Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

1 Theodoret has given a correct explanation, though he does not quite exhaust the force of the words: ‘‘Itis easy for Him to turn even the greatest dangers into happiness; for by the shadow of death he means great dangers. And it is also easy to bring calamity upon those who are in prosperity.”

lighting up of the rays of the dawn, hiphil to cause to light up, is applied here to motion with the swiftness of lightning; it is also employed in a purely metaphorical sense for the lighting up of the countenance (Ps, xxxix. 14; VODIx 24, x. 20). feos ver. 9b the address is continued in a descriptive form; §i2° has not a causative meaning. The two clauses of this verse point to the fate which awaits the Israelites who trust in their strength and their fortifications (ch. vi. 13). And yet they persist in unrighteousness.

Ver. 10. “ They hate the monitor in the gate, and abhor him that speaketh uprightly. Ver. 11. Therefore, because ye tread upon the poor, and take the distribution of corn from him, ye have built houses of square stones, and will not dwell therein; planted pleasant vineyards, and will not drink their wine. Ver. 12. For I know how many are your transgressions, and how great your sins; oppressing the righteous, taking atonement money; and ye bow down the poor in the gate.’ However natural it may seem to take M19 and 0'n 135 in ver. 10 as referring to prophets, who charge the ungodly with their acts of unrighteousness, as Jerome does, this explanation is precluded not only by bassha ar (in the gate), since the gate was not the meeting-place of the people where the prophets were accustomed to stand, but the place where courts of judgment were held, and all the public affairs of the community discussed (see at Deut. xxi. 19); but also by the first half of ver. 11, which presupposes judicial proceedings. Mokhiach is not merely the judge who puts down unjust accusers, but any one who lifts up his voice in a court of justice against acts of injustice (as in Isa, xxix. 21), Dn 725, he who says what is blameless, i.e. what is right and true: this is to be taken generally, and not to be restricted to the accused who seeks to defend his innocence. YF is a stronger expression than “2”, The punishment for this unjust oppression of the poor will be the withdrawal of their possessions. The dz. Aey. boshés is a dialectically different form for DDi3, from ps3, to trample down (Rashi, Kimchi), analogous to the interchange of JY and {"D, a coat of mail, although as a rule & passes into D, and not Dinto &% For the derivation from wa, according to which DvAA would stand for wwr2 (Hitzig and Tuch on Gen. p. 85), is opposed both to the construction with by, and also to the circumstance that YvI3 means to delay (Ex. xxxii. 1;

Judg. v. 28); and the derivation suggested by Hitzig from-an Arabic verb, signifying to carry one’s self haughtily towards others, is a mere loophole. Taking a gift of corn from the poor refers to unjust extortion on the part of the judge, who will only do justice to a poor man when he is paid for it. The main clause, which was introduced with lakhén, is continued with M1 ‘M2: “thus have ye built houses of square stones, and shall not dwell therein;” for “ye shall not dwell in the houses of square stones which ye have built.” The threat is taken from Deut. xxviii. 30, 39, and sets before them the plundering of the land and the banishment of the people. Houses built of square stones are splendid buildings (see Isa. ix. 9). The reason for this threat is given in ver. 12, where reference is made to the multitude and magnitude of the sins, of which injustice in the administration of justice is again held up as the chief sin. The participles Ss and np? are attached to the suffixes of DDYYB and DDNNON: your sins, who oppress the righteous, attack him, and take atonement money, contrary to the express command of the law in Num. xxxv. 31, to take no kopher for the soul of a murderer. The judges allowed the rich murderer to purchase exemption from capital punishment by the payment of atonement money, whilst they bowed down the right of the poor. Observe the transition from the participle to the third person fem., by which the prophet turns away with disgust from these ungodly judges. Bowing down the poor is a concise expression for bowing down the right of the poor: compare ch. ii. 7 and the warnings against this sin (Ix. xxiia6.5 Deut.xviel)).

Vers. 18-17. With the new turn that all talking is useless, Amos repeats the admonition to seek good and hate evil, if they would live and obtain favour with God (vers. 13-15); and then appends the threat that deep mourning will arise on every hand, since God is drawing near to judgment. Ver. 13. “ Therefore, whoever has prudence at this time is silent, for it is an evil time.” As lakhen (therefore) always introduces the threatening of divine punishment after the exposure of the sins (cf. vers. 1G, chs vi. 7,.1V..12 alae might be disposed to connect ver. 13 with the meee verse; but the contents of the verse require that it should be taken in connection with what follows, so that /ékhén simply denotes the close connection of the two turns of speech, ¢.e. indicates that the new command in vers. 14, 15 is a consequence of the previous warnings. Hammaskil, the prudent man, he who acts wisely, is silent. Nv Nya, at a time such as this is, because it is an evil time, not however “a dangerous time to speak, on account of the malignity of those in power,’ but a time of moral corruption, in which all speaking and warning are of no avail. It is opposed to the context to refer xn" nya to the future, z.e. to the time when God will come to punish, in which case the silence would be equivalent to not murmuring against God (Rashi and others). At the same time, love to his people, and zeal for their deliverance, impel the prophet to repeat his call to them to return. Ver. 14. “ Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live; and so Jehovah the God of hosts may be with you, as ye say. Ver. 15. fTate evil, and love good, and set up justice in the gate; perhaps Jehovah the God of hosts will show favour to the remnant of Joseph.” 'The command to seek and love good is practically the same as that to seek the Lord in vers. 4, 6; and therefore the promise is the same, “that ye may live.” But it is only in fellowship with God that man has life. This truth the Israelites laid hold of in a perfectly outward sense, fancying that they stood in fellowship with God by virtue of their outward connection with the covenant nation as sons of Israel or Abraham (cf. John vui. 39), and that the threatened judgment could not reach them, but that God would deliver them in every time of oppression by the heathen (cf. Mic. ii. 11; Jer. vii. 10). Amos meets this delusion with the remark, “ that Jehovah may be so with you as ye say.” {2 neither means “ in case ye do so” (Rashi, Baur), nor “in like manner as, te. if ye strive after good” (Hitzig). Neither of these meanings can be established, and here they are untenable, for the simple reason that {3 unmistakeably corresponds with the ie Wwas2, It means nothing more than “so as ye say.’ The thought i is the following: “ Seek good, and not evil: then will Thon the God of the heavenly fous be with you as a helper in distress, so as ye say.” This implied that in their present condition, so long as they sought good, they ought not to comfort themselves with the certainty of Jehovah’s help. Secking good is explained in ver. 15 as loving good, and this is still further defined as setting up justice in the gate, i.e. maintaining a righteous administration of justice at the place of judgment; and to this the hope, so humiliating to carnal security, is attached: perhaps God will then show favour to the remnant of the people. The emphasis in these words is laid as much upon perhaps as upon the remnant of Joseph. The expression “ nerhaps He will show favour” indicates that the measure of Israel’s sins was full, and no deliverance could be hoped for if God were to proceed to act according to His righteousness. The “remnant of Joseph” does not refer to “the existing condition of the ten tribes” (Ros., Hitzig). For although Hezacl and Benhadad had conquered the whole of the land e Gilead in the times of Jehu and Jehoahaz, and had annihilated the Israelitish army with the exception of a very small remnant (2 Kings x. 32, 33, xiii. 3, 7), Joash and Jeroboam um. had recovered from the Syrians all the conquered territory, aud restored the kingdom to its original bounds (2 Kings xiii. 23 sqq., xiv. 26-28). Consequently Amos could not possibly describe the state of the kingdom of the ten tribes in the time of Jeroboam u. as “the remnant of Joseph.” As the Syrians had not attempted any deportation, the-nation of the ten tribes during the reign of Jeroboam was still, or was once more, all Israel. If, therefore, Amos merely holds out the possibility of the Grencine of the remnant of Joseph, he thereby gives distinetly to nndevatand, that in the approaching oe Israel will perish with the exception of a remnant, which may possibly be preserved after the great chastisement (cf. ver. 3), just as Joel (iii. 5) and Isaiah (vi. 13, x. 21-23) promise only the salvation of a remnant to the kingdom of Judah.

This judgment is announced in vers. 16, 17. Ver. 16. “ Therefore thus saith Jehovah the God of hosts, the Lord: In all roads lamentation! and in all streets will men say, Alas! alas! and they call the husbandman to mourning, and lamentation to those skilled in lamenting. Ver. 17. And in all vineyards lamentation, because I go through the midst of thee, saith Jehovah.” Lakhén (therefore) is not connected with the admonitions in vers. 14, 15, nor can it point back to the reproachies in vers. 7, 10-12, since they are too far off: it rather links on to the substance of ver. 13, which involves the thought that all admonition to return is fruitless, and the ungodly still persist in their unrighteousness,—a thought which also forms the background of vers. 14,15. The meaning of vers. 16, 17 is, that mourning and lamentation for the dead will fill both city and land. On every hand will there be dead to weep for, because Jehovah will go judging through the land. The roads and streets are not wee those of the capital, although these are primarily to be thought of, but those of all the towns in the kingdom. Mispéd is the death-wail. This is evident from the parallel ’dmar ho ho, saying, Alas, alas! i.e. striking up the death-wail (cf. Jer. xxii. 18). And this death-wail will not be heard in all the streets of the towns only, but the husbandman will also be called from the field to mourn, 7.e. to weep for one who has died in his house. The verb %87?, they call, belongs to ON 7BDID, they call lamentation to tess skilled in mourning: for they call out the word mispéd to the professional mourners; in other words, they send for them to strike up their wailing for the dead. 3 ‘975 (those skilled in mourning) are the public wailing women, who were hired when a death occurred to sing mourning songs (compare Jer. ix. 16, Matt. ix. 28, and my Bibl. Archdologie, ii. p. 105). Even in all the vineyards, the places where rejoicing is generally looked for (ver. 11; Isa. xvi. 10), the death-wail will be heard. Ver. 170 Benthiits the event which occasions the lamentation everywhere. °3, for (not “if”) I go through the midst of thee. These words are easily explained from Ex. xii, 12, from which Amos has taken them. Jehovah there says to Moses, “I pass through the land of Egypt, and smite all the first-born.’ And just as the Lord once passed through Egypt, so will He now pass judicially through Israel, and slay the ungodly. For Israel is no longer the nation of the covenant, which He passes over and spares (ch. vil. 8, vili. 2), but has become an Egypt, which He will pass iinsvan as a judge to punish it. This threat is carried out still further in the next two sections, commencing with hai.

