[168] See above, pp. 43-45.
[169] Heb. _the city the oppressor_. The two participles in the first clause are not predicates to the noun and adjective of the second (Schwally), but vocatives, though without the article, after הוֹי.
[170] LXX. _wolves of Arabia_.
[171] The verb left untranslated, גרמו, is quite uncertain in meaning. גרם is a root common to the Semitic languages and seems to mean originally _to cut off_, while the noun גרם is _a bone_. In Num. xxiv. 8 the Piel of the verb used with another word for bone means _to gnaw_, _munch_. (The only other passage where it is used, Ezek. xxiii. 34, is corrupt.) So some take it here: _they do not gnaw bones till morning_, _i.e._ devour all at once; but this is awkward, and Schwally (198) has proposed to omit the negative, _they do gnaw bones till morning_, yet in that case surely the impf. and not the perf. tense would have been used. The LXX. render _they do not leave over_, and it has been attempted, though inconclusively, to derive this meaning from that of _cutting off_, i.e. _laying aside_ (the Arabic Form II. means, however, _to leave behind_). Another line of meaning perhaps promises more. In Aram. the verb means _to be the cause of anything, to bring about_, and perhaps contains the idea of _deciding_ (Levy _sub voce_ compares κρίνω, _cerno_); in Arab. it means, among other things, _to commit a crime, be guilty_, but in mod. Arabic _to fine_. Now it is to be noticed that here the expression is used of _judges_, and it may be there is an intentional play upon the double possibility of meaning in the root.
[172] Ezek. xxii. 26: _Her priests have done violence to My Law and have profaned My holy things; they have put no difference between the holy and profane, between the clean and the unclean._ Cf. Jer. ii. 8.
[173] Schwally by altering the accents: _morning by morning He giveth forth His judgment: no day does He fail_.
[174] On this ver. 6 see above, p. 44. It is doubtful.
[175] Or _discipline_.
[176] Wellhausen: _that which I have commanded her_. Cf. Job xxxvi. 23; 2 Chron. xxxvi. 23; Ezra i. 2.
[177] So LXX., reading מֵעֵינֶיהָ for the Heb. מְעוֹנָהּ, _her dwelling_.
[178] A frequent phrase of Jeremiah’s.
[179] משפטי, decree, ordinance, decision.
[180] Heb. _My anger._ LXX. omits.
[181] That is to say, the prophet returns to that general judgment of the whole earth, with which in his first discourse he had already threatened Judah. He threatens her with it again in this eighth verse, because, as he has said in the preceding ones, all other warnings have failed. The eighth verse therefore follows naturally upon the seventh, just as naturally as in Amos iv. ver. 12, introduced by the same לֵָכן as here, follows its predecessors. The next two verses of the text, however, describe an opposite result: instead of the destruction of the heathen, they picture their conversion, and it is only in the eleventh verse that we return to the main subject of the passage, Judah herself, who is represented (in harmony with the close of Zephaniah’s first discourse) as reduced to a righteous and pious remnant. Vv. 9 and 10 are therefore obviously a later insertion, and we pass to the eleventh verse. Vv. 9 and 10: _For then_ (this has no meaning after ver. 8) _will I give to the peoples a pure lip_ (elliptic phrase: _turn to the peoples a pure lip_—i.e. _turn their_ evil lip into _a pure lip_: pure = _picked out_, _select_, _excellent_, cf. Isa. xlix. 2), _that they may all of them call upon the name of the Lord, that they may serve Him with one consent_ (Heb. _shoulder_, LXX. _yoke_). _From beyond the rivers of Ethiopia_—there follows a very obscure phrase, עֲתָרַי בַּת־פּוּצַי, _suppliants (?) of the daughter of My dispersed_, but Ewald _of the daughter of Phut—they shall bring Mine offering_.