[271] Singular as in LXX., and not plural as in the M.T. and English versions.
[272] Juvenal, Satires, I.
[273] Vision of Piers Plowman. Burgages=tenements.
[274] Or The Enemy, and that right round the Land!
[275] In Damascus on a couch: on a Damascus couch: on a Damascus-cloth couch: or Damascus-fashion on a couch—alternatives all equally probable and equally beyond proof. The text is very difficult, nor do the versions give help. (1) The consonants of the word before a couch spell in Damascus, and so the LXX. take it. This would be in exact parallel to the in Samaria of the previous half of the clause. But although Jeroboam II. is said to have recovered Damascus (2 Kings xiv. 28), this is not necessarily the town itself, of whose occupation by Israel we have no evidence, while Amos always assumes it to be Aramean, and here he is addressing Israelites. Still retaining the name of the city, we can take it with couch as parallel, not to in Samaria, but to on the side of a diwan; in that case the meaning may have been a Damascus couch (though as the two words stand it is impossible to parse them, and Gen. xv. 2 cannot be quoted in support of this, for it is too uncertain itself, being possibly a gloss, though it is curious that as the two passages run the name Damascus should be in the same strange grammatical conjunction in each), or possibly Damascus-fashion on a couch, which (if the first half of the clause, as some maintain, refers to some delicate or affected posture then come into fashion) is the most probable rendering. (2) The Massoretes have pointed, not bedammeseq = in Damascus, but bedemesheq, a form not found elsewhere, which some (Ges., Hitz., Ew., Rev. Eng. Ver., etc.) take to mean some Damascene stuff (as perhaps our Damask and the Arabic dimshaq originally meant, though this is not certain), e.g. silk or velvet or cushions. (3) Others rearrange the text. E.g. Hoffmann (Z. A. T. W., III. 102) takes the whole clause away from ver. 12 and attaches it to ver. 13, reading O those who sit in Samaria on the edge of the diwan, and in Damascus on a couch, hearken and testify against the house of Jacob. But, as Wellhausen points out, those addressed in ver. 13 are the same as those addressed in ver. 9. Wellhausen prefers to believe that after the words children of Israel, which end a sentence, something has fallen out. The LXX. translator, who makes several blunders in the course of this chapter, instead of translating ערשׂ couch, the last word of the verse, merely transliterates it into ἱερεῖς!!
[276] Cf. vi. 4: that lie on ivory diwans and sprawl on their couches.
[277] Van Lennep, Bible Lands and Customs, p. 460.
[279] The words for hook in Hebrew—the two used above, צִנּוֹת and סִירות; and a third, חוֹחַ—all mean originally thorns, doubtless the first hooks of primitive man; but by this time they would signify metal hooks—a change analogous to the English word pen.
[280] Cf. Isa. xxxvii. 29; 2 Chron. xxxiii. 11. On the use fish-hooks, Job xl. 26 (Heb.), xli. 2 (Eng.); Ezek. xxix. 4.