Vers. 18-27. The first turn.—Ver. 18. “ Woe to those who desire the day of Jehovah! What good is the day of Jehovah to you? It is darkness, and not light. Ver. 19. As if a man fleeth before the lion, and the bear meets him; and he comes into the house, and rests his hand upon the wall, and the snake bites him. Ver. 20. Alas! is not the day of Jehovah darkness, and not light; and gloom, and no brightness in it?” As the Israelites rested their hope of deliverance from every kind of hostile oppression upon their outward connection with the covenant nation (ver. 14); many wished the day to come, on which - Jehovah would judge all the heathen, and redeem Israel out of all distress, and exalt it to might and dominion above all nations, and bless it with honour and glory, applying the. prophecy of Joel in ch. iii. without the least reserve to Israel as the nation of Jehovah, and without considering that, according to Joel i. 32, those only would be saved on the day of Jehovah who called upon the name of the Lord, and were called by the Lord, z.c. were acknowledged by the Lord as His own. These infatuated hopes, which confirmed the nation in the security of its life of sin, are met by Amos with an exclamation of woe upon those who long for the day of Jehovah to come, and with the declaration explanatory of the woe, that that day is darkness and not light, and will bring them nothing but harm and destruction, and not prosperity and salvation. He explains this in ver. 19 by a figure taken from life. To those who wish the day of Jehovah to come, the same thing will happen as to a man who, when fleeing from a lion, meets a bear, etc. The meaning is perfectly clear: whoever would escape one danger, falls into a second; and whoever escapes this, falls into a third, and perishes therein. The serpent’s bite in the hand is fatal. “In that day every place is full of danger and death; neither in-doors nor out-of-doors is any one safe: for out-of-doors lions and bears prowl about, and in-doors snakes lie hidden, even in the holes of the walls” (C. a. Lap.). After this figurative indication of the sufferings and calamities which the day of the Lord will bring, Amos once more repeats in ver. 20, in a still more emphatic manner (son, nonne = eatedinys that it will be no day of salvation, sc. to those who seek evil and not good, and trample justice and righteousness under foot (vers. 14, 15).

This threatening judgment will not be averted by the Israelites, even by their feasts and sacrifices (vers. 21, 22). The Lord has no pleasure in the feasts which they celebrate. Their outward, heartless worship, dees not make them into the people of God, who can count upon His grace. Ver. 21. “J hate, I despise your feasts, and do not like to smell your holy days. Ver. 22. For if ye offer me burnt-offerings, and your meat-oferings, I have no pleasure therein; and the thankoffering of your fatted calves I do not regard. Ver. 23. Put away from me the noise of thy songs; and I do not like to hear the playing of thy harps. Ver. 24. And let judgment roll lke water, and righteousness like an inexhaustible stream.” By the rejection of the opus opératum of the feasts and sacrifices, the roots are cut away from the false reliance of the Israelites upon their connection with the people of God. The combination of the words *ADND ‘NN2Y expresses in the strongest terms the dislike of God to the feasts of those who were at enmity with Him. Chaggim are the great annual feasts; ‘witsdrdth, the meetings for worship at those feasts, Inasmuch as a holy meeting took place at the ‘atsereth of the feast of Passover and feast of Tabernacles (see at Ley. xxiii. 36). Ridch, to smell, is an expression of satisfaction, with an allusion to the M1) 0, which ascended to God from the burning sacrifice (see Lev. xxvi. 31). Ki, in ver. 22, is explanatory: “ for,’ not “ yea.” The observance of the feast culminated in the sacrifices. God did not like the feasts, because He had no pleasure in the sacrifices. In ver. 23a the two kinds of sacrifice, ‘alah and minchdh, are divided between the protasis and apodosis, which gives rise to a certain incongruity. The sentences, if written fully, would read thus: When ye offer me burnt-offerings and meat-offerings, I have no pleasure in your burnt-offerings and meat-offerings. To these two kinds the shelem, the health-offering or peaceoffering, is added as a third class in ver. 22d. O's, fattened things, generally mentioned along with bdéqdr as one particular species, for fattened calves (see Isa. i.11). In 7D (ver. 23) Israel is addressed as a whole. TW i941, the noise of thy songs, answers to the strong expression 107, The singing of their psalms is nothing more to God than a wearisome noise, which is to be brought to anend. Singing and playing upon harps formed part of the temple worship (vid. 1 Chron. xvi. 40, xxiii. 5, and xxv.). Isaiah (Isa. i. 11 sqq.) also refuses the heartless sacrifice and worship of the people, who have fallen away from God in their hearts. It is very clear from the sentence which Amos pronounces here, that the worship at Bethel was an imitation of the temple service at Jerusalem. If, therefore, with ch. vi. 1 in view, where the careless upon Mount Zion and in Samaria are addressed, we are warranted in assuming that here also the prophet has the worship in Judah in his mind as well; the words apply primarily and chiefly to the worship of the kingdom of the ten tribes, and therefore even in that case they prove that, with regard to ritual, it was based upon the model of the temple service at Jerusalem. Because the Lord has no pleasure in this hypocritical worship, the judgment shall pour like a flood over the land. The meaning of ver. 24 is not, “ Let justice and righteousness take the place of your sacrifices.” Mishpat is not the justice to be practised by men; for “ although Jehovah might promise that He would create righteousness in the nation, so that it would fill the land as it were like a flood (Isa. xi. 9), He only demands righteousness generally, and not actually in floods” (Hitzig). Still less can mishpdt ats‘daqah be understood as relating to the righteousness of the gospel which Christ has revealed. This thought is a very far-fetched one here, and is only founded upon the rendering given to 2a, et revelabitur (Targ., Jerome, = 23), whereas 72° comes from $3, to roll, to roll along. The verse is to be explained according to Isa. x. 22, and threatens the flooding of the land with judgment and the punitive righteousness of God (Theod. Mops., Theodoret, Cyr., Kimchi, and others).

Their heartless worship would not arrest the flood of divine judgments, since Israel had from time immemorial been addicted to idolatry. Wer. 25. “J/ave ye offered me sacrifices and gifts in the desert forty years, O house of Israel? Ver. 26. But have ye borne the booth of your king and the pedestal of your images, the star of your gods, which ye made for yourselves? Ver. 27. Then I will carry you beyond Damascus, satth Jehovah; God of hosts is His name.” The connection between these verses and what precedes is explained by Hengstenberg thus: “ All this (the acts of worship enumerated in vers. 21-23) can no more be called a true worship, than the open idolatry in the wilderness. Therefore (ver. 17) as in that instance the outwardly idolatrous people did not tread the holy land, so now will the inwardly idolatrous people be driven out of the holy land” (Dissertations on the Pentateuch, vol. i. p. 157 transl.). But if this were the train of thought, the prophet would not have omitted all reference to the punishment of the idolatrous people in the wilderness. And as there is no such allusion here, it is more natural to take vers. 25 and 26, as Calvin does, and regard the reference to the idolatry of the people, which was practised even in the wilderness, as assigning a further reason for their exposure to punishment.’ The question, “ Have ye offered me sacrifices?” is equivalent to a denial, and the words apply to the nation as a whole, or the great mass of the people, individual exceptions being passed by. The forty years are used as a round number, to denote the time during which the people were sentenced to die in the wilderness after the rebellion at Kadesh, just as in Num. xiv. 33, 34, and Josh. v. 6, where this time, which actually amounted to only thirty-eight years, is given, as it is here, as forty years. And “ the prophet could speak all the more naturally of forty years, since the germ of apostasy already existed in the great mass of the people, even when they still continued outwardly to maintain their fidelity to the God of Israel” (Hengstenberg). During that time even the circumcision of the children born in the thirty-eight years was suspended (see at Josh. v. 5-7), and the sacrificial worship prescribed by the law fell more and more into disuse, so that the generation that was sentenced to die out offered no more sacrifices. Z*bhdchim (slain-offerings) and minchah (meat-offerings), z.e. bleeding and bloodless sacrifices, are mentioned here as the two principal kinds, to denote sacrifices of all kinds. We cannot infer from this that the daily sacrificial worship was entirely suspended: in Num. xvii. 11, indeed, the altar-fire is actually mentioned, and the daily sacrifice assumed to be still in existence; at the same time, the event there referred to belonged to the time immediately succeeding the passing of the sentence upon the people. Amos mentions the omission of the sacrifices, however, not as an evidence that the blessings which the Lord had conferred upon the people were not to be attributed to the sacrifices they had offered to Him,

1 «Ty this place,” says Calvin, ‘‘ the prophet proves more clearly, that he is not merely reproving hypocrisy among the Israelites, or the fact that they only obtruded their external pomps upon the notice of God, without any true picty of heart, but he also condemns their departure from the precepts of the law. And he shows that this was not a new disease among the Israelitish people, since their fathers had mixed up such leaven as this with the worship of God from the very beginning, and had thereby corrupted that worship. He therefore shows that the Israelites had always been addicted to superstitions, and could not be kept in any way whatever to the true and innate worship of God.”

as Ephraem Syrus supposes, nor to support the assertion that God does not need or wish for their worship, for which Hitzig appeals to Jer. vii. 22; but as a proof that from time immemorial Israel has acted faithlessly towards its God, in adducing which he comprehends all the different generations of the people in the unity of the house of Israel, because the existing generation resembled the contemporaries of Moses in character and conduct. Ver. 26 is attached in an adversative sense: “To me (Jehovah) ye have offered no sacrifices, but ye have borne,” etc. The opposition between the Jehovah-worship which they suspended, and the idol-worship which they carried on, is so clearly expressed in the verbs D7W30 and onNw3, which correspond to one another, that the idea is precluded at once as altogether untenable, that “ ver. 26 refers to either the present or future in the form of an inference drawn from the preceding verse: therefore do ye (or shall ye) carry the hut of your king,” ete. Moreover, the idea of the idols being carried into captivity, which would be the meaning of N¥3 in that case, is utterly foreign to the prophetical range of thought. It is not those who go into captivity who carry their gods away with them; but the gods of a vanquished nation are carried away by the conquerors (Isa. xlvi. 1). To give a correct interpretation to this difficult verse, which has been explained in various ways from the very earliest times, it is necessary, above all things, to bear in mind the parallelism of the clauses. Whereas in the first half of the verse the two objects are connected together by the copula 1 (8), the omission of both M® and the copula 1 before 3352 indicates most obviously that DON 3ni2 does not introduce a third object in addition to the two preceding ones, but rather that the intention is to define those objects more precisely; from which it follows still further, that mo3$ MID and oondy yD do not denote two different kinds of ‘idolatry, but simply two different forms of the very same idolatry. The two dr. rey. sikkath and kiyyin are undoubtedly appellatives, notwithstanding the fact that the ancient versions have taken kiyyan as the proper name of a deity. This is required by the parallelism of the members; for noby stands in the same relation to "3 as 02259 to nap. The plural na nby, however, cannot be in apposition to the singular jy> (hiyyan, your images), but must be a genitive governed by it: “the hiyyin of your images.” And in the same way non is the genitive after mad: “the sikkath of your king.” Sikkath has been taken in an appellative sense by all the ancient translators. The LXX. and Symm. render it tv cxnvyy; the Peshito, Jerome, and the Ar. tentorium. The Chaldee has retained sikkath. The rendering adopted by Aquila, cvcxiacpos, is etymologically the more exact; for sikkath, from 420, to shade, signifies a shade or shelter, hence a covering, a booth, and is not to be explained either from sdkhath, to be ‘silent, from which Hitzig deduces the meaning “ block,” or from the Syriac and Chaldee word snap, a nail or stake, as Rosenmiiller and Ewald suppose. 13, from 3, is related to [2, basis (Hix. xxx. 18), and 7329, and signifies a pedestal or framework. The correctness of the Masoretic pointing of the word is attested by the kiyyan of the Chaldce, and also by Do D>y, inasmuch as the reading }*2, which is given in the LXX. and Syr., requires the singular Doney, which is also given in the Syriac. Dey are images of gods, as in Num. xxniii. 52, 2 Kings xi. 18. The words iby 2352 which follow are indeed also governed by anNXw2; but, as the omission of NN) clearly shows, the connection is eal a loose one, so that it is rather to be regarded as in apposition to the preceding objects in the sense of «namely, the star of your god;” and there is no necessity to alter the pointing, as Hitzig proposes, and read 3313, “a star was your god,” although this rendering expresses the sense quite correctly. DoS 1553 is equivalent to the star, which is your god, which ye worship as your god (for this use of the construct state, see Ges. § 116, 5). By the star we have to picture to ourselves not a star formed by human hand as a representation of the god, nor an image of a god with the figure of a star upon its head, like those found upon the Ninevite sculptures (sce Layard). For if this had been what Amos meant, he would have repeated the particle M8) before 3313. The thought is therefore the following: the king whose booth, and the images whose stand they cone were a star which they had fate their god, 2.e. a star- deity (WW refers to pdx, not to 3253), This star-god, which they worshipped as their ling, they had embodied in ts*lamim. The booth and the er were the things used’for protecting and carrying the images of the stargod. Sikkath was no doubt a portable shrine, in which the image of the deity was kept. Such shrines (vaot, vaicxot) were used by the Egyptians, according to Herodotus (ii. 63) and Diodorus Sic. (i. 97): they were “small chapels, generally gilded and ornamented with flowers and in other ways, intended to hold a small idol when processions were made, and to be carried or driven about with it” (Drumann, On the Rosetta Inscription, p. 211), The stand on which the chapel was placed during these processions was called racrodopiov (Drumann, p. 212); the bearers were called tepagpdpoe or tractodopot (D. p. 226). This Egyptian custom explains the prophet’s words: “the hut of your king, and the stand of your images,” as Hengstenberg has shown in his Dissertations on the Pentateuch, vol. i. p. 161), and points to Eeypt as the source of the idolatry condemned by Amos. This is also favoured by the fact, that the golden calf which the Israclites worshipped at Sinai was an imitation of the idolatry of Egypt; also by the testimony of the prophet Ezekiel (ch. xx. 7 sqq.), to the effect that the Israelites did not desist even in the wilderness from the abominations of their eyes, namely the idols of Egypt; and lastly, by the circumstance that the idea of there being any allusion in the words to the worship of Moloch or Saturn is altogether irreconcilable with the Hebrew text, and cannot be historically sustained,’ whereas star-worship, or at any rate the

