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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Amos 1:11 - 1:11
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Edom. - Amo 1:11. “Thus saith Jehovah: For three transgressions of Edom, and for four, I shall not reverse it, because it pursues its brother with the sword, and stifles its compassion, and its anger tears in pieces for ever, and it keeps its wrath for ever, Amo 1:12. I send fire into Teman, and it will devour the palaces of Bozrah.” Edom and the two following nations were related to Israel by lineal descent. In the case of Edom, Amos does not condemn any particular sins, but simply its implacable, mortal hatred towards its brother nation Israel, which broke out into acts of cruelty at every possible opportunity. וְשִׁחֵת רַחֲמָיו, he annihilates, i.e., suppresses, stifles his sympathy or his compassionate love; this is still dependent upon עַל רָדְפוֹ, the preposition עַל continuing in force as a conjunction before the infinitive (i.e., as equivalent to עַל אֲשֶׁר), and the infinitive passing into the finite verb (cf. Amo 2:4). In the next clause אַפּוֹ is the subject: its wrath tears in pieces, i.e., rages destructively (compare Job 16:9, where târaph is applied to the wrath of God). In the last clause, on the other hand, Edom is again the subject; but it is now regarded as a kingdom, and construed as a feminine, and consequently עֶבְרָתוֹ is the object, and placed at the head as an absolute noun. שְׁמָרָה, with the tone upon the penult. (milel) on account of netsach, which follows with the tone upon the first syllable, stands for שְׁמָרָהּ (it preserves it), the mappik being omitted in the toneless syllable (compare Ewald, §249, b). If עֶבְרָתוֹ were the subject, the verb would have to be pointed שָֽׁמְרָה. Again, the rendering proposed by Ewald, “his fury lies in wait for ever,” is precluded by the fact that שָׁמַר, when applied to wrath in Jer 3:5, signifies to keep, or preserve, and also by the fact that lying in wait is generally inapplicable to an emotion. Teman, according to Jerome (ad h. l.), is Idumaeorum regio quae vergit ad australem partem, so that here, just as in Amo 2:2 and Amo 2:5, the land is mentioned first, and then the capital.
(Note: It is true that, according to Eusebius, Jerome does also mention in the Onom. a villa (κώμη) named Teman, which was five Roman miles from Petra, and in which there was a Roman garrison; and also that there is a Teman in Eastern Hauran (see Wetzstein in Delitzsch's Comm. on Job, i. 73); but in the Old Testament Teman is never to be understood as referring to a city.)
Bozrah, an important city, supposed to be the capital of Idumaea (see comm. on Gen 36:33). It was to the south of the Dead Sea, and has been preserved in el-Buseireh, a village with ruins in Jebâl (see Robinson, Pal. ii. p. 570), and must not be confounded with Bossra in Hauran (Burckhardt, Syr. p. 364).