72 aTa& Ney.), 1.¢. a lappet, of the ear,” are most insignificant remnants. The grandees of Samaria, of whom only a few were to escape with their life, are depicted by Amos as those who sit on costly divans, without the least anxiety. M2 AXB, the corner of the divan, the most convenient for repose. According to ch. vi. 4, these divans were ornamanted with ivory, and according to the verse before us, they were ornamented with costly stuffs. PW comes from pit, Damascus, and signifies damask, an artistically woven material (see Ges. Thes. p. 846). This brings the visitation of God to an end. Even the altars and palaces are to be laid in ruins, and consequently Samaria will be destroyed.

This feature in the threat is brought out into peculiar prominence by a fresh introduction. Ver. 13. “ Hear ye, and testify tt to the house of Jacob, is the utterance of the Lord, Jehovah, the God of hosts: Ver. 14. That in the day when [ visit the transgressions of the house of Israel upon tt, T shall visit it upon the altars of Bethel; and the horns of the altar will be cut off, and fall to the ground. Ver. 15. And I smite the winter-house over the summer-house, and the houses of ivory perish, and many houses vanish, is the saying of Jehovah.” The words “ Hear ye” cannot be addressed to the Israelites, for they could not bear witness against the house of Israel, but must either refer to the prophets, as in ver. 9a (“ publish ye”), or to the heathen, in which case they correspond to “ assemble yourselves and behold” in ver. 96. The latter assumption is the only correct one, for the context does not assign a sufficient motive for an address to the prophets. On the other hand, as the heathen have been summoned to convince themselves by actual observation of the sins that prevail in Samaria, it is perfectly in keeping that they should now hear what is the punishment that God is about to inflict upon Israel in consequence, and that they should bear witness against Israel from what they have heard. 2 15, to bear witness towards or against (not “in,” as Baur supposes). The house of Jacob is the whole of Israel, of the twelve tribes, as in ver. 1; for Judah was also to learn a lesson from the destruction of Samaria. As the appeal to the heathen to bear witness against Israel indicates the greatness of the sins of the Israelites, so, on the other hand, does the accumulation of the names of God in ver. 130 serve to strenothen the declaration made by the Lord, who possesses as God of hosts the power to execute His threats. *°D introduces the substance of what is to be heard. The punishment of the sins of Israel is to extend even to the altars of Bethel, the seat of the idolatrous image-worship, the hearth and home of the religious and moral corruption of the ten tribes. The smiting off of the horns of the altar is the destruction of the altars themselves, the significance of which culminated in the horns (see at Ex. xxvii. 2). The singular hammizbédch (the altay) preceded by a plural is the singular of species (cf. Ges. § 108, 1), and does not refer to any particular one—say, for example, to the principal altar. The destruction of the palaces and houses (ver. 15) takes place in the capital. In the reference to the winter-house and summer-house, we have to think primarily of the royal palace (cf. Jer. xxxvi. 22); at the same time, wealthy noblemen may also have had them. 2y, lit. over, so that the ruins of one house fall upon the top of another; then “together with,” as in Gen. xxxii. 12. ]¥ °A2, ivory houses, houses the rooms of which are decorated by inlaid ivory. Ahab had a palace of this kind (1 Kings xxii. 39, compare Ps. xlv. 9). n’a1 O'n3, not the large houses, but many houses; for the description is rounded off with these words. Along with the palaces, many houses will also fall to the ground. The fulfilment took place when Samaria was taken by Shalmanezer (2 Kings xvii. 5, 6).

The voluptuous and wanton women of Samaria will be overtaken by a shameful captivity (vers. 1-3). Let the Israelites only continue their idolatry with zeal (vers. 4, 5), the Lord has already visited them with many punishments without their having turned to Him (vers. 6-11); and therefore He must inflict still further chastisements, to see whether they will not at length learn to fear Him as their God (vers. 12, 13).

