PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of the Twelve Prophets, Vol. 1
Smith, George Adam · 134,148 words · 196 reading sections
Footnotes:
[257] _I.e._ a tribe; Doughty, _Arabia Deserta_, I. 335. [258] Judges xix., xx. [259] Duhm was the first to publish reasons for rejecting the passage (_Theol. der Propheten_, 1875, p. 119), but Wellhausen had already reached the same conclusion (_Kleine Propheten_, p. 71). Oort and Stade adhere. On the other side see…
717 wordsSECTION 62_Civilisation And Judgment_
[267] _Waggon full of sheaves._--Wellhausen goes too far when he suggests that Amos would have to go outside Palestine to see such a waggon. That a people who already knew the use of chariots for travelling (cf. Gen. xlvi. 5, JE) and waggons for agricultural purposes (1 Sam. vi. 7 ff.) did not use them at least in the …
684 wordsSECTION 63_Civilisation And Judgment_
* * * * * These few brief oracles open upon the same note as that in which the previous Section closed--that the crimes of Israel are greater than those of the heathen; and that the people's peculiar relation to God means, not their security, but their greater judgment. It is then affirmed that Israel's wealth and soc…
739 wordsSECTION 64_Civilisation And Judgment_
"To their crimes," said the satirist of the Romans, "they owe their gardens, palaces, stables and fine old plate."[272] And William Langland declared of the rich English of his day:-- "For toke thei on trewly · they tymbred not so heigh, Ne boughte non burgages · be ye full certayne."[273] _Therefore thus saith the …
1,036 wordsSECTION 65_Civilisation And Judgment_
Yet all this is no mere desert "razzia" in the name of the Lord, a nomad's hatred of cities and the culture of settled men. It is not a temper; it is a vision of history. In the only argument which these early oracles contain, Amos claims to have events on the side of his word. _Shall the lion roar and not be catching_…
726 wordsSECTION 66_Civilisation And Judgment_
Again, if conscience and history (both of them, to the prophets, being witnesses of God) thus combine to announce the early doom of a civilisation, neither the religion that may have helped to build it, nor any remanent virtue in it, nor its ancient value to God, can avail to save. We are tempted to judge that the long…
725 wordsSECTION 67_The False Peace Of Ritual_
AMOS iv. 4-vi. The next four groups of oracles[287]--iv. 4-13, v. 1-17, v. 18-27 and vi.--treat of many different details, and each of them has its own emphasis; but all are alike in this, that they vehemently attack the national worship and the sense of political security which it has engendered. Let us at once make …
964 wordsSECTION 681. For Worship, Chastisement.
For the superstition that ritual is the indispensable bond between God and man, Amos substitutes two other aspects of religion. They are history as God's discipline of man; and civic justice, as man's duty to God. The first of them he contrasts with religious ceremonialism in chap. iv. 4-13, and the second in chap. v.;…
686 wordsSECTION 691. For Worship, Chastisement.
"He preved that thise pestilences · were for pure synne, And the southwest wynde · in saterday et evene Was pertliche[296] for pure pride · and for no poynt elles. Piries and plomtrees · were puffed to the erthe, In ensample ze segges[297] · ze shulden do the bettere. Beches and brode okes · were blowen to the gro…
660 wordsSECTION 702. For Worship, Justice.
AMOS v. In the next of these groups of oracles Amos continues his attack on the national ritual, and now contrasts it with the service of God in public life--the relief of the poor, the discharge of justice. But he does not begin with this. The group opens with an elegy, which bewails the nation as already fallen. It …
697 wordsSECTION 712. For Worship, Justice.
"I dar noughte for fere of hym · fyghte ne chyde."[310] _Wherefore, because ye trample on the weak and take from him a present of corn,_[311] _ye have built houses of ashlar,_[312] _but ye shall not dwell in them; vineyards for pleasure have ye planted, but ye shall not drink of their wine. For I know how many are you…
698 wordsSECTION 722. For Worship, Justice.
_Woe unto them that long for the day of Jehovah! What have you to do with the day of Jehovah? It is darkness, and not light. As when a man fleeth from the face of a lion, and a bear falls upon him; and he comes into his home_,[317] _and_, breathless, _leans his hand upon the wall, and a serpent bites him._ And then, as…
516 wordsSECTION 733. "At Ease In Zion."
