[344] See Chapter VI., Section 3.
[345] The phrase is uncertain.
[346] Wellhausen thinks that the prophet could not have put the parenthesis in the mouth of the traders, and therefore regards it as an intrusion or gloss. But this is hypercriticism. The last clause, however, may be a mere clerical repetition of ii. 6.
[347] Isa. lviii. See the exposition of the passage in the writer's _Isaiah_ xl.-lxvi. (Expositor's Bible Series), pp. 417 ff.: "Our prophet, while exalting the practical service of man at the expense of certain religious forms, equally exalts the observance of the Sabbath; ... he places the keeping of the Sabbath on a level with the practice of love."
[348] _She shall rise_, etc.--The clause is almost the same as in ix. 5_b_, and the text differs from the LXX., which omits _and heave_. Is it an insertion?
[349] Literally _in the day of light_.
[350] That is, Samaria is used in the wider sense of the kingdom, not the capital, and there is no need for Wellhausen's substitution of Bethel for it.
[351] This in answer to Gunning (_De Godspraken van Amos_, 1885), Wellh. _in loco_, and König (_Einleitung_, p. 304, _d_), who reckon vv. 11 and 12 to be the insertion: the latter on the additional ground that the formula of ver. 13, _in that day_, points back to ver. 9; but not to the _Lo, days are coming_ of ver. 11. But thus to miss out vv. 11 and 12 leaves us with greater difficulties than before. For without them how are we to explain the _thirst_ of ver. 13. It is left unintroduced; there is no hint of a drought in 9 and 10. It seems to me then that, since we must omit some verse, it ought to be ver. 13; and this the rather that if omitted it is not missed. It is just the kind of general statement that would be added by an unthinking scribe; and it does not readily connect with ver. 14, while ver. 12 does do so. For why should youths and maids be specially singled out as swearing by Samaria, Dan and Beersheba? These were the oaths of the whole people, to whom vv. 11 and 12 refer. I see a very clear case, therefore, for omitting ver. 13.
[352] LXX. here gives a mere repetition of the preceding oath.
[353] Doughty: _Arabia Deserta_ I. 269.
[354] Since it is the capital that has been struck, and the command is given to break _the thresholds on the head of all of them_, many translate _lintels_ or _architraves_ instead of _thresholds_ (_e.g._ Hitzig, and Guthe in Kautzsch's _Bibel_). But the word סִפִּים always means thresholds and the blow here is fundamental.
[355] LXX. adds _of Hosts_: on the whole passage see next chapter.
[356] We should have expected _a grain_, but the word צְרֹור only means small stone: cf. 2 Sam. xvii. 13. The LXX. has here σύντριμμα, fracture, ruin. Cf. _Z.A.T.W._, III. 125.
[357] The text has been disturbed here; the verbs are in forms not possible to the sense. For תַּגִּישׁ read either תָּשׂיג with Hitzig or תִּגַּשׁ with Wellhausen. תַּקְדִּים, Hiph., is not impossible in an intransitive sense, but probably Wellhausen is right in reading Pi, תְּקַדֵּם. The reading עדינו which the Greek suggests and Hoffmann and Wellhausen adopt is not so appropriate to the preceding verb as בעדינו of the text.
[358] The text reads _their breaches_, and some accordingly point סֻכַּת _hut_, as if it were the plural _huts_ (Hoffmann, _Z.A.T.W._, 1883, 125; Schwally, _id._, 1890, 226, n. 1; Guthe in Kautzsch's _Bibel_). The LXX. has the sing., and it is easy to see how the plur. fem. suffix may have risen from confusion with the following conjunction.