[1396] See above, note 1393, on the same mis-read phrase in ver. 7.
[1397] Heb. הַיּוֹצֵר, _the potter_. LXX. χωνευτήριον _smelting furnace_. Read הָאוֹצָר by change of א for י: the two are often confounded; see n. 1399.
[1398] Wellhausen and Nowack read _thou hast been valued of them_. But there is no need of this. The clause is a sarcastic parenthesis spoken by the prophet himself.
[1399] Again Heb. _the potter_, LXX. _the smelting furnace_, as above in ver. 13. The additional clause _House of God_ proves how right it is to read _the treasury_, and disposes of the idea that _to throw to the potter_ was a proverb for throwing away.
[1400] Two codd. read _Jerusalem_, which Wellhausen and Nowack adopt.
[1401] Heb. הַנַּעַר, _the scattered_. LXX. τὸν ἐσκορπίσμενον.
[1402] הַנִּצָּבָה, obscure: some translate _the sound_ or _stable_.
[1403] Heb. _and their hoofs he will tear_ (?).
[1404] For Heb. האליל read as in ver. 15 האוילי.
[1405] עמית: only in Lev. and here.
[1406] הך. Perhaps we should read אַכֶּה, _I smite_, with Matt. xxvi. 31.
[1407] Some take this as a promise: _turn My hand towards the little ones_.
[1408] LXX. Heb. אמרתי, but the ו has fallen from the front of it.
[1409] See above, p. 462.
[1410] xii. 2, רַעַל, a noun not found elsewhere in O. T. We found the verb in Nahum ii. 4 (see above, p. 106), and probably in Hab. ii. 16 for והערל (see above, p. 147, n. 412): it is common in Aramean; other forms belong to later Hebrew (cf. Eckardt, p. 85). 3, שׂרט is used in classic Heb. only of intentional cutting and tattooing of oneself; in the sense of _wounding_ which it has here it is frequent in Aramean. 3 has besides אבן מעמסה, not found elsewhere. 4 has three nouns terminating in ־ון, two of them—תמהון, _panic_, and עורון, judicial _blindness_—in O. T. only found here and in Deut. xxviii. 28, the former also in Aramean. 7 למען לא is also cited by Eckardt as used only in Ezek. xix. 6, xxvi. 20, and four times in Psalms.
[1411] xii. 6, תחתיה.
[1412] The text reads _against_ Judah, as if it with Jerusalem suffered the siege of the heathen. But (1) this makes an unconstruable clause, and (2) the context shows that Judah was _against_ Jerusalem. Therefore Geiger (_Urschrift_, p. 58) is right in deleting על, and restoring to the clause both sense in itself and harmony with the context. It is easy to see why על was afterwards introduced. LXX. καὶ ἐν τῇ Ἰουδαίᾳ.
[1413] Since Jerome, commentators have thought of a stone by throwing or lifting which men try their strength, what we call a “putting stone.” But is not the idea rather of one of the large stones half-buried in the earth which it is the effort of the husbandman to tear from its bed and carry out of his field before he ploughs it? Keil and Wright think of a heavy stone for building. This is not so likely.
[1414] שׂרט, elsewhere only in Lev. xxi. 5, is there used of intentional cutting of oneself as a sign of mourning. Nowack takes the clause as a later intrusion; but there is no real reason for this.
[1415] Heb. _upon Judah will I keep My eyes open_ to protect him, and this has analogies, Job xiv. 3, Jer. xxxii. 19. But the reading _its eyes_, which is made by inserting a ו that might easily have dropped out through confusion with the initial ו of the next word, has also analogies (Isa. xlii. 7, etc.), and stands in better parallel to the next clause, as well as to the clauses describing the panic of the heathen.
[1416] Others read אַלְפֵי, _thousands_, i.e. _districts_.