AMOS vi. The evil of the national worship was the false political confidence which it engendered. Leaving the ritual alone, Amos now proceeds to assault this confidence. We are taken from the public worship of the people to the private banquets of the rich, but again only in order to have their security and extravagan…
926 wordsSECTION 744. A Fragment From The Plague.
The Assyrian flood, then, was about to break, and the oracles close with the hopeless prospect of the whole land submerged beneath it. In the above exposition we have omitted two very curious verses, 9 and 10, which are held by some critics to interrupt the current of the chapter, and to reflect an entirely different …
700 wordsSECTION 75Footnotes:
This reveals another side of the popular religion which Amos has been attacking. We have seen it as the sheer superstition of routine; but we now know that it was a routine broken by panic. The God who in times of peace was propitiated by regular supplies of savoury sacrifice and flattery, is conceived, when His wrath …
665 wordsSECTION 76Footnotes:
[281] The verb, which in the text is active, must be taken in the passive. The word not translated above is הַהַרְמוֹנָה _unto the Harmôn_, which name does not occur elsewhere. LXX. read εἰς τὸ ὄρος τὸ Ῥομμάν, which Ewald renders _ye shall cast the Rimmon to the mountain_ (cf. Isa. ii. 20), and he takes Rimmon to be th…
718 wordsSECTION 77Footnotes:
[306] The abstract noun meaning _deep shadow_, LXX. σκιά, and rendered _shadow of death_ by many modern versions. [307] So LXX., reading שׁבר for שׁד; it improves the rhythm, and escapes the awkward repetition of שׁד. [308] So LXX. [309] Possible alternative: _make stagnant_. [310] _Vision of Piers Plowman_, Passus…
901 wordsSECTION 78Footnotes:
[321] The last clause is peculiar. Two clauses seem to have run into one--_saith Jehovah, God of Hosts_, and _God of Hosts is His Name_. The word שמו = _His Name_, may have been added to give the oracle the same conclusion as the oracle at the end of the preceding chapter; and it is not to be overlooked that שמו at the…
663 wordsSECTION 79Footnotes:
[332] Gen. xiv. 5; 1 Macc. v. In the days of Eusebius and Jerome (4th century) there were two places of the name: one of them doubtless the present Tell Ashtara south of El-Merkez, the other distant from that fourteen Roman miles. [333] Along this ridge ran, and still runs, one of the most important highways to the Ea…
359 wordsSECTION 80_Doom Or Discipline?_
AMOS viii. 4-ix. We now enter the Third Section of the Book of Amos: chaps. vii.-ix. As we have already treated the first part of it--the group of four visions, which probably formed the prophet's discourse at Bethel, with the interlude of his adventure there (vii.-viii. 3)[344]--we may pass at once to what remains: f…
399 wordsSECTION 811. Earthquake, Eclipse And Famine.
AMOS viii. 4-14. _Hear this, ye who trample the needy, and would put an end to_[345] _the lowly of the land, saying, When will the New-Moon be over, that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath, that we may open corn_ (_by making small the measure, but large the weight, and falsifying the fraudulent balances; buying the wr…
885 wordsSECTION 822. Nemesis.
Thus Amos returns to the chief target of his shafts--the senseless, corrupt worship of the national sanctuaries. And this time--perhaps in remembrance of how they had silenced the word of God when he brought it home to them at Bethel--he tells Israel that, with all their running to and fro across the land, to shrine af…
659 wordsSECTION 833. The Voices Of Another Dawn.
_And the Lord, Jehovah of the Hosts; Who toucheth the earth and it melteth, and all its inhabitants mourn, and it rises like the Nile, all of it_ together, _and sinks like the Nile of Egypt; Who buildeth His stories in the heavens, and His vault on the earth He foundeth; Who calleth to the waters of the sea and poureth…
656 wordsSECTION 843. The Voices Of Another Dawn.
Now as to these qualifications of the hitherto unmitigated judgments of the book, it is to be noted that there is nothing in their language to lead us to take them from Amos himself. On the contrary, the last clause describes what he has always called a characteristic sin of his day. Our only difficulties are that hith…
802 wordsSECTION 853. The Voices Of Another Dawn.