_ Ver. 1. “ Hear. this word, ye cows of Bashan, that are upon the mountain of Samaria, that oppress there the humble and crush the poor, that say to their lords, Bring hither, that we may drink. Ver. 2. The Lord Jehovah hath sworn by Mis holiness: behold, days come upon you, that they drag you away wit hooks, and your last one with fish-hooks. Wer. 3. And ye will go out through breaches in the wall, every one before him, and be cast away to Harmon, is the saying of Jehovah.” The commencement of this chapter is closely connected, so far as the contents are concerned, with the chapter immediately preceding. The prophet having there predicted, that when the kingdom was conquered by its enemies, the voluptuous grandees would perish, with the exception of a very few who would hardly ucceed in saving their lives, turns now to the voluptuous women of Samaria, to predict in their case a shameful transportation into exile. The introduction, “ Hear this word,” does not point therefore to a new prophecy, but simply to a fresh stage in the prophecy, so that we cannot even agree with Ewald in taking vers. 1-3 as the conclusion of the previous prophecy (ch. i1.). The cows of Bashan are well-fed, fat cows, Boes eUTpopor, vacce pingues (Symm., Jer.), as Bashan had fat pastures, and for that reason the tribes that were richest in flocks and herds had asked for it as their inheritance (Num. xxxii.). The fuller definitions which follow show very clearly that by the cows of Bashan, Amos meant the rich, voluptuous, and violent inhabitants of Samaria. It is doubtful, however, whether he meant the rich and wanton wives of the great, as most of the modern commentators follow Theodor., Theodoret, and others, in assuming; or “the rulers of Israel, and all the leading men of the ten tribes, who spent their time in pleasure and robbery” (Jerome); or “those rich, luxurious, and lascivious inhabitants of the palace of whom he had spoken in ch. iii. 9, 10” (Maurer), as the Chald., Luther, Calvin, and others suppose, and whom he calls cows, not oxen, to denote their effeminacy and their unbridled licentiousness. In support of the latter opinion we might adduce not only Hos. x. 11, where Ephraim is compared to a young heifer, but also the circumstance that from ver. 4 onwards the prophecy refers to the Israelites as a whole. But neither of these arguments proves very much. The simile in Hos. x. 11 applies to Ephraim as a kingdom or people, and the natural personification as a woman prepares the way for the comparison to an ‘egldh; whereas voluptuous and tyrannical grandees would be more likely to be compared to the bulls of Bashan (Ps. xxii. 13). And so, again, the transition in ver. 4 to the Israelites as a whole furnishes no help in determining more precisely who are addressed in vers. 1-3. By the cows of Bashan, therefore, we understand the voluptuous women of Samaria, after the analogy of Isa. ii. 16 sqq. and xxaii. 9-13, more especially because it is only by forcing the last clause of ver. 1 that it can be understood as referring to men. WY for myn, because the verb stands first (compare Isa. xxxii. 11). The mountain of Samaria is mentioned in the place of the city built upon the mountain (see at ch. iii. 9). The sin of these women consisted in the tyrannical oppression of the poor, whilst they asked their lords, i.e. their husbands, to procure them the means of debauchery. For pwY and 781, compare Deut. xxviii. 33 and 1 Sam. xii. 3, 4, where the two words are already connected. 82" stands in the singular, because every wife speaks in this way to her husband. The announcement of the punishment for such conduct is introduced with a solemn oath, to make an impression, if possible, upon the hardened hearts. Jehovah swears by His holiness, i.e. as the Holy One, who cannot tolerate unrighteousness. °3 (for) before 737 introduces the oath. Hitzig takes 82) as a niphal, as in the similar formula in 2 Kings xx. 17; but he takes it as a passive used impersonally with an accusative, after Gen. xxxv. 26 and other passages (though not Ex. xii. 7). But as xt? unquestionably occurs as a pied in 1 Kings ix. 11, it is more natural to take the same form as a piel in this instance also, and whilst interpreting it impersonally, to think of the enemy as understood. Tsinndth = tsinnim, Prov. xxii. 5, Job v. 5, 73% =]¥, thorns, hence hooks; so also stroth = sirtm, thorns, Isa. xxxiv. 13, Hos. ii. 8. Dagdah, fishery; hence stroth dagah, fish-hooks. ’Acharith does not mean posterity, or the young brood that has grown up under the instruction and example of the parents (Hitzig), but simply “the end,” the opposite of ré’shith, the beginning. It is “end,” however, in different senses. Here it signifies the remnant (Chaldee), ¢.e. those who remain and are not dragged away with tsinnoth; so that the thought expressed is “all, even to the very last” (compare Hengstenberg, Christology, i. p. 868). {2098 has a feminine suffix, whereas masculine suffixes were used before (D2M8, O3Y); the universal gender, out of which the feminine was first formed. The figure is not taken from animals, into whose noses hooks and rings are inserted to tame them, or from large fishes that are let down into the water again by nose-hooks; for the technical terms applied to these hooks are M7, Min, and nan (cf. Ezek. xxix. 4; Job xl. 25, 26); but from the catching of fishes, that are drawn out of the fish-pond with hooks. Thus shall the voluptuous, wanton women be violently torn away or earried off from the midst of the superfluity and debauchery in which they lived as in their proper element. 2837 D318, to go out of rents in the wall, §S* being construed, as it frequently is, with the accusative of the place; we should say, “ through rents in the wall,” ae. through breaches made in the wall at the taking of the city, not out at the gates, because they had been destroyed or choked up with rubbish at the storming of the city. ‘ Every one before her,” ¢.e. without looking round to the right or to the left (cf. Josh. vi. 5, 20). The words nia mnzevin are difficult, on account of the dz. ery. myoan, and have not yet been satisfactorily explained. The form mnzeyin for jnaeuin is probably chosen simply for the purpose of obtaining a resemblance in sound to 388M, and is sustained by TIAN for |AN in Gen. xxxi. 6 and Ezck. xiii. 11. pwn is applied to thrusting into exile, as in Deut. xxix. 27, The dm. Aey. T2177 with'n loc. appears to indicate the place to which they were to be cavried away or cast out. But the hiphil man2owin does not suit this, and consequently nearly all the earlier translators have rendered it as a passive, doppuds}- ceobe (LXX.), projiciemint (Jerome); so also the Syr. and Chald. jinn jie, “men will carry them away captive.’ One Hebrew codex actually gives the hophal. And to this reading we must adhere; for the hipiil furnishes no sense at all, since the intransitive or reflective meaning, to plunge, or cast one’s self, cannot be sustained, and is not supported at all by the passages quoted by Hitzig, viz. 2 Kings x. 25 and Job xxvii. 22; and still less does haharmondh denote the object cast away by the women when they go into captivity. The literal meaning of harmonah or harmon still remains uncertain. According to the etymology of n1n, to be high, it apparently denotes a hich land: at the same time, it can neither be taken as an appellative, as Hesselberg and Maurer suppose, “the high land;” nor in the sense of ’armon, a citadel or palace, as Kimchi and Gesenius maintain. The former interpretation is open to the objection, that we cannot possibly imagine why Amos should have formed a word of his own, and one-which never occurs again in the Hebrew language, to express the simple idea of a mountain or high land; and the second to this objection, that “the citadel” would require something to designate it as a citadel or fortress in the land of the enemy.

