[321] The last clause is peculiar. Two clauses seem to have run into one--_saith Jehovah, God of Hosts_, and _God of Hosts is His Name_. The word שמו = _His Name_, may have been added to give the oracle the same conclusion as the oracle at the end of the preceding chapter; and it is not to be overlooked that שמו at the end of a clause does not occur elsewhere in the book outside the three questioned Doxologies iv. 13, v. 8, ix. 6. Further, see below, pp. 204 f.
[322] _In Zion_: "very suspicious," Cornill. But see pp. 135 f.
[323] I remove ver. 2 to a note, not that I am certain that it is not by Amos--who can be dogmatic on such a point?--but because the text of it, the place which it occupies, and its relation to the facts of current history, all raise doubts. Moreover it is easily detached from the context, without disturbing the flow of the chapter, which indeed runs more equably without it. The Massoretic text gives: _Pass over to Calneh, and see; and go thence to Hamath Rabbah, and come down to Gath of the Philistines: are they better than these kingdoms, or is their territory larger than yours?_ Presumably _these_ _kingdoms_ are Judah and Israel. But that can only mean that Israel is the best of the peoples, a statement out of harmony with the irony of ver. 1, and impossible in the mouth of Amos. Geiger, therefore, proposes to read: "Are you better than these kingdoms--_i.e._ Calneh, Hamath, Gath--or is your territory larger than theirs?" But this is also unlikely, for Israel's territory was much larger than Gath's. Besides, the question would have force only if Calneh, Hamath and Gath had already fallen. Gath had, but it is at least very questionable whether Hamath had. Therefore Schrader (_K.A.T._, 444) rejects the whole verse; and Kuenen agrees that if we are to understand Assyrian conquests, it is hardly possible to retain the verses. Bickell's first argument against the verse, that it does not fit into the metrical system of Amos vi. 1-7, is precarious; his second, that it disturbs the grammar, which it makes to jump suddenly from the third person in ver. 1 to the second in ver. 2, and back to the third in ver. 3, is not worth anything, for such a jump occurs within ver. 3 itself.
[324] Davidson, _Syntax_, § 100, R. 5.
[325] חמם שׁבת; LXX. σαββάτων ψευδῶν, on which hint Hoffmann renders the verse: "you that daily demand the tribute of evil (cf. Ezek. xvi. 33), and every Sabbath extort by violence." But this is both unnecessary and opposed to viii. 5, which tells us no trade was done on the Sabbath. שבת is to be taken in the common sense of sitting in judgment (rather than with Wellhausen), in the sense of the enthronement of wrong-doing.
[326] To this day, in some parts of Palestine, the general fold into which the cattle are shut contains a portion railed off for calves and lambs (cf. Dr. M. Blanckenhorn of Erlangen in the _Mittheilungen u. Nachrichten_ of the D.P.V., 1895, p. 37, with a sketch). It must be this to which Amos refers.
[327] Or perhaps _melodies_, _airs_.
[328] Of course, it is possible that here again, as in v. 15 and 16, we have prophecy later than the disaster of 734, when Tiglath-Pileser made a great _breach_ or _havoc_ in the body politic of Israel by taking Gilead and Galilee captive. But this is scarcely probable, for Amos almost everywhere lays stress upon the moral corruption of Israel, as her real and essential danger.
[329] מתאב for מתעב.
[330] Some words must have dropped out here. For these and the following verses 9 and 10 on the pestilence see pp. 178 ff.
[331] So Michaelis, יָם בְּבָקָר for בִּבְקָרִים.