* * * * * We have now surveyed the whole of this much-doubted, much-defended passage. I have stated fully the arguments on both sides. On the one hand, we have the fact that nothing in the language of the verses, and nothing in their historical allusions, precludes their being by Amos; we have also to admit that, havi…
420 wordsSECTION 86Footnotes:
[344] See Chapter VI., Section 3. [345] The phrase is uncertain. [346] Wellhausen thinks that the prophet could not have put the parenthesis in the mouth of the traders, and therefore regards it as an intrusion or gloss. But this is hypercriticism. The last clause, however, may be a mere clerical repetition of ii. 6.…
659 wordsSECTION 87_Common-Sense And The Reign Of Law_
[359] This against Cornill, _Einleitung_, 176. [360] iii. 1. [361] III. _Wars_, x. 8. With the above verses of the Book of Amos Lev. xxvi. 5 has been compared: "your threshing shall reach to the vintage and the vintage to the sowing time." But there is no reason to suppose that either of two so natural passages depen…
764 wordsSECTION 88_Common-Sense And The Reign Of Law_
These instincts we must not exaggerate into a system. There is no philosophy in Amos, nor need we wish there were. Far more instructive is what we do find--a virgin sense of the sympathy of all things, the thrill rather than the theory of a universe. And this faith, which is not a philosophy, is especially instructive …
743 wordsSECTION 89_Common-Sense And The Reign Of Law_
With this sense of law, of moral necessity, in Amos we must not fail to connect that absence of all appeal to miracle, which is also conspicuous in his book. We come now to the three disputed passages:-- iv. 13:--_For, lo! He Who formed the hills,_[374] _and createth the wind,_[375] _and declareth to man what His_[37…
686 wordsSECTION 90_Common-Sense And The Reign Of Law_
Again--an argument in favour of the authenticity of these passages may be drawn from the character of their subjects. We have seen the part which the desert played in shaping the temper and the style of Amos. But the works of the Creator, to which these passages lift their praise, are just those most fondly dwelt upon …
731 wordsSECTION 91Footnotes:
[363] iii. 6_b_; iv. 9; vi. 14; iv. 12_b_. [364] vi. 12. [365] viii. 8. [366] iii. 7: _Jehovah God doeth nothing, but He hath revealed His secret to His servants the prophets._ [367] i. 2; iii. 9; ix. 3. [368] ii. 9. [369] viii. 12. [370] v. 24; 19, 20, etc.; 7; vi. 12. [371] i. 2. [372] iv. 9 ff. [373] iv. 6…
699 wordsSECTION 92_The Book Of Hosea_
"For leal love have I desired and not sacrifice And the knowledge of God rather than burnt-offerings." The Book of Hosea consists of two unequal sections, chaps. i.-iii. and chaps. iv.-xiv., which differ in the dates of their standpoints, to a large extent also in the details of their common subjects, but still more …
312 wordsSECTION 93First Section: Hosea'S Prophetic Life.
With the removal of some of the verses the argument becomes clear and consecutive. After the story of the wife and children (i. 2-9), who are symbols of the land and people of Israel in their apostasy from God (2, 4, 6, 9), the Divine voice calls on the living generation to plead with their mother lest destruction come…
743 wordsSECTION 94First Section: Hosea'S Prophetic Life.
SECOND SECTION: CHAPS. iv.-xiv. When we pass into these chapters we feel that the times are changed. The dynasty of Jehu has passed: kings are falling rapidly: Israel devours its rulers:[407] there is no loyalty to the king; he is suddenly cut off;[408] all the princes are revolters.[409] Round so despised and so unst…
996 wordsSECTION 95First Section: Hosea'S Prophetic Life.
The elusiveness of the style is the greater that many passages do not seem to have been prepared for public delivery. They are more the play of the prophet's mind than his set speech. They are not formally addressed to an audience, and there is no trace in them of oratorical art. Hence the language of this Second Sect…
758 wordsSECTION 96First Section: Hosea'S Prophetic Life.
In spite of these difficulties, since the section is so long, attempts at division have been made. Ewald distinguished three parts in three different tempers: _First_, iv.-vi. 11 _a_, God's Plaint against His people; _Second_, vi. 11 _b_-ix. 9, Their Punishment; _Third_, ix. 10-xiv. 10, Retrospect of the earlier histor…
868 wordsSECTION 97Footnotes:
Other short passages of doubtful authenticity will be treated as we come to them; but again it may be emphasised that, in a book of such a style as this, certainty on the subject is impossible. Finally, there may be given here the only notable addition which the Septuagint makes to the Book of Hosea. It occurs in xiii…
382 wordsSECTION 98[402] 721 B.C.