1 The Masoretic pointing probably originated in the idea that harmonah, corresponding to the talmudic harmdnd’, signifies royal power or dominion, and go Rashi interprets it: “ye will cast away the authority, i.c. the almost regal authority, or that pride and arrogance with which you bear yourselves to-day” (Ros.). This explanation would be admissible, if it were not that the use of a word which never occurs again in the old Hebrew for a thing so frequently mentioned in the Old Testament, rendered it very improbable. At any rate, it is more admissible than the different conjectures of the most recent commentators, Thus Hitzig, for example (Comm. ed. 3), would resolve haharmonah into hahar and monah =m’ Ondh (‘and ye will plunge headlong to the mountain as a place of refuge”). The objections to this are, (1) that hishlikh does not mean to plunge headlong; (2) the improbability of m*onah being contracted into mondh, when Amos has m*ondh in ch. ii. 4; and lastly, the fact that m*ondh means simply a dwelling, not a place of refuge. Ewald would read hahdr rimmonah after the LXX., and renders it, ‘ye will cast Rimmonah to the mountain,” understanding by Rimmonah a female deity of the Syrians. But antiquity knows nothing of any such female deity; and from the reference to a deity called Rimmon in 2 Kings v. 18, you cannot possibly infer the existence of a goddess Rimmonah. The explanation given by Schlottmann (Hiob, p. 182) and Paul Botticher (Rudimenta mythologix

The unusual word certainly points to the name of a land or district, though we have no means of determining it more precisely."

Vers. 4, 5. After this threat directed against the voluptuous women of the capital, the prophecy turns again to all the people. In bitter irony, Amos tells them to go on with zeal in their idolatrous sacrifices, and to multiply their sin. But they will not keep back the divine judgment by so doing. Ver. 4. “Go to Bethel, and sin; to Gilgal, multiply sinning; and offer your slain-offerings in the morning, your tithes every three days. Ver. 5. And kindle praise-offerings of that which is leavened, and cry out freewill-offerings, proclaim tt; for so ye love it, O sons of Israel, is the saying of the Lord, of Jehovah.” “ Amos here describes how zealously the people of Israel went on pilgrimage to Bethel, and Gilgal, and Beersheba, those places of sacred associations; with what superabundant diligence they offered sacrifice and paid tithes; how they would rather do too much than too little, so that they even burnt upon the altar a portion of the leavened loaves of the praise-offering, which were only intended for the sacrificial meals, although none but unleavened bread was allowed to be offered; and lastly, how in their pure zeal for multiplying the works of piety, they so completely mistook semit. 1848, p. 10)—namely, that harmondh is the Phoenician goddess Chusarthis, called by the Greeks “Apuovéa—is still more untenable, since “Apwovie is no more derived from the, talmudic harman than this is from the Sanserit pramana (Botticher, J.c. p. 40); on the contrary, harman signifies loftiness, from the Semitic root p77, to be high, and it cannot be shown that there was a goddess called Harman or Harmonia in the Phoenician worship. Lastly, the fanciful idea of Botticher, that harmondah is contracted from hahar rimmondh, and that the meaning is, ‘‘and then ye throw, z.e. remove, the mountain (your Samaria) to Rimmon, that ancient place of refuge for expelled tribes” (Judg. xx. 45 sqq.), needs no refutation.