1 This explanation of the words is simply founded upon the rendering of the LXX.: zal dysnaBere ryv cunvqv tod Monroy xual ro dotpov tov Ocov buoy PaiQav, rors tUTO0Vvs avg eromoure eevrois. These translators, therefore, have not only rendered non" erroneously as Moacy, but have arbitrarily twisted the other words of the Hebrew text. For the Hebrew reading oo2y is proved to be the original one, not only by the rod Baoiatas duay of Symm. and Theod., but also by the Maayéw of Aquila

» vy - and the SoamNo of the Peshito; and all the other ancient translators enter a protest against the displacing of the other words. The name ‘Paipév (PnQav), or PsuQaéy (Acts vii. 43), however, owes its origin simply to the false reading of the unpointed 3 as jp, inasmuch as in the old Hebrew writing not only is 5 similar to 4, but } is also similar to 5: and in 2 Sam. xxii. 12, where pyo-niwn is rendered oxores (i.e. NIWM) ddatov, we have an example of the interchange of 5 and. There was no god Rephan or Rempha; for the name never occurs apart from the LAX. ‘he statement made in the Arabico-Coptic list of planets, edited by Ath. Kircher, that Swhhel (the Arabic name of Saturn) is the same as “PaQé», and the remark found in a Coptic Ms. on the Acts of the Apostles, ‘* Lephan worship of the sua, was widely spread in Egypt from the very earliest times. According to the more recent investigations into the mythology of the ancient Egyptians which have been made by Lepsius (Transactions of the Academy of Science at Berlin, 1851, p. 157 sqq.), “the worship of the sun was the oldest kernel and most general principle of the religious belief of Egypt;” and this “was regarded even down to the very latest times as the outward culminating point of the whole system of deus temporis,” prove nothing more than that Coptic Christians supposed the Rephan or Remphan, whose name occurred in their version of the Bible which was founded upon the LXX., to be the star Saturn as the god of time; but they by no means prove that the ancient Egyptians called Saturn Rephan, or were acquainted with any deity of that name, since the occurrence of the Greek names Yas and Z<asvy for sun and moon are a sufficient proof of the very recent origin of the list referred to. It is true

Dien: that the Peshito has also rendered pp by elo (YD) by which the Syrians understood Saturn, as we may see from a passage of Ephracm Syrus, quoted by Gesenius in his Comm. on Isaiah (ii. p. 344), where this father, in his Sermones adv. her. s.8, when ridiculing the star-worshippers, refers to the Kevan, who devoured his own children. But no further evidence can be adduced in support of the correctness of this explanation of Na. The corresponding use of the Arabic Kaivan for Saturn, to which appeal has also been made, does not occur in any of the earlier Arabic writings, but has simply passed into the Arabic from the Persian; so that the name and its interpretation originated with the Syrian church, passing thence to the Persians, and eventually reaching the Arabs through them. Consequently the interpretation of Kevan by Saturn has no higher worth than that of an exegetical conjecture, which is not elevated into a truth by the fact that j}9 is mentioned in the Cod. Nazar. i. p. 54, ed. Norb., in connection with Nebo, Bel, and Nerig (= Nergal). With the exception of these passages, and the gloss of a recent Arabian grammarian cited by Bochart, viz. ‘‘ Keivan signifies Suhhel,” not a single historical trace can be found of Kevan having been an ancient oriental name of Saturn; so that the latest supporter of this hypothesis, namely Movers (Phénizier, i. p- 290), has endeavoured to prop up the arguments already mentioned in his own peculiar and uncritical manner, by recalling the Phoenician and Babylonian names, San-Chonidth, Kyn-el-Adan, and others. Not even the Greeco-Syrian fathers make any reference to this interpretation. Theodoret cannot say anything more about Moady xai Pedy, than that they were sidonay éveg-ure; and Theod. Mops. has this observation on ‘PewQev: Qeeal 0: Tey EwaDepoy odTw xara rHy EBpalav yaarray. It is still very doubtful, therefore, whether the Alexandrian and Syrian translators of Amos really supposed “Pa:@eév and jw2 to signify Saturn; and this interpretation, whether it originated with the translators named, or was first started by religion” (Lepsius, p. 193). The first group of deities of Upper and Lower Egypt consists of none but sun-gods (p. 188). fia, i.e. Helios, is the prototype of the kings, the highest potency and prototype of nearly all the gods, the king of the gods, and he is identified with Osiris (p. 194). But from the time of Menes, Osiris has been worshipped in, This and Abydos; whilst in Memphis the bull Apis was regarded as the living copy of Osiris (p. 191). According to Herodotus (ii. 42), Osiris and isis were the only gods worshipped by the ancient Egyptians; and, according to Diodorus Sic. (i. 11), the Egyptians were said to have had originally only two gods, Helios and Selene, and to have worshipped the former in Osiris, the latter in Isis. The Pan of Mendes appears to have also been a peculiar form of Osiris (cf. Diod. Sic. i. 25, and Leps. p. 175). Herodotus (ii. 145) speaks of this as of primeval antiquity, and reckons it later commentators upon these versions, arose in all probability simply from a combination of the Greek legend concerning Saturn, who swallowed his own children, and the Moloch who was worshipped with the sacrifice of ehildren, and therefore might also be said to devour children; that is to say, it was merely an inference drawn from the rendering of noob as Moacy. But we are precluded from thinking of Moloch-worship, or regarding n225, “your king,” as referring to Moloch, by the simple circumstance that pony 33iD unquestionably points to the Sabeean (sidereal) character of the worship condemned by Amos, whereas nothing is known of the sidereal nature of Moloch; and even if the sun is to be regarded as the physical basis of this deity, as Munter, Creuzer, and others conjecture, it is impossible to discover the slightest trace in the Old Testament of any such basis as this,

The Alexandrian translation of this passage, which we have thus shown to rest upon a misinterpretation of the Hebrew text, has acquired a greater importance than it would otherwise possess, from the fact that the protomartyr Stephen, in his address (Acts vii. 42, 43), has quoted the words of the prophet according to that version, simply because the departure of the Greek translation from the original text was of no consequence, so far as his object was concerned, viz. to prove to the Jews that they had always resisted the Holy Ghost, inasmuch as the Alex. rendering also contains the thought, that their fathers worshipped the orperie rod odpervod.

1 [tis true, that in the first divine sphere Ra occupies the second place according to the Memphitic doctrine, namely, after Phiha (Hephexstos), and according to the Theban doctrine, Amen (Awoy). Mentu and Atmu stand at the head (Leps. p. 186); but the two deities, Mentu, i.e. the rising sun, and Aimu, i.e. the setting sun, are simply a splitting up of [a; and both Hephestos and Amon (Amon-Ra) were placed at the head of the gods at a later period (Leps. pp. 187, 189).

among the eight so-called ese gods; and Diodorus Sic. (i. 18) Perxibes it as Scahepovtws b7d Tov AliyuTTiov tiwmpevov. It was no doubt to these Egyptian sun-gods that the star-god which the Israelites carried about with them in the wilderness belonged. This is all that can at present be determined concerning it. There is not sufficient evidence to support Hengstenberg’s opinion, that the Egyptian Pan as the sun-god was the king worshipped by them. It is also impossible to establish the identity of the king mentioned by Amos with the Dy in Lev. xvii. 7, since eee oy, even if they are connected with the goat-w aan of Mendes, are not exhausted by this goatee

The prophet therefore affirms that, during the forty years’ journey through the wilderness, Israel did not offer sacrifices to its true King Jehovah, but carried about with it a star made into a god as the king of heaven. If, then, as has already been observed, we understand this assertion as referring to the great mass of the people, like the similar passage in Isa. slili. 23, it agrees with the intimations in the Pentateuch as to the attitude of Israel. For, beside the several grosser outbreaks of rebellion against the Lord, which are the only ones recorded at all circumstantially there, and which show clearly enough that it was not devoted to its God with all its heart, we also find traces of open idolatry. Among these are the command in Lev. xvil., that every one who slaughtered a sacrificial animal was to bring it to the tabernacle, when taken in connection with the reason assigned, namely, that they were not to offer their sacrifices any more to the S“irim, after which they went a whoring (ver. 7), and the warning in Deut. iv. 19, against worshipping the sun, moon, and stars, even all the host of heaven, from which we may infer that Moses had a reason for this, founded upon existing circumstances. After this further proof of the apostasy of Israel from its God, the judgment already indicated in ver. 24 is still further defined in ver. 27 as the banishment of the people far beyond the borders of the land given to it by the Lord, where higléh evidently points back to yiggal in ver. 24. > MNT, lit. “from afar with regard to,” te. so that when looked at from Damascus} the nike showed itself afar off, 7.2, according to one mode of viewing it, “ far beyond Damascus.”

