[857] Or _Fair, fair is it!_ Nowack.
[858] _The stone, the leaden_. Marti, _St. u. Kr._, 1892, p. 213 n., takes _the leaden_ for a gloss, and reads simply _the stone_, _i.e._ the top-stone; but the plummet is the last thing laid to the building to test the straightness of the top-stone.
[859] _A. T. Rel. Gesch._, 312 n.
[860] מגלה _roll_ or _volume_. LXX. δρέπανον, _sickle_, מַגָּל.
[861] A group of difficult expressions. The verb נִקָּה is Ni. of a root which originally had the physical meaning to _clean out of a place_, and this Ni. is so used of a plundered town in Isa. iii. 26. But its more usual meaning is to be spoken free from guilt (Psalm xix. 14, etc.). Most commentators take it here in the physical sense, Hitzig quoting the use of καθαρίζω in Mark vii. 19. מִזֶה כָמוֹהָ are variously rendered. מזה is mostly understood as locative, _hence_, _i.e._ from the land just mentioned, but some take it with _steal_ (Hitzig), some with _cleaned out_ (Ewald, Orelli, etc.). כָמוֹהָ is rendered _like it_—the flying roll (Ewald, Orelli), which cannot be, since the roll flies upon the face of the land, and the sinner is to be purged out of it; or in accordance with the roll or its curse (Jerome, Köhler). But Wellhausen reads מִזֶה כַמֶּה, and takes נִקָּה in its usual meaning and in the past tense, and renders _Every thief has for long remained unpunished_; and so in the next clause. So, too, Nowack. LXX. _Every thief shall be condemned to death_, ἕως θανάτου ἐκδιθήσεται.
[862] Heb. _lodge_, _pass the night_: cf. Zeph. ii. 14 (above, p. 65), _pelican and bittern shall roost upon the capitals_.
[863] Smend sees a continuation of Ezekiel’s idea of the guilt of man overtaking him (iii. 20, xxxiv.). Here God’s curse does all.
[864] This follows from the shape of the disc that fits into it. Seven gallons are seven-eighths of the English bushel: that in use in Canada and the United States is somewhat smaller.
[865] Ewald.
[866] Upon the stage of vision.
[867] For Heb. עֵינָם read עוֹנָם with LXX.
[868] By inserting איפה after מה in ver. 5, and deleting ויאמר ... היוצאת in ver. 6, Wellhausen secures the more concise text: _And see what this bushel is that comes forth. And I said, What is it? And he said, That is the evil of the people in the whole land_. But to reduce the redundancies of the Visions is to delete the most characteristic feature of their style. Besides, Wellhausen’s result gives no sense. The prophet would not be asked to see what a bushel is: the angel is there to tell him this. So Wellhausen in his translation has to omit the מה of ver. 5, while telling us in his note to replace האיפה after it. His emendation is, therefore, to be rejected. Nowack, however, accepts it.
[869] LXX. Heb. _this_.
[870] In the last clause the verbal forms are obscure if not corrupt. LXX. καὶ ἕτοιμασαι καὶ θήσουσιν αὐτο ἐκεῖ = לְהָכִין וַהֲנִיחֻהָ שָׁם; but see Ewald, _Syntax_, 131 _d_.
[871] Wellhausen suggests that in the direction assigned to the white horses, אחריהם (ver. 6), which we have rendered _westward_, we might read ארץ הקדם, _land of the east_; and that from ver. 7 _the west_ has probably fallen out after _they go forth_.
[872] Heb. _I turned again and_.
[873] Hebrew reads אֲמֻּצִּים, _strong_; LXX. ψαροί, _dappled_, and for the previous בְּרֻדּים, _spotted_ or _dappled_, it reads ποικίλοι, _piebald_. Perhaps we should read חמצים (cf. Isa. lxiii. 1), _dark red_ or _sorrel_, with _grey spots_. So Ewald and Orelli. Wright keeps _strong_.