1 Hven the early translators have simply rendered haharmondh according to the most uncertain conjectures. Thus LXX., sis 7d dpoc ro Popemory (al. ‘Pewmcev); Aq., mons Armona; Theod., mons Mona; the Quinta: excelsus mons (according to Jerome); and Theodoret attributes to Theodot. inpaardy dpos. The Chaldee paraphrases it thus: syn "HY jd mNone, “far beyond the mountains of Armenia.” Symmachus also had A rmenia, according to the statement of Theodoret and Jerome. But this explanation is probably merely an inference drawn from 2 Kings xvii. 23, and cannot be justified, as Bochart supposes, on the ground that mondh or mon is identical with minnt.

their nature, as to summon by a public proclamation to the presentation of freewill-offerings, the very peculiarity of which consisted in the fact that they had no other prompting than the will of the offerer” (v. Hofmann, Schriftbewets, ii. 2, p. 373). The irony of the summons to maintain their worship comes out very distinctly in the words 3Y¥5}, and sin, or fall away from God. Dean is not a nominative absolute, “as for Gilgal,” but an accusative, and 383 is to be repeated from the first clause. The absence of the copula before 1279 does not compel us to reject the Masoretic accentuation, and connect 23037 with 3p, as Hitzig does, so as to obtain the unnatural thought, “ sin ye towards Gilgal.” On Gilgal mentioned ‘along with Bethel as a place of idolatrous worship (here and ch. v. 5, as in Hos. iv. 15, ix. 15, and xii. 12), see at Hos. iv. 15. Offer your slain-offerings labboger, for the morning, we. every morning, like layyom in Jer. xxxvii. 21. This is required by the parallel lishlosheth yémim, on the three of days, te. every three days. O'2t... 827 does not refer to the morning sacrifice prescribed in the law (Num. xxviil. 3)—for that is always called “alah, not zebach—but to slain sacrifices that were offered every morning, although the offering of z*bhdchim every morning presupposes the presentation of the daily morning burnt-offering. What is said concerning the tithe rests upon the Mosaic law of the second tithe, which was to be brought every three years (Deut. xiv. 28, xxvi.12; compare my Bibl. Archdol. § 71, Anm. 7). The two clauses, however, are not to be understood as implying that the Israelites had offered slain sacrifices every morning, and tithe every three days. Amos is speaking hyperbolically, to depict the great zeal displayed in their worship; and the thought is simply this: “If ye would offer slain sacrifices every morning, and tithe every three days, ye would only thereby increase your apostasy from the living God.” The words, “kindle praise-offerings of that which is leavened,” have been misinterpreted in various ways. P, an inf. absol. used instead of the imperative (see Ges. § 131, 4, 0). According to Lev. vii. 12-14, the praise-offering (todah) was to consist not only of unleayened cakes and pancakes with oil poured upon them, but also of cakes of leavened bread. The latter, however, were not to be placed upon the altar, but one of them was to be assigned to the priest who sprinkled the blood, and the rest to be eaten at the sacrificial meal. Amos now charges the people with having offered that which was leavened instead of unleavened cakes and pancakes, and with having burned it upon the altar, contrary to the express prohibition of the law in Lev. ii. 11. His words are not to be understood as signifying that, although outwardly the praiseofferings consisted of that which was unleavened, according to the command of the law, yet inwardly they were so base that they resembled unleavened cakes, inasmuch as whilst the material of the leaven was absent, the true nature of the lea malice and wickedness—was there in all the greater quantity (Hengstenberg, Dissertations, vol. i. p. 143 translation). The meaning is rather this, that they were not content with burning upon the altar unleavened cakes made from the materials pore for the sacrifice, but that they burned some of the leavened loaves as weil, in order to offer as much as possible to God. What follows answers to this: call out n’dabhoth, i.e. call out that men are to present freewillofferings. The emphasis is laid upon 38%P, which is therefore still further strengthened by 3°pv. Their calling out n'dabhoth, i.e. their nies freew ill-offerings to be presented, vas an exaggerated act of zeal, inasmuch as the sacrifices which ought to have been brought out of purely spontaneous impulse (cf. Lev. xxii. 18 sqq.; Deut. xii. 6), were turned into a matter of moral compulsion, or rather of legal command. The words, “ for so ye love it,’ show how this zeal in the worship lay at the heart of the nation. It is also evident from the whole account, that the worship in the kingdom of the ten tribes was conducted generally according to the precepts of the Mosaic law.

Vers. 6-11. But as Israel would not desist from its idolatrous worship, Jehovah would also continue to visit the people with judgments, as He had already done, though without ‘effecting any conversion to their God. This last thought is explained i In vers. 6— a in a series of instances, in which tie expression “IY DAW s NOY (and ye have not Syvne to me), which 18 repeated five times, depicts i in the most thorough manner the unwearied love of iis Lord to His rebellious children.