[403] Stade, _Gesch._, I. 577; Cornill, _Einleitung_, who also would exclude _no king and no prince_ in iii. 4. [404] This objection, however, does not hold against the removal of merely _and David_, leaving _their king_. [405] ii. 7, 11, 14, 17 (Heb.). In i. 4 B-text reads Ἰούδα for יהוא while Q^{mq} have Ἰηου. [40…
745 wordsSECTION 99[402] 721 B.C.
[424] See above, p. 114. [425] _Præf. in Duod. Prophetas._ [426] Especially in chap. vii. [427] As in xi. 2 _b_. [428] This is especially the case in x. 11-13; xi. 4; xiv. 5. [429] _E.g._ vi. 5 _b_: M.T. יצא אור משפטיך which is nonsense; LXX. כאור משפטי, _My judgment shall go forth like light._ xi. 2: M.T. מִפְּנֵ…
283 wordsSECTION 100_The Problem That Amos Left_
[441] viii. 14 is also rejected by Wellhausen and Cornill. [442] _Loc. cit._ Amos was a preacher of righteousness almost wholly in its judicial and punitive offices. Exposing the moral conditions of society in his day, emphasising on the one hand its obduracy and on the other the intolerableness of it, he asserted th…
777 wordsSECTION 101_The Problem That Amos Left_
Such an one was found in Hosea, the son of Be'eri, a citizen and probably a priest of Northern Israel, whose very name, _Salvation_, the synonym of Joshua and of Jesus, breathed the larger hope, which it was his glory to bear to his people. Before we see how for this task Hosea was equipped with the love and sympathy w…
596 wordsSECTION 102_The Story Of The Prodigal Wife_
[443] See above, pp. 193 ff. [444] v. 4. [445] Deut. xxxii. 10-12: a song probably earlier than the eighth century. But some put it later. [446] Psalm xviii. [447] ii. 10 f. [448] iii. 2. [449] Matt. xi. 12. HOSEA i.-iii. It has often been remarked that, unlike the first Doomster of Israel, Israel's first Evang…
768 wordsSECTION 103_The Story Of The Prodigal Wife_
The story, and how it led Hosea to understand God's relations to sinful men, is told in the first three chapters of his book. It opens with the very startling sentence: _The beginning of the word of Jehovah to Hosea:--And Jehovah said to Hosea, Go, take thee a wife of harlotry and children of harlotry: for the Land hat…
826 wordsSECTION 104_The Story Of The Prodigal Wife_
How then are we to reconcile with this the statement of that command to take a wife of the character so frankly described? In this way--and we owe the interpretation to the same lamented scholar.[465] When, some years after his marriage, Hosea at last began to be aware of the character of her whom he had taken to his h…
769 wordsSECTION 105_The Story Of The Prodigal Wife_
"I was in Leamington, and Mr. Cobden called on me. I was then in the depths of grief--I may almost say of despair, for the light and sunshine of my house had been extinguished. All that was left on earth of my young wife, except the memory of a sainted life and a too brief happiness, was lying still and cold in the…
681 wordsSECTION 106_The Story Of The Prodigal Wife_
It is the re-creation of an Idea. Slain and made carrion by the heathen religions, the figure is restored to life by Hosea. And this is a life everlasting. Prophet and apostle, the Israel of Jehovah, the Church of Christ, have alike found in Hosea's figure an unfailing significance and charm. Here we cannot trace the h…
656 wordsSECTION 107_The Story Of The Prodigal Wife_
_Therefore, behold, I am going to hedge_[480] _up her_[481] _way with thorns, and build her_[482] _a wall, so that she find not her paths. And she shall pursue her paramours and shall not come upon them, seek them and shall not find them; and she shall say, Let me go and return to my first husband, for it was better fo…
655 wordsSECTION 108_The Story Of The Prodigal Wife_
As a result of all this (whether the words be by Hosea or another),[486] _It shall be in that day--'tis Jehovah's oracle--that thou shalt call Me, My husband,_ _And thou shalt not again call Me, My Ba'al:_ _For I will take away the names of the Ba'alim from her mouth,_ _And they shall no more be remembered by the…
844 wordsSECTION 109_The Story Of The Prodigal Wife_
But this return from the nation to the individual has another interest. Gomer's redemption is not the mere formal completion of the parallel between her and her people. It is, as the story says, an impulse of the Divine Love, recognised even then in Israel as seeking the individual. He who followed Hagar into the wilde…
