THE BOOK OF AMOS Part Two: Translation and Notes THE BOOK OF AMOS Part Two: Translation and Notes BY NORMAN H. SNAITH, M.A. Tutor in Old Testament Languages and Literature Wesley College, Headingley, Leeds THE EPWOR TH PRESS (EDGAR C. BARTON) 25-35 City Road, London, E.C.1 All rights reserved First published 1946 EIOOK PRODUCTION WARECONCMY STAN!WlD This book is published in complete conformity with the authori<:,ed economy standards Made in Great Britain I i. 1. The words ef Amos, who was among the shepherds from Tekoa-(words) which came to him in visions con­ cerning Israel, during the days ef U:a,iah king ef Judah and Jeroboam-ben-Joask king of Israel, two years before the earthquake. This verse, which is in prose, is a general title to the whole of the book, comparable to those found at the beginning of other books, e.g. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, etc. They are all the work of editors, and some of them contain more than one stratum. Because of the awkwardness of the two relative clauses, some scholars have thought the phrase 'who was among the shepherds from Tekoa' to be secondary, but it is the other relative clause which is the more difficult syntactically. It is probable that the reference to the reigns of the kings is secondary, and that the reference to the earthquake belongs to the earliest editorial stratum. shepherds (EVV, 'herdmen'). 1 Amos is described, not as an ordinary shepherd (ro'eh), but as a noqed. The word is found elsewhere in the Old Testament only in 2 Kings iii. 4, though it was probably the original reading for boqer (cattleman) in Amos vii. 14 (q.v.). Outside tlie Old Testament it is found with the mean­ ing 'shepherd' in Assyrian, Arabic, and Syriac. The Arabic naqqad is a dwarfed sheep with short legs, de­ spised for its smallness ('viler than a naqqad'), but 1The round brackets enclose insertions made to render the meaning more clear, and the square brackets enclose passages which are held to belong to times later than those of Amos of Tekoa. 5 valued for its abundant fine wool. The word noqed (shepherd, sheep-master, naqqad-keeper) is used of Mesha, King of Moab, not only in 2 Kings iii. 4, but also in line 30 of the Moabite Stone (Mesha's own account of his successful revolt against Israel, found in the desert in 1868). On account of the reference in 2 Kings, Jewish interpreters have maintained that Amos was a man of some considerable substance, a wealthy sheep-owner, who had property interests in the Shephelah (the lowlands west of the Judean hills) also, and voluntarily endured contumely, afflicting himself for the sins of Israel (so the Targum of vii. 14; but see the note there). came to him in visions (EVV, 'saw'). This is T. H. Robinson's translation, and expresses well the fact that the Hebrew word chazah has here a special meaning not expressed by the plain word 'saw'. When the word is used of seeing with the eyes, it tends to involve the idea of intensity, or that of appreciation, but the root is used mostly of a seer in his ecstasy or of perception with the intelligence. The noun chozeh (seer, vii. 12) tends to be used, to a greater extent than its companion ro'eh (1 Samuel ix. g) of 'auditory rather than strictly visual phenomena' (A. R. Johnson, The Cultic Prophet in Ancient Israel, 1944, p. 14. See also S. R. Driver, Joel and Amos, p. 126). This use is in line with the Arabic use of the verb chazay of perception with the inner vision, and of the Arabic noun chaz (astronomer, astrologer); cf. Isaiah xlvii. 13. Uzziah ('my strength isJah') is called Azariah (:Jah bath helped') in the Book of Kings. The difference in the Hebrew consists of the insertion of one consonant (with consequent adjustment of the voweillng), and 6 the existence of the two names may be due to no more than an accidental error of a very early copyist who remembered the opening phrase of 2 Chronicles xxvi. 7. King U zziah was the most successful of all the Judahite kings. Josephus (Ant. lud., IX, x, 3) charac­ terizes him as 'a good man, and by nature righteous and magnanimous, and high-minded in taking care of the affairs of his kingdom'. The chronology of the kings of both Israel and Judah presents grave diffi­ culties. See Oesterley and Robinson, History of Israel, vol. I, pp. 360, 46! f., where the suggested dates of Uzziah's reign are 786-57 