Ver. 6. “ And I have also given you cleanness of teeth in all your towns, and want of bread in all your places: and ye have not returned to me, is the saying of Jehovah.” The strongly adversative *J8 DN forms the antithesis to BRINN }2: Ye love to persist in your idolatry, and yet I have tried all means of turning you to me. Cleanness of teeth is explained by the parallel “want of bread.” The first chastisement, therefore, consisted in famine, with which God visited the nation, as He had threatened the transgressors that He would do in the law (Deut. xxviii. 48, 57). For TY 2, compare Hos. xiv. 2.

Ver. 7. “ And Ihave also withholden the rain from you, in yet three months to the harvest; and have caused tt to rain upon one city, and I do not cause it to rain upon another. One field is rained upon, and the field upon which tt does not rain withers. Ver. 8. And two, three towns stagger to one town to drink water, and are not satisfied: and ye have not returned to me, is the saying of Jehovah.” The second punishment mentioned is the withholding of rain, or drought, which was followed by the failure of the harvest. and the scarcity of water (cf. Lev. xxvi. 19, 20; Deut. xxviii. 23). The rain “in yet (ie. at the time when there were yet) three months to the harvest” is thé so-called latter rain, which falls in the latter half of February and the first half of March, and is of the greatest importance to the vigorous development of the ears of corn and also of the grains. In southern Palestine the harvest commences in the latter half of April (Nisan), and falls for the most part in May and June; but in the northern part of the land it is from two to four weeks later (see my Archdologie, 1. pp. 33, 34, il. pp- 113, 114), so that in round numbers we may reckon three months from the latter rain to the harvest. But in order to show the people more clearly that the sending and withholding of rain belonged to Him, God caused it to rain here and there, upon one town and one field, and not upon others (the imperfects from ’amtir onwards express the repetition of a thing, what generally happens, and timmdtér, third pers. fem., is used impersonally). This occasioned such distress, that the inhabitants of the places in which it had not rained were obliged to go to a great distance for the necessary supply of water to drink, and yet could not get enough to satisfy them. $3, to stagger, to totter, expresses ee insecure and trembling w: alls of a man almost fainting with thirst.

of your gardens, and of your vineyards, and of your jig-trees, and of your olive-trees, the locust devoured; and ye-have not returned to me, is the saying of Jehovah.” The third chastisement consisted in the perishing of the corn by blight, and by the ears turning yellow, and also in the destruction of the produce of the gardens and the fruits of the trees by locusts. The first is threatened in Deut. xxvili. 22, against despisers of the commandments of God; the second points to the threatenings in Deut. xxviii. 39, 40, 42. The injin. constr. harboth is used as a substantive, and stands as a noun in the construct state before the following words; so that it is not to be taken adverbially in the sense of many times, or often, as though used instead of harbch (cf. Ewald, § 280, ¢). On gdzdm, see at Joeli.4. The juxtaposition of these two plagues is not to be understood as implying that they occurred simultaneously, or that the second was the consequence of the first; still less are the two to be placed in causal connection with the drought mentioned in vers. 7,8. For although such combinations do take place in the course of nature, there is no allusion to this in the present instance, where Amos is simply enumerating a series of judgments, through which Jehovah had already endeavoured to bring the people to repentance, without any regard to the time when they occurred.

The same thing may be said of the fourth chastisement mentioned in ver. 10, “ I have sent pestilence among you in the manner of Egypt, have slain your young men with the sword, together with the booty of your horses, and caused the stench of your camps to ascend, and that wio your nose; and ye have not returned to me, is the saying of Jehovah.” In the combina~ tion of pestilence and sword (war), the allusion to Lev. xxvi. 25 is unmistakeable (compare Deut. xxviii. 60, where the rebellious are threatened with all the diseases of Egypt). pms) FV, in the manner (not in the road) of Egypt (compare Isa. x. 24, 26; Ezek. xx. 30), because pestilence is epidemic in Egypt. The idea that there is any allusion to the pestilence with which God visited Egypt (Ex. ix. 3 sqq.), is overthrown by the circumstance that it is only a dreadful murrain that is mentioned there. The slaying of the youths or young men points to overthrow in war, which the Israelites endured most grievously in the wars with the Syrians (compare

2 Kings viii. 12, xiii. 3, 7). O2°DID ‘AY BY does not mean together with, ne by the side of, the carrying away of your horses i.e. along with the fact ne your horses were carried away; for ‘2% does not mean carrying away captive, but the captivity, or the whole body of captives. The words are still dependent upon °9379, and affirm that even the horses that had been taken perished,—a fact which is also referred to in 2 Kings xi. 7, From the slain men and animals forming the camp the stench ascended, and that into their noses, “ as it were, as an ’azkaréh of their sins” (Hitzig), but without their turning to their God.

