[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 IV., l. 52. Cf. the whole passage.
[311] Uncertain; Hitzig takes it as the apodosis of the previous clause: _Ye shall have to take from him a present of corn_, _i.e._ as alms.
[312] See above, p. 33.
[313] Cf. "Pecca fortiter."
[314] As, for instance, the prophet looks forward to in iii. 12.
[315] _God of Hosts_, perhaps an intrusion (?) between אדני and יהוה.
[316] I have ventured to rearrange the order of the clauses, which in the original is evidently dislocated.
[317] Lit. _the house_.
[318] Eph. v. 2; etc.
[319] No one doubts that this verse is interrogative. But the Authorised Eng. Ver. puts it in a form--_Have ye brought unto Me?_ etc.--which implies blame that they did not do so. Ewald was the first to see that, as rendered above, an appeal to the forty years was the real intention of the verse. So after him nearly all critics, also the Revised Eng. Ver.: _Did ye bring unto Me?_ On the whole question of the possibility of such an appeal see above, pp. 100 ff., and cf. Jer. vii. 22, which distinctly declares that in the wilderness God prescribed no ritual to Israel.
[320] Ver. 26 is very difficult, for both the text and the rendering of all the possible alternatives of it are quite uncertain. (1) As to the _text_, the present division into words must be correct; at least no other is possible. But the present order of the words is obviously wrong. For _your images_ is evidently described by the relative clause _which you have made_, and ought to stand next it. What then is to be done with the two words that at present come between--_star of your god_? Are they both a mere gloss, as Robertson Smith holds, and therefore to be struck out? or should they precede the pair of words, צלמיכם כיון, which they now follow? This is the order of the text which the LXX. translator had before him, only for כון he misread רֵיפָן or רֵיוָן: καὶ ἀνελάβετε τὴν σκηνὴν τοῦ Μωλὸχ καὶ τὸ ἄστρον τοῦ Θεοῦ ὑμῶν Ῥαιφάν [Ῥεφάν, Q], τοὺς τύπους αὐτῶν [om. AQ] οὓς ἐποιήσατε ἑαυτοῖς. This arrangement has the further evidence in its favour, that it brings _your god_ into proper parallel with _your king_. The Hebrew text would then run thus:--
[אלהיכם כוכב] ואת מלככם סכות את ונשאתם לכם עשיתם אשר צלמיכם כיון
(2) The translation of this text is equally difficult: not in the verb ונשאתם, for both the grammar and the argument oblige us to take it as future, _and ye shall lift up_; but in the two words סכות and כיון. Are these common nouns, or proper names of deities in apposition to _your king_ and _your god_? The LXX. takes סכות as = _tabernacle_, and כיון as a proper name (Theodotion takes both as proper names). The Auth. Eng. Ver. follows the LXX. (except that it takes _king_ for the name _Moloch_). Schrader (_Stud. u. Krit._, 1874, 324; _K.A.T._, 442 f.) takes them as the consonants of Sakkut, a name of the Assyrian god Adar, and of Kewan, the Assyrian name for the planet Saturn: _Ye shall take up Sakkut your king and Kewan your star-god, your images which_... Baethgen goes further and takes both the מלך of מלכיכם and the צלם of צלמיכם as Moloch and Ṣelam, proper names, in combination with Sakkut and Kewan (_Beitr. z. Sem. Rel._, 239). Now it is true that the Second Book of Kings implies that the worship of the host of heaven existed in Samaria before its fall (2 Kings xvii. 16), but the introduction into Samaria of Assyrian gods (among them Adar) is placed by it after the fall (2 Kings xvii. 31), and besides, Amos does not elsewhere speak of the worship of foreign gods, nor is the mention of them in any way necessary to the argument here. On the contrary, even if Amos were to mention the worship of idols by Israel, would he have selected at this point the Assyrian ones? (See, however, Tiele, _Revue de l'Histoire des Religions_, III., p. 211, who makes Koun and the planet Keiwan purely Phœnician deities.) Some critics take סכות and כיון as common nouns in the construct state. So Ewald, and so most recently Robertson Smith (_O.T.J.C._, 2): _the shrine of your king and the stand of your images_. This is more in harmony with the absence from the rest of Amos of any hint as to the worship of idols, but an objection to it, and a very strong one, is that the alleged common nouns are not found elsewhere in Hebrew. In view of this conflicting evidence it is best therefore to leave the words untranslated, as in the text above. It is just possible that they may themselves be later insertions, for the verse would read very well without them: _And ye shall lift up your king and your images which you have made to yourselves_.