417 wordsSECTION 110Footnotes:
[450] ii. 23, Heb. [451] ii. 20, Heb. [452] vi. 3, 4; vii. 8; ix. 10; xiv. 6, 7, 8. [453] vii. 11, 12; x. 11; xi. 4, etc. [454] Pregnant construction, _hath committed great harlotry from after Jehovah_. [455] These personal names do not elsewhere occur. גֹּמֶר; Γομερ. דִּבְלַיִם; Δεβηλαιμ B; Δεβηλαειμ, AQ. They ha…
652 wordsSECTION 111Footnotes:
[477] ii. 5, 13. [478] ii. 5. [479] See above, p. 235. [480] The participle Qal, used by God of Himself in His proclamations of grace or of punishment, has in this passage (cf. ver. 16) and elsewhere (especially in Deuteronomy) the force of an immediate future. [481] So LXX.; Mass. Text, _thy_. [482] The reading ג…
420 wordsSECTION 112_The Thick Night Of Israel_
HOSEA iv.-xiv. It was indeed "thick night" into which this Arthur of Israel stepped from his shattered home. The mists drive across Hosea's long agony with his people, and what we see, we see blurred and broken. There is stumbling and clashing; crowds in drift; confused rallies; gangs of assassins breaking across the …
468 wordsSECTION 113_A People In Decay: 1. Morally_
HOSEA iv.-vii 7. Pursuing the plan laid down in the last chapter, we now take the section of Hosea's discourse which lies between chap. iv. 1 and chap. vii. 7. Chap. iv. is the only really separable bit of it; but there are also slight breaks at v. 15 and vii. 2. So we may attempt a division into four periods: 1. Chap…
251 wordsSECTION 1141. The Lord'S Quarrel With Israel.
HOSEA iv. _Hear the word of Jehovah, sons of Israel!_[495] _Jehovah hath a quarrel with the inhabitants of the land, for there is no troth nor leal love nor knowledge of God in the land. Perjury_[496] _and murder and theft and adultery!_[497] _They break out, and blood strikes upon blood._ That stable and well-furnis…
784 wordsSECTION 1151. The Lord'S Quarrel With Israel.
(_Though thou play the harlot, Israel, let not Judah bring guilt on herself. And come not to Gilgal, and go not up to Beth-Aven, and take not your oath_ at the Well-of-the-Oath, Beer-Sheba,[503] _By the life of Jehovah!_ This obvious parenthesis may be either by Hosea or a later writer; the latter is more probable.[504…
258 wordsSECTION 1162. Priests And Princes Fail.
HOSEA v. 1-14. The line followed in this paragraph is almost parallel to that of chap. iv., running out to a prospect of invasion. But the charge is directed solely against the chiefs of the people, and the strictures of chap. vii. 7 ff. upon the political folly of the rulers are anticipated. _Hear this, O Priests, a…
708 wordsSECTION 1173. Repentance Fails.
HOSEA v. 15-vii. 2. Seeing that their leaders are so helpless, and feeling their wounds, the people may themselves turn to God for healing, but that will be with a repentance so shallow as also to be futile. They have no conviction of sin, nor appreciation of how deeply their evils have eaten. This too facile repenta…
664 wordsSECTION 1184. Wickedness In High Places.
Evidently real repentance on the part of such a people is impossible. As Hosea said before, _Their deeds will not let them return._[531] HOSEA vii. 3-7. There follows now a very difficult passage. The text is corrupt, and we have no means of determining what precise events are intended. The drift of meaning, however,…
336 wordsSECTION 119Footnotes:
[495] כי formally introduces the charge. [496] Lit. _swearing and falsehood_. [497] Ninth, sixth, eighth and seventh of the Decalogue. [498] Amos vi. 1. [499] iv. 4. According to the excellent emendation of Beck (quoted by Wünsche, p. 142), who instead of ועמככמריב proposes ככמריו ועמי, for the first word of which …
684 wordsSECTION 120Footnotes:
[511] Probably the ancient war-cry of the clan. Cf. Judg. v. 14. [512] Yet ver. 9 goes with ver. 8 (so Wellhausen), and not with ver. 10 (so Ewald). [513] For צו read שׁוא. [514] Wellhausen inserts _Judah_, with that desire to complete a parallel which seems to me to be overdone by so many critics. If Judah be inser…
459 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
Project Gutenberg source record →
Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.