Ver. 11. “ I have destroyed among you, like the destruction of God upon Sodom and Gomorrah, and ye were like a brand plucked out of the fire; and ye have not returned to me, is the saying of Jehovah.” Proceeding from the smaller to the greater chastisements, Amos mentions last of all the destruction similar to that of Sodom and Gomorrah, z.e. the utter confusion of the state, by which Israel was brought to the verge of ruin, so that it had only been saved like a frebe and out of the fire. °*AD5N does not refer to an earthquake, which had laid waste cities and hamlets, or a part of the land, say that mentioned in ch. i. 1, as Kimchi and others suppose; but it denotes the desolation of the whole land in consequence of devastating wars, more especially the Syrian (2 Kings xii. 4, 7), and other calamities, which had undermined is acalility of the kingdom, as in Isa. i. 9. The words 11) pyro n3272D are taken from Deut. xxix. 22, where the complete desolation of the land, after the driving away of the people into exile on account of their obstinate apostasy, is compared to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. By thus playing upon this terrible threat uttered by Moses, the prophet seeks to show to the people what has already happened to them, and what still awaits them if they do not eventually turn to their God. They have again been rescued from the threatening destruction like a firebrand out of the fire (Zech. ili. 2) by the deliverer whom the Lord gave to them, so that they escaped from the power of the Syrians (2 Kings xiii. 5). But inasmuch as all these chastisements have produced no fruit of repentance, the Lord will now proceed to judgment with His people.

I will do this to thee, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel. Ver. 13. For, behold, He that formeth the mountains, and createth the wind, and maketh known to man what is his thought; who maketh dawn, darkness, and goeth over the high places of the earth, Jehovah God of hosts is His name.” The punishment which God is now about to inflict is introduced with lakhén (therefore). vy m5 cannot point back to the punishment threatened in vers. 2, 3, and still less to the chastisements mentioned in vers. 6-11; for lakhén koh is always used by Amos to introduce what is about to ensue, and any retrospective allusion to vers. 6-11 is precluded by the future NYYX. What Jehovah is now about to do is not expressed here more tratorum, but may clearly be discerned from what follows. “ When He has said, ‘ This will I do to thee, He is silent as to what He will do, in order that, whilst Israel is left in uncertainty as to the particular kind of punishment (which is all the more terrible because all kinds of things are imagined), it may repent of its sins, and so avert the things which God threatens here” (Jerome). Instead of an announcement of the punishment, there follows in the words, “ Because I will do this to thee (MNi pointing back to 73), prepare to meet thy God,” a summons to hold themselves in readiness ligrath ’clohim (in occursum Det), i.e. to stand before God thy judge. The meaning of this summons has been correctly explained by Calvin thus: “When thou seest that thou hast resorted in vain to all kinds of subterfuges, since thou never wilt be able to escape from the hand of thy judge; see now at length that thou dost avert this last destruction which is hanging over thee.” But this can only be effected “ by true renewal of heart, in which men are dissatisfied with themselves, and submit with changed heart to God, and come as suppliants, praying for forgiveness.” For if we judge ourselves, we shall not be judged by the Lord (1 Cor. xi. 31). This view is shown to be the correct one, by the repeated admonitions to seek the Lord and live (ch. v. 4, 6; ef. ver. 14). To give all the greater emphasis to this command, Amos depicts God in ver. 13 as the Almighty and Omniscient, who creates prosperity and adversity. ‘The predicates applied to God are to be regarded as explanations of PHN, prepare to meet thy God; for it is He who formeth mountains, etc., i.e. the Almighty, and also He who maketh known to man inv, what man thinketh, not what God thinketh, since "Y= MY is not applicable to God, and is only used ironically of Baal in 1 Kings xviii. 27. The thought is this: God is the searcher of the heart (Jer. xvi. 10; Ps. cxxxix. 2), and reveals to men by prophets the state of their heart, since He judges not only the outward actions, but the inmost emotions of the heart (cf. Heb. iv. 12). Ay nw ny might mean, He turns morning dawn into darkness, since ny may be construed with the accusative of that into which anything is made (compare Ex. xxx. 25, and the similar thought in ch. v. 8, that God darkens the day into night). But both of these arguments simply prove the possibility of this explanation, not that it is either necessary or correct. As a rule, where nvy ets the thing into which anything is made is introduced with 2 (ef. Gen. xii. 2; YE. SERIE 10). Here, therefore,? may be omitted, simply to avoid ambiguity. For these reasons we agree with Calvin and others, who take the words as asyndeton. God makes morning-dawn and darkness, which is more suitable to a description of the creative omnipotence of God; and the omission of the Vav may be explained very simply from the oratorical character of the prophecy. ‘To this there is appended the last statement: He passes along over the high places of the earth, 1.e. He rules the earth with unlimited omnipotence (see at Deut. xxxii. 13), and manifests Himself thereby as the God of the universe, or God of hosts.

