in LXX, but is Hebrew, OID519, é-«,
your king (as A.V. in margin, Amos v. 26). The LXX, either as explanatory, or
perhaps through another reading Ὀσ ο ;
2 Kings xxiii. 13, here render by the name of the idol. Sayce also (Patriarchal Palestine, p. 258) renders ‘‘ Sikkuth your Malik,” z.e., the Babylonian god Sik- kuth also represents ‘‘ Malik,” the king, another Babylonian deity (= Moloch of the O.T.). Most commentators maintain that ver. 26 (Amos v.) is not in the original connected with ver. 25 as the LXX render, referring the latter verse back to Mosaic times. The LXX may have followed some tradition, but not only does the fact that the worship of Moloch was forbidden in the wilderness seem to indicate that its practice was a possibility, but there is also evidence that long be- fore the Exodus Babylonian influence had made itself felt in the West, and the statement of Amos may therefore mean that the Babylonian god was actually worshipped by the Israelites in the wil- derness (Sayce, 1. δ., p. 259). In margin of R.V. we have ‘shall take up,’ έ.ε.,
196
Βαβυλῶνος.”
44. Ἡ σκην τοῦ
αρτυρίου ἦν ἓν τοῖς πατράσιν
ἡμῶν ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ, καθὼς διετάξατο ὁ λαλῶν τῷ Μωσῇ, ποιῆσαι
carry away with you into exile (as a threat), while others take the verb not in a future but in a perfect sense, as refer- ring to the practice of the contemporaries of the prophet: ‘‘de suo tempore hec dicit Amos” (Blass). Siccuth or rather Saccuth is probably a proper name (a name given to Nin-ip, the warlike sun- god of Babylonia (Sayce)), and both it
and Kewan (Kaivan), 13, represent
Babylono-Assyrian deities (or a deity), see Schrader, Cun. Inscript. and the O. T., ταν πι Ε.Ε. SAVE, ee Se Atte ‘‘Chiun” in Hastings’ B.D., and Felten and Wendt, ix loco. For the thought expressed here that their gods should go into captivity with the people, cf Isa. xlvi. 2.—Kal τὸ ἄστρον . . . Ῥεμφάν, T.R.—but R.V. 'Ῥεφάν, on the reading see critical notes, and Wendt, p. 177.
For the Hebrew (Amos v. 26) ‘ie
Chiun, the LXX has Ῥαιφάν. How can we account for this? Probably LXX read the word not Chiun but Kewan
ae) (so in Syr. Pesh., Kewan = Saturn
“your idol), of which Ῥαιφάν is a corrup- tion through Καιφάν (cf similar change
of 5 into“) in Nah. i. 6, {Sy in LXX
ἀρχάς as if YPN, Robinson’s Gesenius, p.- 463). Kewan = Ka-ai-va-nu, an Assyrian name for the planet Saturn, called by the same name in Arabic and Persian (Hamburger, Real-Encyclo- padie des Fudentums, i., 2, 216, and Art. ‘“‘Chiun,” 1. s.); and this falls in perfectly with the Hebrew, ‘“‘the star of
your god” (your star-god) — or ον
3335, the previous word, DINQby,
““your images,” being placed after the two Hebrew words just quoted, cf LXX (but see also Sayce, wu. s., who renders ‘‘Chiun, your Zelem,’’ Zelem denot- ing another Babylonian deity =the image or disc of the sun). It seems plain at all events that both in the Hebrew and in the LXX reference is made to the divine honours paid to the god Saturn. In the words “ ye took up the star,” etc., the meaning is that they took up the star or image which represented the god Saturn—your god with some authorities
(so in LXX, see Blass, in loco). ὑμῶν, 1.é., the deity whom these Israelites thus placed on a level with Jehovah. If we
take {PD Chiun =the litter, or pedestal,
of your gods, 1.6., on which they were carried in procession, as if from }55 (a
meaning advocated by Dr. Robertson Smith), and not as a proper name at all: “the shrines of your images, the star of your God,” R.V. margin, Amos v. 26, we may still infer from the mention of a star that the reference is to the debase- ment of planet worship (so Jerome con- jectured Venus or Lucifer). It is to be noted that the vocalisation of Siccuth and Chiun is the same, and it has been recently suggested that for the form of these two names in our present text we are indebted to the misplaced zeal of the Massoretes, by the familiar trick of fitting the pointing of one word to the consonant skeleton of another—here the pointing is