[124] Zech. xiv. 5, and probably Isa. ix. 9, 10 (Eng.).
[125] iv. 11.
[126] Of course it is always possible to suspect—and let us by all means exhaust the possibilities of suspicion—that the title has been added by a scribe, who interpreted the forebodings of judgment which Amos expresses in the terms of earthquake as if they were the predictions of a real earthquake, and was anxious to show, by inserting the title, how they were fulfilled in the great convulsion of Uzziah's days. But to such a suspicion we have a complete answer. No later scribe, who understood the book he was dealing with, would have prefixed to it a title, with the motive just suspected, when in chap. iv. he read that an earthquake had just taken place. The very fact that such a title appears over a book, which speaks of the earthquake as past, surely attests the bona fides of the title. With that mention in chap. iv. of the earthquake as past, none would have ventured to say that Amos began to prophesy before the earthquake unless they had known this to be the case.
[127] Except for the later additions, not by Amos, to be afterwards noted.
[128] Cf. ii. 13; v. 11.; vi. 8, 10; vii. 9, 16; viii. 8 (?).
[130] Cornill: Der Israelitische Prophetismus. Five Lectures for the Educated Laity. 1894.
[131] Amos vii. 14. See further pp. [76] f.
[132] Khurbet Taḳûa', Hebrew Teḳôa', תְּקֹוע, from תקע, to blow a trumpet (cf. Jer. vi. 1, Blow the trumpet in Tekoa) or to pitch a tent. The latter seems the more probable derivation of the name, and suggests a nomadic origin, which agrees with the position of Tekoa on the borders of the desert. Tekoa does not occur in the list of the towns taken by Joshua. There are really no reasons for supposing that some other Tekoa is meant. The two that have been alleged are (1) that Amos exclusively refers to the Northern Kingdom, (2) that sycomores do not grow at such levels as Tekoa. These are dealt with on pp. [79] and [77] respectively.
[133] 2 Chron. xx. 20.