The elegy, which the prophet commences in ver. 2, upon the fall of the daughter of Israel, forms the theme of the admonitory addresses in these two chapters. These addresses, which are divided into four parts by the admonitions, “ Seek Jehovah, and live,” in vers. 4 and 6, “Seek good” in ver. 14, and the two woes (hoi) in ch. v. 18 and vi. 1, have no other purpose than this, to impress upon the people of God the impossibility of averting the threatened destruction, and to take away from the self-secure sinners the false foundations of their trust, by setting the demands of God before them once more. In every one of these sections, therefore, the proclamation of the judgment returns again, and that in a form of greater and greater intensity, till it reaches to the banishment of the whole nation, and the overthrow of Samaria and the kingdom (ch. v. 27, vi. 8 sqq.).;

Vers. 1-3. The Elegy.—Ver. 1. “ Hear ye this word, which I raise over you; a lamentation, O house of Israel. Ver. 2. The virgin Israel is fallen; she does not rise wp again; cast down upon her soil; no one sets her up. Ver. 8. For thus saith the Lord Jehovah, The city that goes out by a thousand will retain a hundred, and that which goes out by a hundred will retain ten, for the house of Israel.” 33 13977 is still further defined in the relative clause 3) WW as 73°P, a mournful song, /ié. a lamentation or dirge for one who is dead (cf. 2 Sam... 17; 2 Chron. xxxv. 25). Ws is a relative pronoun, not a conjunction (for); and gindh is an explanatory apposition: which I raise or commence as (or “namely”) a lamentation. ‘ House of Israel” is synonymous with “house of Joseph” (ver. 6), hence Israel of the ten tribes. The lamentation follows in ver. 2, showing itself to be a song by the rhythm and by its tical form. ~ bp), to fall, denotes a violent death (2 Sam. i. 19, 25), and is io a ia used to denote the overthrow or destruction of the kingdom. The expression virgin Israel (an epexecetical genitive, not “ of Israel”) rests upon a poetical personification of the population of a city or of a kingdom, as a daughter, and wherever the further idea of being unconquered is added, as a virgin (see at Tsa, xxii, 12). Here, too, the term “ virgin” is used to indicate the contrast between the overthrow predicted and the original destination of Israel, as the people of God, to be unconquered by any heathen nation whatever. The second clause of the verse strengthens the first. 3, to be stretched out or cast down, describes the fall as a aiclene overthrow. The third verse does not form part of the lamentation, but gives a brief, cursory vindication of it by the announcement that Israel will perish in war, even to a very small remnant. 83" refers to their marching out to war, and FON, ANT is subordinated LO: 3b pas aa more precise definition of the manner in which they marched out (cf. Ewald, § 279, 5).

