Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Amos 4:1 - 4:1

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Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Amos 4:1 - 4:1


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“Hear this word, ye cows of Bashan, that are upon the mountain of Samaria, that oppress there the humble and crush the poor, that say to their lords, Bring hither, that we may drink. Amo 4:2. The Lord Jehovah hath sworn by His holiness: behold, days come upon you, that they drag you away with hooks, and your last one with fish-hooks. Amo 4:3. And ye will go out through breaches in the wall, every one before him, and be cast away to Harmon, is the saying of Jehovah.” The commencement of this chapter is closely connected, so far as the contents are concerned, with the chapter immediately preceding. The prophet having there predicted, that when the kingdom was conquered by its enemies, the voluptuous grandees would perish, with the exception of a very few who would hardly succeed in saving their lives, turns now to the voluptuous women of Samaria, to predict in their case a shameful transportation into exile. The introduction, “Hear this word,” does not point therefore to a new prophecy, but simply to a fresh stage in the prophecy, so that we cannot even agree with Ewald in taking Amo 4:1-3 as the conclusion of the previous prophecy (Amo 3:1-15). The cows of Bashan are well-fed, fat cows, βόες εὔτροφοι, vaccae pingues (Symm., Jer.), as Bashan had fat pastures, and for that reason the tribes that were richest in flocks and herds had asked for it as their inheritance (Numbers 32). The fuller definitions which follow show very clearly that by the cows of Bashan, Amos meant the rich, voluptuous, and violent inhabitants of Samaria. It is doubtful, however, whether he meant the rich and wanton wives of the great, as most of the modern commentators follow Theodor., Theodoret, and others, in assuming; or “the rulers of Israel, and all the leading men of the ten tribes, who spent their time in pleasure and robbery” (Jerome); or “those rich, luxurious, and lascivious inhabitants of the palace of whom he had spoken in Amo 3:9-10” (Maurer), as the Chald., Luther, Calvin, and others suppose, and whom he calls cows, not oxen, to denote their effeminacy and their unbridled licentiousness. In support of the latter opinion we might adduce not only Hos 10:11, where Ephraim is compared to a young heifer, but also the circumstance that from Amo 3:4 onwards the prophecy refers to the Israelites as a whole. But neither of these arguments proves very much. The simile in Hos 10:11 applies to Ephraim as a kingdom of people, and the natural personification as a woman prepares the way for the comparison to an ‛eglâh; whereas voluptuous and tyrannical grandees would be more likely to be compared to the bulls of Bashan (Psa 22:13). And so, again, the transition in Hos 10:4 to the Israelites as a whole furnishes no help in determining more precisely who are addressed in Hos 10:1-3. By the cows of Bashan, therefore, we understand the voluptuous women of Samaria, after the analogy of Isa 3:16. and Isa 32:9-13, more especially because it is only by forcing the last clause of Isa 32:1 that it can be understood as referring to men. שִׁמְעוּ for שְׁמַעְנָה, because the verb stands first (compare Isa 32:11). The mountain of Samaria is mentioned in the place of the city built upon the mountain (see at Amo 3:9). The sin of these women consisted in the tyrannical oppression of the poor, whilst they asked their lords, i.e., their husbands, to procure them the means of debauchery. For עָשַׁק and רָצַץ, compare Deu 28:33 and 1Sa 12:3-4, where the two words are already connected. הָבִיאָה stands in the singular, because every wife speaks in this way to her husband.

The announcement of the punishment for such conduct is introduced with a solemn oath, to make an impression, if possible, upon the hardened hearts. Jehovah swears by His holiness, i.e., as the Holy One, who cannot tolerate unrighteousness. כִּי (for) before הִנֵּה introduces the oath. Hitzig takes וְנִשָּׂא as a niphal, as in the similar formula in 2Ki 20:17; but he takes it as a passive used impersonally with an accusative, after Gen 35:26 and other passages (though not Exo 13:7). But as נִשָּׂא unquestionably occurs as a piel in 1Ki 9:11, it is more natural to take the same form as a piel in this instance also, and whilst interpreting it impersonally, to think of the enemy as understood. Tsinnōth = tsinnı̄m, Pro 22:5; Job 5:5, צִנָּה = צֵּן, thorns, hence hooks; so also sı̄rōth = sı̄rı̄m, thorns, Isa 34:13; Hos 2:8. Dūgâh, fishery; hence sı̄rōth dūgâh, fish-hooks. 'Achărı̄th does not mean posterity, or the young brood that has grown up under the instruction and example of the parents (Hitzig), but simply “the end,” the opposite of rē'shı̄th, the beginning. It is “end,” however, in different senses. Here it signifies the remnant (Chaldee), i.e., those who remain and are not dragged away with tsinnōth; so that the thought expressed is “all, even to the very last” (compare Hengstenberg, Christology, i. p. 368). אַחֲרִיתְכֶן has a feminine suffix, whereas masculine suffixes were used before (אֶתְכֶם, עֲלְיכֶם); the universal gender, out of which the feminine was first formed. The figure is not taken from animals, into whose noses hooks and rings are inserted to tame them, or from large fishes that are let down into the water again by nose-hooks; for the technical terms applied to these hooks are חָח, חוֹחַ, and חַכָּה (cf. Eze 29:4; Job 41:1-2); but from the catching of fishes, that are drawn out of the fish-pond with hooks. Thus shall the voluptuous, wanton women be violently torn away or carried off from the midst of the superfluity and debauchery in which they lived as in their proper element. פְּרָצִים תֵּצֶאנָה, to go out of rents in the wall, יָצָא being construed, as it frequently is, with the accusative of the place; we should say, “though rents in the wall,” i.e., through breaches made in the wall at the taking of the city, not out at the gates, because they had been destroyed or choked up with rubbish at the storming of the city. “Every one before her,” i.e., without looking round to the right or to the left (cf. Jos 6:5, Jos 6:20). The words וְהִשְּׁלַכְתֶּנָה הַֽהַרְמוֹנָה are difficult, on account of the ἁπ. λεγ. ההרמונה, and have not yet been satisfactorily explained. The form הִשְׁלַכְתֶּנָה for הִשְׁלַכְתֶּן is probably chosen simply for the purpose of obtaining a resemblance in sound to תֵּצֶאנָה, and is sustained by אַתֵּנָה for אַתֶּן in Gen 31:6 and Eze 13:11. הִשְׁלִיךְ is applied to thrusting into exile, as in Deu 29:27.