CHAPS VL) 1-8: 297 Ch. vi. The prophet utters the second woe over the care-* less heads of the nation, who were content with the existing state of things, who believed in no divine judgment, and who revelled in their riches (vers. 1-6). To these he announces destruction and the general overthrow of the kingdom (vers. 7-11), because they act perversely, and trust in their own power (vers. 12-14). Ver. 1. “ Woe to the secure upon Zion, and to the careless upon the mountain of Samaria, to the chief men of the jirst of the nations, to whom the house of Israel comes! Ver. 2. Go over to Calneh, and see; and proceed thence to Hlamath, the great one: and go down to Gath of the Philistines: are they indeed better than these kingdoms? or is their territory greater than your territory? Ver. 3. Ye who keep the day of calamity far of, and bring the seat of violence near.” This woe applies to the great men in Zion and Samaria, that is to say, to the chiefs of the whole of the covenant nation, because they were all sunk in the same godless security; cienee special allusion is made to the corrupt leaders of the kingdom of the ten tribes, whose debauchery is still further depicted in what follows. These great men are designated in the words °3?3 ONIT MWS, as ne heads of the Blech people, who are know n by name. Ns ‘in nvinn is taken from Num. xxiv. 20, so ‘293 is taken from Num. i. 17, where the heads of the tribes who were chosen as princes of the congregation to preside over the numbering of the people are desorietl as men Nipva 339) Ws, who were ened with names, 7.e. distinguished by names, ihae is to say, well-known men; and it is used here in the same sense. Observe, however, with reference to D437 NWN), that in Num. xxiv. 20 we have not D%33, but simply O39 ne ND, Amalek is so called there, as being Ae first heathen nation which rose up in hostility to Israel. On the other hand, O17 1 is the firstling of the nations, i.e. the first or most exalted of all nations. Israel is so called, because Jehovah had chosen it out of all the nations of the earth to be the people of [is possession (Ex. xix. 5; cf. 2 Sam. vii. 23). In order to define with still greater precision the position of these princes in the congregation, Amos adds, “to whom the house of Israel cometh,” namely; to have its affairs regulated by them as its rulers. These epithets were intended to remind the princes of the people of both kingdoms, “that they were the descendants of those tribe- princes who had once been honoured to conduct the affairs of the chosen family, along with Moses and Aaron, and whose light shone forth from that better age as brilliant examples of what a truly theocratical character was” (Hengstenberg, Dissertations, i. p. 148). To give still greater prominence to the exalted calling of these princes, Aches shows in ver. 2 that Israel can justly be called the firstling of the nations, since it is not inferior either in prosperity or greatness to any of the powerful and prosperous heathen states. Amos names three great and flourishing capitals, because he is speaking to the great men of the capitals of the two kingdoms of Israel, and the condition of the whole kingdom is reflected in the cireumstances of the capital. Calneh (= Calno, Isa. x. 9) is the later Ctesiphon in the land of Shinar, or Babylonia, situated upon the Tigris opposite to Seleucia (see at Gen. x. 10); hence the expression 2Y, because men were obliged to cross over the river (Euphrates) in order to get there. Hamath: the capital of the Syrian kingdom of that name, situated upon the Orontes (see at Gen. x ate and Num. xxxiv. 8.) There was not another Hamath, as Hitzig supposes. The circumstance that Amos mentions Calneh first, whereas it was much farther to the east, so that Hamath was nearer to Palestine than Calneh was, may be explained very simply, from the fact that the enumeration commences with the most distant place and passes from the north-east to the south-west, which was in the immediate neighbourhood of Israel. Gath: one of the five capitals of Bilis and im David’s time the capital of all Philistia (see at Josh, xiii. 8,2 Sam. viii. 1). The view still defended by Baur— namely, that Amos mentions here three cities that had either lost their former grandeur, or had fallen altogether, for the purpose of showing the self-secure princes of Israel that the same fate awaited Zion erroneous; for although Calneh is spoken of in Isa. x. 9 as a city that had been conquered by the Assyrians, it cannot be proved that this was the case as early as the time of Amos, but is a simple inference drawn from a false interpretation of the verse before us. Nor did Jeroboam 11. conquer the city of Hamath on the Orontes,.and incorporate its territory with his own kingdom (see at 2 Kings xiv. 25). And although the Philistian city Gath was conquered by Uzziah (2 Chron. xxvi. 6), we cannot infer from 2 Chron. xxvi. 6, or from the fact of Gath not being mentioned in Amos i. 6-8, that this occurred before the time of Amos (see at ch. i. 8). On the other hand, the fact that it is placed by the side of Hamath in the passage before us, is rather a proof that the conquest did not take place till afterwards. Ver. 2b states what the princes of Israel are to sce in the cities mentioned,—namely, that they are not better off (O°2i0 denoting outward success or earthly prosperity) than these two kingdoms, i.e. the kingdoms of Judah and Israel, and that their territories are not larger than theirs. It is very evident that this does not apply to cities that have been destroyed. The double question 1... DN requires a negative answer. Ver. 3 assigns the reason for the woe pronounced upon the sinful security of the princes of Israel, by depicting the godless conduct of these princes; and this is appended in the manner peculiar to Amos, viz. in participles. These princes fancy that the evil day, z.c. the day of misfortune or of judgment and punishment, is far away (O32, piel of 172 = 773, to be far off, signifies in this instance not to put far away, but to regard as far off); and they go so far as to prepare a seat or throne close by for wickedness and violence, which must be followed by judgment. nav v*3n, to move the sitting (shebheth from yashabh) of violence near, or better still, taking shebheth in the sense of enthroning, as Ewald does, to move the throne of violence nearer, i.¢. to cause violence to erect its throne nearer and nearer among them. This forgetfulness of God shows itself more especially in! he reckless licentiousness and debauchery of these men. Ver. A. “They who lie upon beds of wory, and stretch themselves apon their couches, and eat lambs from the flock, and calves out of the fattening stall. Ver. 5. Who pratile to the tune of the harp; like David, they tnwent string instruments. Ver. 6. Who drink wine out of sacrificial bowls, and anoint themselves with the best otls, and do not aglict themselves for the hurt of Joseph.” They lie stretched, as it were poured out (O°N7D), upon beds inlaid with ivory, to feast and fill their belly with the flesh of the best lambs and fattened calves, to the playing of harps and singing, in which they take such pleasure, that they invent new kinds of playing and singing. The dz. rey. parat, to strew around (cf. peret in Lev. xix. 10), in Arabic to throw many useless words about, to gossip, describes the singing at the banquets as frivolous nonsense. vp, articles or instruments of singing, are not musical instruments generally, but, as we may see from 2 Chron. xxxiv. 12, compared with 2 Chron. xxix. 26, 27, and 1 Chron. xxiii. 5, the stringed instruments that were either invented by David (e.g. the nebel), or arranged by him for the sacred song of the temple, together with the peculiar mode of playing them; in other words, “ the playing upon stringed instruments introduced by David.” Consequently the meaning of yer. 5 is the following: As David invented stringed instruments in honour of his God in heaven, so do these princes invent playing and singing for their god, the belly. The meaning to invent or devise, which Baur will not allow to 207, is established beyond all doubt by Ex. xxxi. 4. They drink thereby out of sacrificial bowls of wine, ¢.e. drink wine out of sacrificial bowls. "NY with 3, as in Gen. sliv. 5. Méerdg, in the plural mizrdgim and mizrdqoth, from zdraq, to sprinkle, was the name given both to the vessels used for the sprinkling of the blood, and also to the bowls made use of for pouring the libation of wine upon the table of shew-bread (2 Chron. iv. 8). This word is applied by Amos to the bowls out of which the gluttons drank their wine; with special reference to the offering of silver sacrificial bowls made by the tribe-princes at the consecration of the altar (Num. vii), to show that whereas the tribe-princes of Israel in the time of Moses manifested their zeal for the service of Jehovah by presenting sacrificial bowls of silver, the princes of his own time showed just as much zeal in their care for their god, the belly. Mizrdgimn does not mean “rummers, or pitchers used for mixing wine.” Lastly, Amos refers to their anointing themselves with the firstling of the oils, i.e. the best oils, as a sign of unbridled rejoicing, inasmuch as the custom of anointing was suspended in time of mourning (2 Sam. xiv. 2), for the purpose of appending the antithesis m2 NA, they do not afflict or grieve themselves for the ruin of Israel. Shébher, breach, injury, destruction. Joseph signifies the people and kingdom of the ten tribes. Vers. 7-11. Announcement of Punishment. — Ver. 7. “ Therefore will they now go into captivity at the head of the captives, and the shouting of the revellers will depart.’ Because these revellers do not trouble themselves about the ruin of

Israel, they will now be obliged to wander into captivity at the head of the people (cf. 1 Kings xxl. 9), when the approaching shebher occurs. 23 vNn2 is Rchosén with direct reference to bv MVNI, as Jerome has observed: “Ye who are Jirst in ieee will ie the jirst to bear the yoke of captivity.” S’rachim also points back to ver. 4, “those who are stretched upon their couches ”—that is, the revellers; and it forms a play upon words with mirzach. M2 signifies a loud cry, here a joyous cry, in Jer. xvi. 5 a cry of lennon!

This threat is carried out still further in vers. 8-11. Ver. 8. “ The Lord Jehovah hath sworn by Himself, ts the saying of Jehovah, the God of hosts: I abhor the pride of Jacob, and his palaces I hate; and give up the city, and the fulness thereof. Ver. 9. And it will come to pass, if ten men are left in a house, they shall die. Ver. 10. And when his cousin lifts him up, and he that burieth him, to carry out the bones out of the house, and saith to the one in the hindermost corner of the house, Is there still any one with thee? and he says, Not one; then will he say, Hush; for the name of Jehovah is not to be invoked. Ver. 11. For, behold, Jehovah commandeth, and imen smite the great house to ruins, and the small house into shivers.’ In order to show the secure debauchees the terrible severity of the judgments of God, the Lord announces to His people with a solemn oath the rejection of the nation which is so confident im its own power (cf. ver. 13). The oath runs here as in ch. iv. 2, with this exception, that instead of iv1P3 we have 23 in the same sense; for the nephesh of Jechov: ah, His inmost being or self, is His holiness. 8h, with the ictal softened, for 3Yn1, The participle describes the abhorrence as a continued lasting feeling, and not a merely passing emotion. apy’ isd, the ieee or pride of Jacob, ze. everything of which ae is proud, the true and imaginary greatness and pride of Israel, which included the palaces of the voluptuous great men, for which reason they are placed in parallelism with ‘yy ps3. This glory of Israel Jehovah abhors, and He will destroy it by giving up the city (Samaria), and all that fills it (houses and men), to the enemies to be destroyed. 30%, to give up to the enemy, as in Deut. xxxii. 80 and Ob. 14; 0) to surround, to which AISI is unsuitable. The words not only threaten surrounding, or siege, but also conquest, and (ver. 11) the destruction of the city. And then, even if there are ten in one house, they will all perish. 5'¥28: people, men. Ten in one house is a large number, which the prophet assumes as the number, to give the stronger emphasis to the thought that not one will escape from death. This thought is still further explained in ver. 10. A relative comes into the house to bury his deceased blood-relation. The suffix to int? refers to the idea involved in 37, a dead man. Déd, literally the father’s brother, here any near relation whose duty it was to see to the burial of the dead. ADD for Ww», the burner, i.e. the burier of the dead. The Israelites were indeed accustomed to bury their dead, and not to burn the corpses. The description of the burier as m’sdréph (a burner) therefore supposes the occurrence of such a multitude of deaths that it is impossible to bury the dead, whose corpses are obliged to be burned, for the purpose of preventing the air from being polluted by the decomposition of the corpses. Of course the burning did not take place at the house, as Hitzig erroneously infers from D'Dxy sind; for D’PSY denotes the corpse here, as in Ex. xiii. 19, Josh. xxiv. 32, and 2 Kings xiii. 21, and not the different bones of the dead which remained without decomposition or burning. The burier now asks the last living person in the house, who has gone to the very back of the house in order to save his life, whether there is any one still with him, any one still living in the house beside himself, and receives the answer, DDN (adv.), “ Nothing more;” whereupon he says to him, has, “ Be still,” answering to our Hush! because he is afraid that, if he goes on speaking, he may invoke the name of God, or pray for the mercy of God; and he explains his words by adding, “The name of Jehovah must not be mentioned.” It is not Amos who adds this explanation, but the relation. Nor does it contain “the words of one who despairs of any better future, and whose mind is oppressed by the weight of the existing evils, as if he said, Prayers would be of no use, for we too must die” (Livel., Ros.). 2m N?, “it is not to (may not) be mentioned,” would be unsuitable as an utterance of despair. It rather indicates the fear lest, by the invocation of the name of God, the eye of God should be drawn towards this last remaining one, and he also should fall a victim to the judgment of death. This judgment the Lord accomplishes not merely by a pestilence which breaks out during the siege, and rages all around (there is no ground for any such limitation of the words), but also by sword and plague during the siege and conquest of the town. For the reason assigned for the threat in ver. 11 points to the latter. °3 links the words to the main thought in ver. 11, or even ver. 100: “ When the Lord delivers up the city and all that fills it, they will all perish; for, behold, He commands, orders the enemy (the nation in ver. 14), and it will smite in pieces the houses, great and small.” The singular n33 is used with indefinite generality: every house, great and small (cf. ch. iii. 15).