B.c., with Jotham as co­ regent till Uzziah's death in 744 B.C. This reduces the length of his reign by ten years from the fifty-two of 2 Kings xv. 2 and 2 Chronicles xxvi. 2, which seems to be rather a lot, but it is certain that some such reduction must be made. Jeroboam-ben-Joash, so called to distinguish him from his predecessor of the same name, Jeroboam-ben­ Nebat. The English spelling of the name is due to the spelling of the Septuagint, the Hebrew being Torob'am. This is one of very many elements due to the fact that the first influence of the Hebrew Old Testament on the Christian Church was through the Greek. The Old Testament first became known to Christians in its Greek (Septuagint) form, and even though Jerome's third translation into Latin was from the Hebrew, yet Septuagint still maintains its strong influence in that translation. The Hebrew name is difficult, but prob­ ably means, 'Let the people multiply'. He was the most successful of all the Israelite kings, but his death led to a period of successive usurpations and unrest which never ceased until the kingdom itself came to an end with the deposition of Hoshea by the Assyrians in 724 B.C. 7 The earthquake. This particular earthquake is men­ tioned again, after many centuries, in Zechariah xiv. 5, and was evidently of catastrophic proportions, comparable to that of the year of the battle of Actium (31 B.c.), when, according to Josephus (Ant. Iud., XV, v, 2), ten thousand people were buried in the ruins. Josephus (Ant. Iud., IX, x, 4) gives a lurid and detailed description of an earthquake which he says took place on the occasion of King Uzziah's sudden seizure with leprosy. Assuming the dates of Oesterley and Robinson, this would make Amos's first assay in prophecy to be 757 B.c. On the other hand, Josephus says that 'a rent was made in the temple' on the occa­ sion of Uzziah's sudden sickness, and this reference has been associated with the movement of the founda­ tions mentioned in Isaiah vi. 4. This occurred (prob­ ably) in the year 744 B.c., the year of King Uzziah's death, so that 'a couple of years before the earthquake' would be 746 B.C. There is a very great deal to be said for the suggestion that there was an earthquake of some eeverity in the year of King Uzziah's death, and that this had to do with Isaiah's call to be a prophet. The first chapters of the Book of Isaiah have many references to an earthquake, ii. 19, 21, v. g (?), 14, 25; whilst iii. 8 may actually refer to a city at least in part ruined in an earthquake. It is evident that a disaster of catastrophic proportions has made a deep impression of the prophet's mind. The general tendency is to give the date of Amos's preaching as 'towards the middle of the eighth century' (G. A. Smith), say, from 765-50 B.C. (Wellhausen, Cheyne, ·Driver, Marti). Sellin and Gressmann suggest about 750 B.c., but Cripps advocates a date as late as 742 or 741 B.c. This seems to us to involve difficulties in the general chron­ ology of the kings, since it is difficult to allow as late a 8 date as 741 B.c. for the death ofJeroboam II. We find (with Edgehill) that there is no need to assume that either Hosea or Isaiah are definitely borrowing from Amos, since all three may be presumed to belong to a general movement of revival and of protest against the luxurious living of the well-to-do of the period. Both Amos and Hosea began their ministries before the death ofJeroboam, but there is no need to insist upon any long interval. On the other hand, the Assyrian threat evidently loomed largely in the mind of Amos. This did not arise till the accession by usurpation of Tiglath-pileser III in 745 B.c. He speedily showed his strength and determination by his defeat of the eastern Aramaeans, but not yet (when Amos began to preach) had he turned west. This he did in 743 B.c., so that we would agree with Zeijdner and Valeton in fixing the date of the preaching of Amos at 745-44 B.c. It seems to us that Cripps is sound in so far as he seeks to place the date as late as possible and certainly after the rise of the new Assyrian usurper, but to go below 744 B.C. involves us in serious difficulties in the dates of the later kings. II i. 2. He said: The Lord roars from Zion, and from Jerusalem He utters His voice; The pastures of the shepherds mourn, and the Ridge qf Carmel withers.