[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 Robertson Smith, _Prophets of Israel_, 398, and Kuenen, who adheres to Smith's arguments (_Onderzoek_).
[260] "It is plain that Amos could not have excepted Judah from the universal ruin which he saw to threaten the whole land; or at all events such exception would have required to be expressly made on special grounds."--Robertson Smith, _Prophets_, 398.
[261] _Ibid._
[262] צדיק, _righteous_: hardly, as most commentators take it, the _legally_ (as distinguished from the _morally_) _righteous_; the rich cruelly used their legal rights to sell respectable and honest members of society into slavery.
[263] By adapting the LXX. So far as we know Wellhausen is right in saying that the Massoretic text, which our English version follows, gives no sense. LXX. reads, also without much sense as a whole, τὰ πατοῦντα ἐπὶ τὸν χοῦν τῆς γῆς, καὶ ἐκονδύλιζον εἰς κεφαλὰς πτῶχων.
[264] So rightly the LXX. Or the definite article may be here used in conformity with the common Hebrew way of employing it to designate, not a definite individual, but a member of a definite, well-known genus.
[265] On the use of Amorite for all the inhabitants of Canaan see Driver's _Deut._, pp. 11 f.
[266] The verb עוק of the Massoretic text is not found elsewhere, and whether we retain it, or take it as a variant of, or mistake for, צוק, or adopt some other reading, the whole phrase is more or less uncertain, and the exact shade of meaning has to be guessed, though the general sense remains pretty much the same. The following is a complete note on the subject, with reasons for adopting the above conclusion.
(1) LXX.: _Behold, I roll_ (κυλίω) _under you as a waggon full of straw is rolled_. A.V.: _I am pressed under you as a cart is pressed_. Pusey: _I straiten myself under you, etc._ These versions take עוּק in the sense of צוּק, _to press_, and תחת in its usual meaning of _beneath_; and the result is conformable to the well-known figure of the Old Testament by which God is said to be laden and weary with the transgressions of His people. But this does not mean an actual descent of judgment, and yet vv. 14-16 imply that such an intimation has been made in ver. 13; and besides טעיק and תעיק are both in the Hiphil, the active, _to press_, or causative, _make to press_. (2) Accordingly some, adopting this sense of the verb, take תחת in an unusual sense of _down upon_. Ewald: _I press down upon you as a cart that is full of sheaves presseth_. Guthe (in Kautzsch's _Bibel_): _Ich will euch quetschen_. Rev. Eng. Ver.: _I will press you in your place_.--But וקע has been taken in other senses. (3) Hoffmann (_Z.A.T.W._, III. 100) renders it _groan_ in conformity with Arab. 'îḳ. (4) Wetzstein (_ibid._, 278 ff.) quotes Arab. 'âḳ, to _stop_, _hinder_, and suggests _I will bring to a stop_. (5) Buhl (12th Ed. of Gesenius' _Handwört_, sub עוּק), in view of possibility of עגלה being threshing-roller, recalls Arab. 'aḳḳ, _to cut in pieces_. (6) Hitzig (_Exeg. Handbuch_) proposed to read מפיק and תפיק: _I will make it shake under you, as the laden waggon shakes_ (the ground). So rather differently Wellhausen: _I will make the ground quake under you, as a waggon quakes under its load of sheaves_.
I have only to add that, in the Alex. Cod. of LXX., which reads κωλύω for κυλίω, we have an interesting analogy to Wetzstein's proposal; and that in support of the rendering of Ewald, and its unusual interpretation of תחתיכם which seems to me on the whole the most probable, we may compare Job xxxvi. 16, תחתיה מוצק לא. This, it is true, suggests rather the choking of a passage than the crushing of the ground; but, by the way, that sense is even more applicable to a harvest waggon laden with sheaves.