Vers. 12-14. This judgment also, they, with their perversion of all right, will be unable to avert by their foolish trust in their own power. Ver. 12. “Do horses indeed run upon the rock, or do men plough (there) with oxen, that ye turn justice into poison, and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood? Ver. 13. They who rejoice over what is worthless, who say: with our strength we make ourselves horns! Ver. 14. For, behold, I raise over you, O house of Israel, is the saying of Jehovah, the God of hosts, a nation; and they will oppress you from the territory of Hamath to the brook of the desert.” To explain the threat in ver. 11, Amos now calls attention in ver. 12, under two different similes, to the perversity with which the haughty magnates of Israel, who turn right into bitter wrong, imagine that they can offer a successful resistance, or bid defiance with their own strength to the enemy, whom the Lord will raise up as the executor of His judgment. The perversion of right into its opposite can no more bring salvation than horses can run upon rocks, or any one plough upon such a soil with oxen. In the second question yob2 (on the rock) is to be repeated from the first, as the majority of commentators suppose. But the two questions are not to be taken in connection with the previous verse in the sense of “Ye will no more be able to avert this destruction than horses can run upon rocks,” etc. (Chr. B. Mich.) | They belong to what follows, and are meant to expose the moral perversity of the unrighteous conduct of the wicked. For 3) O75, see ch. v. 7; and for Wx, Hos.x.4. The impartial administration of justice is called the “ fruit of righteousness,” on account of the figurative use of the terms darnel and wormwood. These great men, however, rejoice thereby in 123 x5, “a nothing,” or a thing which has no existence. What the prophet refers to may be seen from the parallel clause, viz. their imaginary strength (chozeq). They rested this hope upon the might with which Jeroboam had smitten the Syrians, and restored the ancient boundaries of the kingdom. From this might they would take to themselves (/dgach, to take, not now for the first time to create, or ask of God) the horns, to thrust down all their foes. JZorns are signs and symbols of power (cf. Deut. xxxiil. 17; 1 Kings xxii. 11); here they stand for the military resources, with which they fancied that they could conquer every foe. These delusions of God-forgetting pride the prophet casts down, by saying that Jehovah the God of hosts will raise up a nation against them, which will crush them down in the whole length and breadth of the kingdom. This nation was Assyria. Ki hinnéh (for behold) is repeated from ver. 11; and the threat in ver. 14 is thereby described as the resumption and confirmation of the threat expressed in ver. 11, although the 47 is connected with the perversity condemned in vers. 12, 13, of trusting in their own power. Ldchats, to oppress, to ae: down. On the expression Nan Ni2?, as a standing epithet for the northern boundary of the kingdom of Israel, see Num. xxxiv. 8. As the southern boundary we have naa 23 instead of nas Oo (2 Kings xiv. 25). This is not the willow-brook mentioned in Isa. xv. 7, the present Wady Sufsaf, or northern arm of the Wady el-Kerek (see Delitzsch on {saiah, /.c.), nor the Khinokorura, the present el-Arish, which formed the southern boundary of Canaan, because this is constantly called “the brook of Egypt” (see at Num. xxxiv. 5, Josh. xv. 4), but the present e/-Ahsy (Ahsa), the southern border river which separated Moab from Edom (see at 2 Kings RIV 2)

The last part of the writings of Amos contains five visions, which confirm the contents of the prophetic addresses in the preceding part. The first four visions, however (ch. vii. and viii.), are distinguished from the fifth and last (ch. ix.) by the fact, that whereas the former all commence with the same formula, “ Thus hath the Lord showed me,” the latter commences with the words, “I saw the Lord,’ etc. They also differ in their contents, inasmuch as the former symbolize the judgments which have already fallen in part upon Israel, and in part have still to fall; whilst the latter, on the contrary, proclaims the overthrow of the old theocracy, and after this the restoration of the fallen kingdom of God, and its ultimate glory. And again, of these four, the first and second (ch. vii. 1-6) are distinguished from the third and fourth (ch. vii. 7-9, and viii. 1-3) by the fact, that whereas the former contain a promise in reply to the prophet’s intercession, that Jacob shall be spared, in the latter any further sparing is expressly refused; so that they are thus formed into two pairs, which differ from one another both in their contents and purpose. This difference is of importance, in relation both to the meaning and also to the historical bearing of the visions. It points to the conclusion, that the first two visions indicate universal judgments, whilst the third and fourth simply threaten the overthrow of the kingdom of Israel in the immediate future, the commencement of which is represented in the fifth and last vision, and which is then still further depicted in its results in connection with the realization of the divine plan of salvation.

VISIONS OF THE LOCUSTS, THE FIRE, AND THE PLUMB-LINE. THE PROPHETS EXPERIENCE AT BETHEL.—CHAP. VII.

Vers. 1-6. The first two visions.—Vers. 1-3. Tux Loousts:—Ver. 1. “ Thus the Lord Jehovah showed me; and, behold, He formed locusts in the beginning of the springing up of the second crop; and, behold, it was a second crop after the king s mowing. Wer. 2. And it came to pass, when they had finished eating the vegetable of the land, I said, Lord Schovah, forgive, I pray: how can Jacob stand? for he is small. Ver. 8. Jehovah repented of this: It shall not take place, saith Jehovah.” The formula, “ Thus the Lord Jehovah showed me,” is common to this and the three following visions (vers. 4, 7, and ch. viii. 1), with this trifling difference, that in the third (ver. 7) the subject (the Lord Jehovah) is omitted, and ’ Adonai (the Lord) is inserted instead, after o°hinnéh (and behold). "2875 denotes seeing with the eyes of the mind—a visionary seeing.

These visions are not merely pictures of a judgment which was ever threatening, and drawing nearer and nearer (Baur); still less are they merely feel fictions, or forms of drapery selected arbitrarily, for the purpose of clothing the prophet’s thoughts; but they are inward intuitions, produced by the Spirit of God, which set forth the punitive judgments of God. Koh (ita, thus) points to what follows, and v%hinnéh (and behold) introduces the thing seen. Amos sees the Lord form locusts. Baur proposes to alter $i" (forming) into 78° (forms), but without any reason, and without observing that in all three visions of this chapter hinnézh is followed by: a participle (s7P in ver. 4, and 38) in ver. 7), and that the Adonai which stands before 382 in ver. 7 shows very clearly that this noun is simply omitted in ver. 1, because "Adonai Y*hovah has immediately preceded iets G poetical form for 733, analogous to WY for mv, and contracted into 343 in Nah. ii. 17) sionifies locusts, the only question being, whether this meaning is derived from

33 = Cle, to cut, or from 523= le, to creep forth (out of the earth). The fixing of the time has an important bearing upon the meaning of the vision: viz. “at the beginning of the springing up of the second crop (of grass);” especially when taken in connection with the explanation, “ after the mowings of the king.” These definitions cannot be merely intended as outward chronological data. For, in the first place, nothing is known of the existence of any right or prerogative on the part of the kings of Israel, to have the early crop in the meadow land throughout the country mown for the support of their horses and mules (1 Kings xviii. 5), so that their subjects could only get the second crop for their own cattle. Moreover, if the second crop, “ after the king’s mowings,” were to be interpreted literally in this manner, it would decidedly weaken the significance of the vision. For if the locusts did not appear till after the king had got in the hay for the supply of his own mews, and so only devoured the second crop of grass as it grew, this plague would fall upon the people alone, and not at all upon the king. But such an exemption of the king from the judgment is evidently at variance with the meaning of this and the following visions. Consequently the definition of the time must be interpreted spiritually, in accordance with the idea of the vision. The king, who has had the early grass mown, is Jehovah; and the mowing of the grass denotes the judgments which Jehovah has already executed upon Israel. The growing of the second crop is a figurative representation of the prosperity which flourished again after those judgments; in actual fact, therefore, it denotes the time when the dawn had risen again for Israel (ch. iv. 18). Then the locusts came and devoured all the vegetables of the earth. 7IS8T AWY is not the second crop; for 1¥Y does not mean grass, but vegetables, the plants of the field (see at Gen. i. 11). Vers. 2 and 3 require that this meaning should be retained. When the locusts had already eaten the vegetables of the earth, the prophet interceded, and the Lord interposed with deliverance. ‘This intercession would have been too late after the consumption of the second crop. On the other hand, when the vegetables had been consumed, there was still reason to fear that the consumption of the second crop of grass would follow; and this is averted at the prophet's intercession. 7) for ‘1, as in 1 Sam. xvi. 48, Jer. xxxvii. 11, ete. §3 snbp, pray fa give, sc. the guilt of the people (cf. ate xiv. 19). mip’ 9, how (‘2 ie) can Jacob (the nation of Israel) stand (not arise), since it is small? jOP, small, 7.e. so poor in sources and means of help, that it cannot endure this stroke; not “ so crushed already, that a very light calamity would Baia ne

(Rosenmiiller). For by om, see Ex. xxxii. 14. mst (this) refers to the destruction of he people indicated in 2; and nxt is also to be supplied as the subject to WN NP,