Vers. 4-12. The short, cursory explanation of the reason for the lamentation opened here, is followed in vers. 4 sqq. by the more elaborate proof, that Israel has deserved to be destroyed, because it has done the very opposite of what God demands of His people. God requires that they should seek Him, and forsake idolatry, in order to live (vers. 4-6); but Israel, on the contrary, turns right into unrighteousness, without fearing the almighty God and His judgment (vers. 7-9). This unrighteousness God must punish (vers. 10-12). Ver. 4. “For thus saith Jehovah to the house of Israel, Seek ye me, and live. Ver. 5. And seek not Bethel, and come not to Gilgal, and go not over to Beersheba: for Gilgal repays it with captivity, and Bethel comes to nought. Ver. 6. Seek Jehovah, and live; that He fall not upon the house of Joseph like fire, and it devour, and there be none to quench dt for Bethel.” The ki in ver. 4 is co-ordinate to that in ver. 3, “ Seek me, and live,” for “Seek me, so shall ye live.” For this meaning of two imperatives, following directly the one upon the other, see Gesenius, § 130, 2, and Ewald, § 347, bd. mn, not merely to remain alive, not to perish, but to obtain possession of true life. God can only be sought, however, in His revelation, or in the manner in which He wishes to be sought and worshipped. This explains the antithesis, “Seek not Bethel,” etc. In addition to Bethel and Gilgal (see at ch. iv. 4), Beersheba, which was in the southern part of Judah, is also mentioned here, being the place where Abraham had alled upon the Lord (Gen. xxi. 83), and where the Lord had appeared to Isaac and Jacob (Gen. xxvi. 24 and xlvi. 1; see also at Gen. xxi. 31). These sacred reminiscences from the olden time had caused Beersheba to be made into a place of idolatrous worship, to which the Israelites went on pilgrimage beyond the border of their own kingdom (72Y). But visiting these idolatrous places of worship did no good, for the places themselves would be given up to destruction. Gilgal would wander into captivity (an expression used ae on account of the snauaney 2 in the ring of 230) and nbs 53). Bethel would Decora, dven, that is to say, not “ an idol” here, but “nothingness,” though there is an allusion to the change of Beth-ol (God's house) into Beth-dven (an idol-house; see at Hos, iv. 15). The Judean Beersheba is passed over in the threat, because the primary intention of Amos is simply to predict the destruction of the kingdom of the ten tribes, After this warning the prophet repeats the exhortation to seek Jehovah, and adds this threatening, “ that Jehovah come not like fire upon the house of Joseph” (tsélach, generally construed with ‘al or ’el, cf. Judg. xiv. 19, xv. 14, 1 Sam. x. 6; here with an accusative, to fall upon a person), “and it (the fire) devour, without there being any to extinguish it for Bethel.” Bethel, as the chief place of worship i in ‘ead, is mentioned here for the kingdom itself, which is called the “ house of Joseph,” from J oseplt the father of Ephraim, the most powerful tribe in that kingdom. To add force to this warning, Amos (vers. 7-9) exhibits the moral corruption of the Israelites, in contrast with the omnipotence of Jehovah as it manifests itself in terrible judgments. Ver. 7. “They that change right into wormwood, and bring righteousness down to the earth. Ver. 8. He that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into morning, and darkeneth day to night: that calleth to the waters of the sea, and poureth them over the surface of the earth; Jehovah is His name. Ver. 9. Who causeth desolation to flash upon the strong, and desolation cometh upon the fortress.” The sentences in vers. 7 and 8 are written without any connecting link. The participle in ver. 7 cannot be taken as an address, for it is carried on in the third person (hinnicha), not in the second. And hahdph*khim (who turn) cannot be in apposition to Beth-el, since the latter refers not to the inhabitants, but to the houses. As Amos is generally fond of a participial construction (cf. ch. i. 7, iv. 13), so in a spirited address he likes to utter the thoughts one after another without any logical link of connection. As a matter of fact, hahoph*khim is connected with béth-yoséph (the house of Joseph), “ Seek the Lord, ye of the house of Joseph, who turn right into wrong;” but instead of this connection, he proceeds with a simple description, “They are turning,” ete. La‘dnah, wormwood, a bitter plant, is a figurative term denoting bitter wrong (cf. ch. vi. 12), the actions of men being regarded, according to Deut. xxix. 17, as the fruits of their state of mind. Laying righteousness on the ground (hinnidch from nadéch) answers to our “trampling under feet.” Hitzig has correctly explained the train of thought in vers. 7 and 8: “They do this, whereas Jehovah is the Almighty, and can bring destruction suddenly upon them.’ To show this antithesis, the article which takes the place of the relative is omitted from the participles ‘ds¢h and hophzkh. 'The description of the divine omnipotence commences with the creation of the brightly shining stars; then follow manifestations of this omnipotence, which are repeated in the government of the world. Kimdh, lit. the crowd, is the group of seven stars, the constellation of the Pleiades. K’sil, the gate, according to the ancient versions the giant, is the constellation of Orion. The two are mentioned together in Job ix. 9 and xxxvili. 31 (see Delitzsch on the latter). And He also turns the darkest night into morning, and darkens the day into night again. These words refer to the regular interchange of day and night; for tsalméaveth, the shadow of death, ae. thick darkness, never denotes the regularly recurring gloominess of night, but the appalling gloom of night (Job xxiv. 17), more especially of the night of death (Job iii. 5, x. 21, 22, xxxvill. 17; Ps. xliv. 20), the unlighted depth of the heart of the earth (Job xxviii. 3), the darkness of the prison (Ps. evil. 10, 14), also of wickedness (Job xii. 22, xxxiv. 22), of sufferings (Job xvi. 16; Jer. xiii. 16; Ps. xxiii. 4), and of spiritual misery (Isa. ix. 1). Consequently the words point to the judicial rule of the Almighty in the world. As the Almighty turns the darkness of death into light, and the deepest misery into prosperity and health,’ so He darkens the bright day of prosperity into the dark night of adversity, and calls to the waters of the sea to pour themselves over the earth like the flood, and to destroy the ungodly. ‘The idea that by the waters of the sea, which pour themselves out at the call of God over the surface of the earth, we are to understand the moisture which rises from the sea and then falls upon the earth as rain, no more answers to the words themselves, than the idea expressed by Hitzig, that they refer to the water of the rivers and brooks, which flow out of the sea as well as into it (Eccles. i. 7). The words suggest the thought of terrible inundations of the earth by the swelling of the sea, and the allusion to the judgment of the flood can hardly be overlooked. This judicial act of the Almighty, no strong man and no fortress can defy. With the swiftness of lightning He causes desolation to smite the strong man. Bdlag, lit. micare, used in the Arabic to denote the