The ἁπ. λεγ. הַֽהַרְמוֹנָה with ה htiw loc. appears to indicate the place to which they were to be carried away or cast out. But the hiphil הִשְׁלַכְתֶּנָה does not suit this, and consequently nearly all the earlier translators have rendered it as a passive, ἀποῤῥι-φήσεσθε (lxx), projiciemini (Jerome); so also the Syr. and Chald. וְיִגְלוֹן יַתְהוֹן, “men will carry them away captive.” One Hebrew codex actually gives the hophal. And to this reading we must adhere; for the hiphil furnishes no sense at all, since the intransitive or reflective meaning, to plunge, or cast one's self, cannot be sustained, and is not supported at all by the passages quoted by Hitzig, viz., 2Ki 10:25 and Job 27:22; and still less does haharmōnâh denote the object cast away by the women when they go into captivity.

(Note: The Masoretic pointing probably originated in the idea that harmōnâh, corresponding to the talmudic harmânâ', signifies royal power or dominion, and so Rashi interprets it: “ye will cast away the authority, i.e., the almost regal authority, or that pride and arrogance with which you bear yourselves to-day” (Ros.). This explanation would be admissible, if it were not that the use of a word which never occurs again in the old Hebrew for a thing so frequently mentioned in the Old Testament, rendered it very improbable. At any rate, it is more admissible than the different conjectures of the most recent commentators. Thus Hitzig, for example (Comm. ed. 3), would resolve haharmōnâh into hâhâr and mōnâh = meōnâh (“and ye will plunge headlong to the mountain as a place of refuge”). The objections to this are, (1) that hishlı̄kh does not mean to plunge headlong; (2) the improbability of meōnâh being contracted into mōnâh, when Amos has meōnâh in Amo 3:4; and lastly, the fact that meōnâh means simply a dwelling, not a place of refuge. Ewald would read hâhâr rimmōnâh after the lxx, and renders it, “ye will cast Rimmonah to the mountain,” understanding by Rimmonah a female deity of the Syrians. But antiquity knows nothing of any such female deity; and from the reference to a deity called Rimmon in 2Ki 5:18, you cannot possibly infer the existence of a goddess Rimmonah. The explanation given by Schlottmann (Hiob, p. 132) and Paul Bötticher (Rudimenta mythologiae semit. 1848, p. 10) - namely, that harmōnâh as the Phoenician goddess Chusarthis, called by the Greeks Ἁρμονία - is still more untenable, since Ἁρμονία is no more derived from the talmudic harmân than this is from the Sanscrit pramāna (Bötticher, l.c. p. 40); on the contrary, harmân signifies loftiness, from the Semitic root הרם, to be high, and it cannot be shown that there was a goddess called Harman or Harmonia in the Phoenician worship. Lastly, the fanciful idea of Bötticher, that harmōnâh is contracted from hâhar rimmōnâh, and that the meaning is, “and then ye throw, i.e., remove, the mountain (your Samaria) to Rimmon, that ancient place of refuge for expelled tribes” (Jdg 20:45.), needs no refutation.)

The literal meaning of harmōnâh or harmōn still remains uncertain. According to the etymology of הרם, to be high, it apparently denotes a high land: at the same time, it can neither be taken as an appellative, as Hesselberg and Maurer suppose, “the high land;” nor in the sense of 'armōn, a citadel or palace, as Kimchi and Gesenius maintain. The former interpretation is open to the objection, that we cannot possibly imagine why Amos should have formed a word of his own, and one which never occurs again in the Hebrew language, to express the simple idea of a mountain or high land; and the second to this objection, that “the citadel” would require something to designate it as a citadel or fortress in the land of the enemy. The unusual word certainly points to the name of a land or district, though we have no means of determining it more precisely.

(Note: Even the early translators have simply rendered haharmōnâh according to the most uncertain conjectures. Thus lxx, εἰς τὸὄρος τὸ Ῥομμάν (al. Ῥεμμάν); Aq., mons Armona; Theod., mons Mona; the Quinta: excelsus mons (according to Jerome); and Theodoret attributes to Theodot. ὑψηλὸν ὄρος. The Chaldee paraphrases it thus: לְהַלְאָה מִן טוּרֵי הַרְמֵינִי, “far beyond the mountains of Armenia.” Symmachus also had Armenia, according to the statement of Theodoret and Jerome. But this explanation is probably merely an inference drawn from 2Ki 17:23, and cannot be justified, as Bochart supposes, on the ground that mōnâh or mōn is identical with minnı̄.)