Vers. 4-6. Tort Drevourine Firne.—Ver. 4. “ Thus the Lord Jehovah showed me: and, behold, the Lord Jehovah called to punish with fire; and it devoured the great flood, and devoured the portion. Ver. 5. And I said, Lord Jehovah, leave off, I pray: how can Jacob stand? for it is small. Ver. 6. Jehovah repented of this; this also shall not take place, said the Lord Jehovah.” That the all-devouring fire represents a much severer judgment than that depicted under the figure of the locusts, is generally acknowledged, and needs no proof. But the more precise meaning of this judgment is open to dispute, and depends upon the explanation of the fourth verse. The object to NP is VNB 2, and 27 is to be taken as an infinitive, as in Isa. iii. 18: He called to strive (é.e. to judge or punish) with fire. There is no necessity to supply ministros suos here. The expression is a concise one, for “ He called to the fire to punish with fire” (for the expression and the fact, compare Isa. Ixvi. 16). This fire devoured the great flood. T°hdm rabbah is used in Gen. vil. 11 and Isa. li. 10, etc., to denote the unfathomable ocean; and in Gen. i. 2 é‘hom is the term applied to the immense flood which surrounded and covered the globe at the beginning of the creation. neds’, as distinguished from 2NM\, signifies an action in progress, or still incomplete (Hitzig). The meaning therefore is, “ it also devoured (began to devour) ’eth-hachéleg;” i.e. not the field, for a field does not form at all a fitting antithesis to the ocean; and still less “ the land,” for chéleg never bears this meaning; but the inheritance or portion, namely, that of Jehovah (Deut. xxxii. 9), ie. Israel. Consequently thom rabbdh cannot, of course, signify the ocean as such. For the idea of the fire falling upon the ocean, and consuming it, and then beginning to consume the land of Israel, by which the ocean was bounded (Hitzig), would be too monstrous; nor is it justified by the simple remark, that “ it was as if the last great conflagration (2 Pet. ii. 10) had begun” (Schmieder). As the fire is not earthly fire, but the fire of the wrath of God, and therefore a figurative representation of the judgment of destruction; and as hachdleq (the portion) is not the land of Israel, but according to Deuteronomy (/.c.) Israel, or the people of Jehovah; so ¢’hdm rabbah is not the ocean, but the heathen world, the great sea of nations, in their rebellion against the kingdom of God. The world of nature in a state of agitation is a frequent symbol in the Scriptures for the agitated heathen world (eg. Ps. xlvi. 3, xciii. 3,4). On the latter passage, Delitzsch has the following apt remark: “ The

stormy sea is a figurative representation of the whole heathen world, in its estrangement from God, and enmity against Him, or the human race outside the true church of God; and the rivers are figurative representations of the kingdoms of the world, eg. the Nile of the Egyptian (Jer. xlvi. 7, 8), the Euphrates of the Assyrian (Isa. vili. 7, 8), or more precisely still, the arrow-swift Tigris of the Assyrian, and the winding Kuphrates of the Babylonian (Isa. xxvii. 1).” This symbolism

lies at the foundation of the vision seen by the prophet. The world of nations, in its rebellion against Jehovah, the Lord and King of the world, appears as a great flood, like the chaos at the beginning of the creation, or the flood which poured out its waves upon the globe in the time of Noah. Upon this flood of nations does fire from the Lord fall down and consume them; and after consuming them, it begins to devour the inheritance of Jehovah, the nation of Israel also. The prophet then prays to the Lord to spare it, because Jacob would inevitably perish in this conflagration; and the Lord gives the promise that “this shall not take place,” so that Israel is plucked like a firebrand out of the fire (ch. iv. 11).

If we inquire now into the historical bearing of these two visions, so much is & priori clear,—namely, that both of them not only indicate judgments already past, but also refer to the future, since no fire had hitherto burned upon the surface of the globe, which had consumed the world of nations and threatened to annihilate Israel. If therefore there is an element of truth in the explanation given by Grotius to the first vision, “ After the fields had been shorn by Benhadad (2 Kings xiii. 3), and after the damage which was then sustained, the condition of Israel began to flourish once more during the reign of Jeroboam the son of Joash, as we see from 2 Kings xiv. 15,” according. to which the locusts would refer to the invasion on the part of the Assyrians in the time of Pul; this application is much too limited, neither exhausting the contents of the first vision, nor suiting in the smallest degree the figure of the fire. The “mowing of the king” CE 1) oimics rather all the judgments hick the aed had hitherto poured out upon Israel, embracing everything that the prophet mentions in ch. iv. 6-10. The locusts are a figurative representation of the judgments that still await the covenant nation, and will destroy it even to a small remnant, which will be saved through the prayers of the righteous. The vision of the fire has a similar scope, embracing all the past and all the future; but this also indicates the judgments that fall upon the heathen world, and will only receive its ultimate fulfilment in the destruction of everything that is ungodly upon the face of the earth, when the Lord comes in fire to strive with all flesh (Isa. Ixvi. 15, 16), and to burn up the earth and all that is therein, on the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men (2 Pet. ii. 7, 10-13).

The removal of the two judgments, however, by Jehovah in consequence of the intercession of the prophet, shows that these judgments are not intended to effect the utter annihilation of the nation of God, but simply its refinement and the rooting out of the sinners from the midst of it, and that, in consequence of the sparing mercy of God, a holy remnant of the nation of God will be left. The next two visions refer simply to the judgment which awaits the kingdom of the ten tribes in the immediate future.

Vers. 7-9. Tur Tutrp Viston.—Ver. 7. “ Thus he showed me: and, behold, the Lord stood upon a wall made with a plumbline, and a plumb-line in His hand. Ver. 8. And Sehovah said to me, What seest thou, Amos? And I said, A plumb-line. And the Lord said, Behold, I put a plumb-line in the midst of my people Israel: I shall pass by it no more. Ver. 9. And the sacrificial heights of Isaac are laid waste, and the holy things of Israel CSE and I rise up against the house of Seroboam with the sword.” The word 338, which only occurs here, denotes, according to the dialects and the Rabbins, tin or lead, hore a ite line. Chomath ’dnakh is a wall built with a plumb-line, z.e. a perpendicular wall, a wall built with mechanical correctness and solidity. Upon this wall Amos sees the Lord standing. The wall built with a plumb- line is a figurative representation of the kingdom of God in Israel, as a cn and well-constructed sun heery He holds in iat hand a plumb-line. The question addressed to the prophet, “ What does he see?” is asked for the simple purpose of following up his answer with an explanation of the symbol, as in Jer.i. 11, 13, since the plumb-line was used for different purposes,—namely, not only for building, but partly also for pulling buildings down (compare 2 Kings xxi. 13; Isa. xxxiv.11). Jehovah will lay it b’gerebh ‘ammi, to the midst of His people, and not merely to an outward portion of it, in order to destroy this building. He will no longer spare as He has done ee 2 12Y, to pass by any one Githout taking any notice of him, without looking upon his guilt or punishing him;; hence, to spare,—the opposite of 27p2 y inch. v.17. The destruction will fall upon the idolatrous sanctuaries of the land, the bdémoth (see at 1 Kings ill, 2), zc. the altars of the high places, and the temples at

Bethel, at Dan (see at 1 Kings xii. 29), and at Gilgal (see ch. iv.4). Isaac (PHM, a softened form for PAS’, used here and at ver. 16, as in Jer. x=sili. 26) is mentioned here instead of Jacob, and the name is used as a synonym for Jsrael of the ten tribes. Even the house of J Fe hae the reigning royal family, is to perish with the sword (oy pp as in Isa, xxxi. 2). Jeroboam is mentioned as the existing representative of the monarchy, and the words are not to be restricted to the overthrow of his dynasty, but announce the destruction of the Israelitish monarchy, which actually was annihilated when this dynasty was overthrown (see p. 41). The destruction of the sacred places and the overthrow of the monarchy involve the dissolution of the kingdom. Thus does Amos himself interpret his own words in vers. 11 and 17.

Vers. 10-17. Opposition To THE PRopHET at BETHEL. —The daring announcement of the overthrow of the royal family excites the wrath of the high priest at Bethel, so that he relates the affair to the king, to induce him to proceed against the troublesome prophet (vers. 10 and 11), and then calls upon Amos himself to leave Bethel (vers. 12 and 13). That this attempt to drive Amos out of Bethel was occasioned by his prophecy in vers. 7-10, is evident from what Amaziah says to the king concerning the words of Amos. “ The priest of Bethel” (Kohén Béth-él) is the high priest at the sanctuary of the golden calf at Bethel. He accused the prophet to the king of having made a conspiracy (gdéshar; cf. 1 Kings xv. 27, etc.) against the king, and that “in the midst of the house of Israel,” ze. in the centre of the kingdom of Israel—namely at Bethel, the religious centre of the kingdom—through all his sayings, which the land could not bear. To establish this charge, he states (in ver. 11) that Amos has foretold the death of Jeroboam by the sword, and the carrying away of the people out of the land. Amos had really said this. The fact that in ver. 9 Jeroboam is named, and not the house of Jeroboam, makes no difference; for the head of the house is naturally included in the house itself, And the carrying away of the people out of the land was not only implied in the announcement of the devastation of the sanctuaries of the kingdom (ver. 9), which presupposes the conquest of the land by foes; but Amos had actually predicted it in so many words (ch. v. 27). And Amaziah naturally gave the substance of all the prophet’s addresses, instead of simply confining himself to the last. There is no reason, therefore, to think of intentional slander.

Vers. 12, 13. The king appears to have commenced no proceedings against the prophet in consequence of this denunciation, probably because he did not regard the affair as one of so much danger. Amaziah therefore endeavours to persuade the prophet to leave the country. “Seer, go, and flee into the land of Judah.” WN, i.e. withdraw thyself by flight from the punishment which threatens thee. “ There eat thy bread, and there mayst thow prophesy:” i.e. in Judah thou mayst earn thy bread by prophesying without any interruption. It is evident from the answer given by Amos in ver. 14, that this is the meaning of the words: “ But in Bethel thou shalt no longer prophesy, for it is a kings sanctuary (i.e. a sanctuary founded by the king; 1 Kings xii. 28), and beth mamlakhdah,”’ house of the kingdom, 7.¢. a royal capital (cf. 1 Sam. xxvii. 5), —namely, as being the principal seat of the worship which the king has established for his kingdom. There no one could be allowed to prophesy against the king.

Vers. 14, 15. Amos first of all repudiates the insinuation that he practises prophesying as a calling or profession, by which he gets his living. “TI am no prophet,” se. by profession, “and no prophets son,” i.e. not a pupil or member of the prophets’ schools, one who has been trained to prophesy (on these schools, see the comm. on 1 Sam. xix. 24); but (according to my proper calling) a bogér, lit. a herdsman of oxen (from bagdr); then in a broader sense, a herdsman who tends the sheep (jN¥), a shepherd; and a bol@s shigmim, i.e. one who plucks sycamores or mulberry-figs, and lives upon them. The am. Ney. bolés is a denom. from the Arabic name for the mulberry-fig, and signifies to gather mulberry-figs and live upon them; like cvmdfew and drrocunatew, 1.e. according to Hesych. Ta odKa Tpwyew, to eat figs. The rendering of the LXX. xvitov, Vulg. vellicans, points to the fact that it was a common custom to nip or scratch the mulberry-figs, in order to make them ripen (see Theophr. Hist. plant. iv. 2; Plin. Hist. nat. 13, 14; and Bochart, Mieroz. i. 384, or p. 406 ed. Ros.); but this cannot be shown to be the true meaning of bolés. And even if the idea of nipping were implied in the word bdlés, it would by no means follow that the possession of a mulberry plantation was what was intended, as many commentators have inferred; for “the words contain an allusion to the ‘ eating of bread’ referred to in ver. 12, and the fruit is mentioned here as the ordinary food of the shepherds, who lived at the pasture grounds, and to whom bread may have been a rarity” (Hitzig). From this calling, which afforded him a livelihood, the Lord had called him away to prophesy to His people Israel; so that whoever forbade him to do so, set himself in opposition to the Lord God.

Vers. 16, 17. In return for this rebellion against Jehovah, Amos foretels to the priest the punishment which will fall upon him when the judgment shall come upon Israel, meeting his words, “ Thou sayst, Thou shalt not prophesy,” with the keen retort, “ Thus saith Jehovah.” "Si, to drip, applied to prophesying here and at Mic. ii. 6, 11, and Ezek. xxi. 2, 7, is taken from Deut. xxxii. 2, “ My teaching shall drip as the rain,” ete. Isaac (yischéq) for Israel, as in ver. 9. The punishment is thus described in ver. 17: “Thy wife will be a harlot in the city,” i.e. at the taking of the city she will become a harlot through violation. His children would also be slain by the foe, and his landed possession assigned to others, namely, to the fresh settlers in the land. He himself, viz. the priest, would die in an unclean land, that is to say, in the land of the Gentiles,—in other words, would be carried away captive, and that with the whole nation, the carrying away of which is repeated by Amos in the words which the priest had reported to the king (ver. 11), as a sign that what he has prophesied will assuredly stand.

Under the symbol of a basket filled with ripe fruit, the Lord shows the prophet that Israel is ripe for judgment (vers. 1-3); whereupon Amos, explaining the meaning of this vision, announces to the unrighteous magnates of the nation the changing of their joyful feasts into days of mourning, as the punishment from God for their unrighteousness (vers. 4-10), and sets before them a time when those who now despise the word of God will sigh in vain in their extremity for a word of the Lord (vers. 11-14).

Vers. 1-3. Vision of a BASKET OF RIPE FRUIT.—Ver. 1. “ Thus did the Lord Jehovah show me: and behold a basket with wipe fruit. Ver.2. And He said, What seest thou, Amos? And L said, A basket of ripe fruit. Then Jehovah said to me, The end ts come to my people Israel; I will not pass by them any more. Ver. 3. And the songs of the palace will yell in that day, és the saying of the Lord Jehovah: corpses tn multitude; in every place hath He cast them forth; Hush!” mb3 from 33, to lay hold of, to grasp, lit. a receiver, here a basket (of basket-work), in Jer. v.27 a bird-cage. }"P: summer-fruit (see at 2 Sam. xvi. 1); in Isa. xvi. 9, xxviii. 4, the gathering of fruit, hence ripe fruit. The basket of ripe fruit (qayits) is thus explained by the Lord: the end (géts) is come to my people (cf. Ezek vii. 6). Consequently the basket of ripe fruit is a figurative representation of the nation that is now ripe for judgment, although géts, the end, does not denote its ripeness for judoment, but its destruction, and the word gés is simply chosen to form a paronomasia with gayits. “V1 5,DIN N? as in ch. vii. 8. All the joy shall be turned into mourning. The thought is not that the temple-singing to the praise of God (ch. v. 23) would be turned into yelling, but that the songs of joy (ch. vi. 5; 2 Sam. xix. 86) would be turned into yells, ze. into sounds of lamentation (cf. ver. 10 and 1 Macc. ix. 41), namely, because of the multitude of the dead which lay upon the ground on every side. pwn is not impersonal, in the sense of “ which men are no longer able to bury on account of their great number, and therefore cast away in quiet places on every side;” but Jehovah is to be regarded as the subject, viz. which God has laid prostrate, or cast to the ground on every side. For the adverbial use of D7 cannot be established. The word is an interjection here, as in ch. vi. 10; and the exclamation, Hush! is not a sign of gloomy despair, but an admonition to bow beneath the overwhelming severity of the judgment of God, as in Zeph. i. 7 (cf. Hab. ii. 20 and Zech. ii. 17).

Vers. 4-10. To this vision the prophet attaches the last admonition to the rich and powerful men of the nation, to observe the threatening of the Lord before it is too late, impressing upon them the terrible severity of the judgment. Ver. 4. “ Hear this, ye that gape for the poor, and to destroy the meek of the earth, Ver. 5. Saying, When is the new moon over, that we may sell corn? and the sabbath, that we may open wheat, to make the ephah small, and the shekel great, and to falsify the scale of deceit? Ver. 6. To buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes, and the refuse of the corn will we sell.” The persons addressed are the {28 DDNYD, 7.2. not those who snort at the poor man, to frighten him away from any further pursuit of his rights (Baws but, according to ch. il. 6, 7, those who greedily pant for the poor man, who try to swallow him (Hitzig). ‘This is affirmed in the second clause of the verse, in which DANY is to be repeated in thought before mavine:: they gape to destroy the quiet in the land (nay — DY j in ch. i. %); “namely by grasping all property for themselves, Job xxii. 8, Isa. v.8” (Hitzig). Vers. 5 and 6 show how they expect to accomplish their purpose. Like covetous usurers, they cannot even wait for the end of the feast-days to pursue their trade still further. Chodesh, the new moon, was a holiday on which all trade was suspended, just as it was on the Sabbath (see at Num. xxviii. 11 and 2 Kingsiv. 23), av Yavin, to sell corn, as in Gen. xli. 57, 72 "M8, to open up corn, i.e. to open the granaries (cf. Gen. xli. 56). In doing so, they wanted to cheat the poor by small measure (ephah), and by making the shekel great, z.e. by increasing the price, which was to be weighed out to them; also by false scales (‘ivvéth, to pervert, or falsify the scale of deceit, 7.e. the scale used for cheating), and by bad corn (mappal, waste or refuse); that in this way they might make the poor man so poor, that he would either be obliged to sell himself to them from want and distress (Lev. xxv. 39), or be handed over to the creditor by the court of justice, because he was no longer able to pay for a pair of shoes, te. the very smallest debt (cf. ch. ii. 6).

Such wickedness as this would be severely punished by the Lord. Ver. 7. “Jehovah hath sworn by the pride of Jacob, Verily I will not forget all their deeds for ever. Ver. 8. Shall the earth not tremble for this, and every inhabitant upon it mourn? and all of it rises like the Nile, and heaves and sinks like the Nile of Egypt.’ The pride of Jacob is Jehovah, as in Hos.

v. 5 and vii. 10. Jehovah swears by the pride of Jacob, as He does by His holiness in ch. iv. 2, or by His soul in ch. vi. 8, i.e. as He who is the pride and glory of Israel: 7.e. as truly as He is so, will He and must He punish such acts as these. By. overlooking such sins, or leaving them unpunished, He would deny His glory in Israel. MW, to forget a sin, i.e. to leave it unpunished. In ver. 8 the negative question is an expression denoting strong assurance. “For this” is generally supposed to refer to the sins; but this is a mistake, as the previous verse alludes not to the sins themselves, but to the punishment of them; and the solemn oath of Jehovah does not contain so subordinate and casual a thought, that we can pass over ver. 7, and take mNt SY as referring back to vers. 4-6. It rather refers to the substance of the oath, z.c. to the punishment of the sins which the Lord announces with a solemn oath. This will be so terrible that the earth will quake, and be resolved, as it were, into its primeval condition of chaos. Rdgaz, to tremble, or, when applied to the earth, to quake, does not mean to shudder, or to be shocked, as Rosenmiiller explains it after Jer. i. 12. Still less can the idea of the earth rearing and rising up in a stormy manner to cast them off, which Hitzig supports, be proved to be a biblical idea from Isa. xxiv. 20. The thought is rather that, under the weight of the judgment, the earth will quake, and all its inhabitants will be thrown into mourning, as we may clearly see from the parallel passage in ch. ix. 5. In ver. 82 this figure is carried out still further, and the whole earth is represented as being turned into a sea, heaving and fallmg in a tempestuous manner, just as in the case of the flood. mpo, the totality of the earth, the entire globe, will rise, and swell and fall like waters lashed into a storm. This rising and falling of the earth is compared to the rising and sinking of the Nile. According to the parallel passage in ch. ix. 5, 183 is a defective form for 182, just as 5:3 is for aa in Job xl. 20, and it is still further defined by the expression OY 7iN'3, which follows. All the ancient versions have taken it as TiN’, and many of the Hebrew codd. (in Kennicott and De Rossi) have this reading. Migrash, to be excited, a term applied to the stormy sea (Isa. lvii. 20). APw2 is a softened form for nypya, as is shown by nypy in ch. ix. 5.

Ver. 9. “ And it will come to pass on that day, ts the saying of the Lord Jehovah, I cause the sun to set at noon, and make it dark to the earth in clear day. Ver. 10. And turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation: and bring mourning clothes upon all loins, and baldness upon every head; and make it like mourning for an only one, and the end thereof’ like a bitter day.” The effect of the divine judgment upon the Israelites is depicted here. Just as the wicked overturn the moral order of the universe, so will the Lord, with His judgment, break through the order of nature, cause the sun to go down at noon, and envelope the earth in darkness in clear day. The words of the ninth verse are not founded upon the idea of an eclipse of the sun, though Michaelis and Hitzig not only assume that they are, but actually attempt to determine the time of its occurrence. An eclipse of the sun is not the setting of the sun (iz). But to any man the sun sets at noon, when he is suddenly snatched away by death, in the very midst of his life. And this also applies to a nation when it is suddenly destroyed in the midst of its earthly prosperity. But it has a still wider application. When the Lord shall come to judgment, at a time when the world, in its self-security, looketh not for Him (cf. Matt. xxiv. 37 sqq.), this earth’s sun will set at noon, and the eaith be covered with darkness in bright daylight. And every judgment that falls upon an ungodly people or kingdom, as the ages roll away, is a harbinger of the approach of the final judgment. Ver. 10. When the judgment shall burst upon Israel, then will all the joyous feasts give way to mourning and lamentation (compare ver. 3 and ch. v.16; Hos. ii. 13). On the shaving of a bald place asa sign of mourning, see Isa. iii. 24. This mourning will be very deep, like the mourning for the death of an only son (cf. Jer. vi. 26 and Zech. xii. 10). The suffix in Mm’ (I make 7) does not refer to Pas (mourning), but to all that has been previously mentioned as done upon that day, to their weeping and lamenting (Hitzig). ANINS, the end thereof, namely, of this mourning and lamentation, will be a bitter day (2 is caph verit.; see at Joel i. 15). This implies that the judgment will not be a passing one, but will continue.

Vers. 11-14. And at that time the light and comfort of the word of God will also fail them. Ver. 11. “ Behold, days come, ts the saying of the Lord Jehovah, that I send a hungering into the land, not a hungering for bread nor a thirst for water, but to hear the words of Jehovah. Ver. 12. And they will reel from sea to sea; and from the north, and even to the east, they sweep round to seek the word of Jehovah, and will not find it.” The bitterness of the time of punishment is increased by the fact that the Lord will then withdraw His word from them, 7.e. the light of His revelation. They who will not now hear His word, as proclaimed by the prophets, will then cherish the greatest longing for it. Such hunger and thirst will be awakened by the distress and afiliction that will come upon them. The intensity of this desire is depicted in ver. 12. They reel (33 as in ch. iv. 8) from the sea to the sea; that is to say, not “from the Dead Sea in the east to the Mediterranean in the west,” for Joel ii. 20 and Zech. xiv. 8 are not cases in point, as the two seas are defined there by distinct epithets; but as in Ps. Ixxii. 8 and Zech. ix. 10, according to which the meaning is, from the sea to where the sea occurs again, at the other end of the world, “the sea being taken as the boundary of the earth” (Hupfeld). The other clause, “ from the north even to the east,” contains an abridged expression for “ from north to south and from west to east,” ¢.e. to every quarter of the globe.

Ver. 13. “ In that day will the fair virgins and the young men faint for thirst. Ver. 14. They who swear by the guilt of Samaria, and say, By the life of thy God, O Dan! and by the life of the way to Beersheba; and will fall, and not rise again.” Those who now stand in all the fullest and freshest vigour of life, will succumb to this hunger and thirst. The virgins and young men are individualized, as comprising that portion of the nation which possessed the vigorous fulness of youth. mDY, to be enveloped in night, to sink into a swoon, hithp. to hide one’s self, to faint away. myawan refers to the young men and virgins; and inasmuch as they represent the most vigorous portion of the nation, to the nation as a whole. If the strongest succumb to the thirst, how much more the weak! ’Ashmath Shom'ron, the guilt of Samaria, is the golden calf at Bethel, the principal idol of the kingdom of Israel, which is named after the capital Samaria (compare Deut. ix. 21, “the sin of Israel”), not the Asherah which was still standing in Samaria in the reign of Jehoahaz (2 Kings xiii. 6); for apart from the question whether it was there in the time of Jeroboam, this is at variance with the second clause, in which the manner of their swearing is given,—namely, by the life of the god at Dan, that is to say, the golden calf that was there; so that the guilt of Samaria can only have been the golden calf at Bethel, the national sanctuary of the ten tribes (cf. ch. iv. 4, v. 5). The way to Beersheba is mentioned, instead of the worship, for the sake of which the pilgrimage to Beersheba was made. This worship, again, was not a purely heathen worship, but an idolatrous worship of Jehovah (see ch. v. 5). The fulfilment of these threats commenced with the destruction of the kingdom of Israel, and the carrying away of the ten tribes into exile in Assyria, and continues to this day in the case of that portion of the Israelitish nation which is still looking for the Messiah, the prophet promised by Moses, and looking in vain, because they will not hearken to the preaching of the gospel concerning the Messiah, who appeared as Jesus.

The prophet sees the Lord standing by the altar, and giving command to overthrow the temple, that the whole nation may be buried beneath the ruins (ver. 1). Should any one escape, the Lord will pursue him everywhere, and overtake and destroy him (vers. 2-4); for He is the Almighty God, and the Judge of the world (vers. 5 and 6); and Israel has become like the heathen, so that it deserves no sparing. Nevertheless it shall not be utterly destroyed, but simply sifted, and the sinful mass be slain (vers. 7-10). Then will the fallen tabernacle of David be raised up again, and the kingdom of God be glorified by the reception of all nations (ver. 12), and richly blessed with the fulness of the gifts of divine grace (vers. 13, 14), and never destroyed again (ver. 15). As the chapter gives the final development of the judgment threatened in the preceding one, so is it also closely attached in form to ch. vii. and viii., commencing with a vision just as they do. But whilst the preceding visions simply indicate the judgment which is to fall upon the sinful nation, and are introduced with the words, “ The Lord showed me” (ch. vii. 1, 4, 7, vill. 1), this closing vision shows the Lord engaged in the execution of the judgment, and commences accordingly with the words, “1 saw the Lord standing,” ete.

Ver. 1. “I saw the Lord standing by the altar; and He said, Smite the top, that the thresholds may tremble, and smash them upon the head of all of them; and I will slay their remnant with the sword: a fugitive of them shall not flee; and an escaped one of them shall not escape.” The correct and full interpretation not only of this verse, but of the whole chapter, depends upon the answer to be given to the question, what altar we are to understand by hammizbedch. Ewald, Hitzig, Hofmann, and Baur follow Cyril in thinking of the temple at Bethel, because, as Hitzig says, this vision attaches itself in an explanatory manner to the close of ch. viii. 14, and because, according to Hofmann, “if the word of the prophet in general was directed against the kingdom, the royal house and the sanctuary of the ten tribes, the article before hammizbédéch points to the altar of the sanctuary in the kingdom of Israel, to the altar at Bethel, against which he has already prophesied in a perfectly similar manner in ch. iii. 14.” But there is no ground whatever for the assertion that our vision contains simply an explanation of ch. viii. 14. The connection with ch. viil. is altogether not so close, that the object of the prophecy in the one chapter must of necessity cover that of the other. And it is quite incorrect to say that the word of the prophet throughout is directed simply against the kingdom of the ten tribes, or that, although Amos does indeed reprove the sins of Judah as well as those of Israel, he proclaims destruction to the kingdom of Jeroboam alone. As early as ch. il. 5 he announces desolation to Judah by fire, and the burning of the palaces of Jerusalem; and in ch. vi. 1, again, he gives utterance to a woe upon the self-secure in Zion, as well as upon the careless ones in Samaria. And lastly, it is evident from vers. 8-10 of the present chapter, that the sinful kingdom which is to be destroyed from the face of the earth is not merely the kingdom of the ten tribes, but the kingdoms of Judah and Israel, which are embraced in one. For although it is stated immediately afterwards that the Lord will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob, but will shake the house of Israel among all nations, the house of Jacob cannot mean the kingdom of Judah, and the house of Israel the kingdom of the ten tribes, because such a contrast between Judah and Israel makes the thought too lame, and the antithesis between the destruction of the sinful kingdom and the utter destruction of the nation is quite obliterated. Amos does not generally draw such a distinction between the house of Jacob and the house of Israel, as that the first represents Judah, and the second the ten tribes; but he uses the two epithets as synonymous, as we may see from a comparison of ch. vi. 8 with ch. vi. 14, where the rejection of the pride of Israel and the hating of its palaces (ver. 8) are practically interpreted by the raising up of a nation which oppresses the house of Israel in all its borders (ver. 14). And so also in the chapter before us, the “ house of Israel” (ver. 9) is identical with “Israel” and the “ children of Israel” (7), whom God brought up out of Egypt. But God brought up out of Egypt not the ten tribes, but the twelve. And consequently it is decidedly incorrect to restrict the contents of vers. 1-10 to the kingdom of the ten tribes. And if this be the case, we cannot possibly understand by hammizbédch in ver. 1 the altar of Bethel, especially seeing that not only does Amos foretel the visitation or destruction of the altars of Bethel in ch. iii. 14, and therefore recognises not one altar only in Bethel, but a plurality of altars, but that he also speaks in ch. vil. 9 of the desolation of the high places and sanctuaries of Israel, and in ch. viii. 14 places the sanctuary at Dan on a par with that at Bethel; so that there was not any one altar in the kingdom of the ten tribes, which could be called hammizbédch, the altar pur excellence, inasmuch as it possessed from the very beginning two sanctuaries of equal dignity (viz. at Bethel and Dan). Hammizbédch, therefore, both here and at Hzek. ix. 2, is the altar of burnt-offering in the temple at Jerusalem, the sanctuary of the whole of the covenant nation, to which even the ten tribes still belonged, in spite of their having fallen away from the house of David. So long as the Lord still continued to send prophets to the ten tribes, so long did they pass as still forming part of the people of God, and so long also was the temple at Jerusalem the divinely appointed sanctuary and the throne of Jehovah, from which both blessings and punishment issued for them. The Lord roars from Zion, and from Zion He utters His voice (ch. i. 2), not only upon the nations who have shown hostility to Judah or Israel, but also upon Judah and Israel, on account of their departure from His law (ch. ii. 4 and 6 sqq.).

The vision in this verse is founded upon the idea that the whole nation is assembled before the Lord at the threshold of the temple, so that it is buried under the ruins of the falling building, in consequence of the blow upon the top, which shatters the temple to its very foundations. The Lord appears at the altar, because here at the sacrificial place of the nation the sins of Israel are heaped up, that He may execute judgment upon the nation there. by 333, standing at (not upon) the altar, as in 1 Kings xiii. 1. He gives commandment to smite the top. The person who is to do this is not mentioned; but it was no doubt an angel, probably the n’nvian FNP, who brought the pestilence as a punishment at the numbering of the people in the time of David (2 Sam. xxiv. 15, 16), who smote the army of the Assyrian king Sennacherib before Jerusalem (2 Kings xix. 35), and who also slew the first-born of Egypt (Ex. xii. 13, 23); whereas in Ezek. ix. 2, 7, He is represented as accomplishing the judgment of destruction by means of six angels. [akkaphtor, the knob or top; in Ex. xxv. 31, 33 sqq., an ornament upon the shaft and branches of the golden candlestick. Here it is an ornament at the top of the columns, and not “ the lintel of the door,” or “ the pinnacle of the temple with its ornaments.” For the latter explanation of kaphtor, which cannot be philologically sustained, by no means follows from the fact that the antithesis to the haphtor is formed by the stppim, or thresholds of the door. The knob and threshold simply express the contrast between the loftiest summit and the lowest base, without at all warranting the conclusion that saph denotes the base of the pillar which culminated in a knob, or kaphtor, the top of the door which rested upon a threshold. The description is not architectural, but rhetorical, the separate portions of the whole being individualized, for the purpose of expressing the thought that the building was to be shattered to pieces in summo usque ad imum, a capite ad caleem. Would we bring out more clearly the idea which lies at the foundation of the rhetorical mode of expression, we have only to think of the capital of the pillars Jachin and Boaz, and that with special reference to their significance, as symbolizing the stability of the temple. The smiting of these pillars, so that they fall to the ground, individualizes the destruction of the temple, without there being any necessity in consequence to think of these pillars as supporting the roof of the temple hall. The rhetorical character of the expression comes out clearly again in what follows, “and smash them to pieces, z.e. lay them in ruins upon the head of all,”* where the plural suffix attached to DYsz (with the toneless suffix for DY¥3; see Ewald, § 253, a) cannot possibly be taken as referring to the singular hakkaphtor, nor even to hassippim alone, but must refer to the two nouns hakkaphtor and hassippim. The reference to hassippim could no doubt be grammatically sustained; but so far as the sense is concerned, it is inadmissible, inasmuch as when a building falls to the ground in consequence of its having been laid in ruins by a blow from above, the thresholds of the entrance could not possibly fall upon the heads of the men who were standing in front of it. The command has throughout a symbolical meaning, and has no literal reference to the destruction of the temple. The temple symbolizes the kingdom of God, which the Lord had founded in Israel; and as being the centre of that kingdom, it stands here for the kingdom itself. In the temple, as the dwelling-place of the name of Jehovah, z.c. of the gracious presence of God, the idolatrous nation beheld an indestructible pledge of the lasting continuance of the kingdom. But this support to their false trust is taken away from it by the announcement that the Lord will lay the temple in ruins. The destruction of the temple represents the destruction of the kingdom of God embodied in the temple, with which indeed the earthly temple would of necessity fall to the ground. No one will escape this judgment. This is affirmed in the words which follow: And their last, their remnant (achdrith, as in ch. iv. 2), I will slay with the sword; as to the meaning of which Cocceius has correctly observed, that the magnitude of the slaughter is increased caclusione fugientium et eorum, qui videbantur effugisse. The apparent discrepancy in the statement, that they will all be crushed to pieces by the ruins, and yet there will be fugitives and persons who have escaped, is removed at once if we bear in mind that the intention of the prophet is to cut off every loophole for carnal security, and that the meaning of the words is simply this: “ And even if any should succeed in fleeing and