[311] Uncertain; Hitzig takes it as the apodosis of the previous clause: Ye shall have to take from him a present of corn, i.e. as alms.
[313] Cf. "Pecca fortiter."
[314] As, for instance, the prophet looks forward to in iii. 12.
[315] God of Hosts, perhaps an intrusion (?) between אדני and יהוה.
[316] I have ventured to rearrange the order of the clauses, which in the original is evidently dislocated.
[317] Lit. the house.
[318] Eph. v. 2; etc.
[319] No one doubts that this verse is interrogative. But the Authorised Eng. Ver. puts it in a form—Have ye brought unto Me? etc.—which implies blame that they did not do so. Ewald was the first to see that, as rendered above, an appeal to the forty years was the real intention of the verse. So after him nearly all critics, also the Revised Eng. Ver.: Did ye bring unto Me? On the whole question of the possibility of such an appeal see above, pp. [100] ff., and cf. Jer. vii. 22, which distinctly declares that in the wilderness God prescribed no ritual to Israel.
[320] Ver. 26 is very difficult, for both the text and the rendering of all the possible alternatives of it are quite uncertain. (1) As to the text, the present division into words must be correct; at least no other is possible. But the present order of the words is obviously wrong. For your images is evidently described by the relative clause which you have made, and ought to stand next it. What then is to be done with the two words that at present come between—star of your god? Are they both a mere gloss, as Robertson Smith holds, and therefore to be struck out? or should they precede the pair of words, כיון צלמיכם, which they now follow? This is the order of the text which the LXX. translator had before him, only for כון he misread רֵיפָן or רֵיוָן: καὶ ἀνελάβετε τὴν σκηνὴν τοῦ Μωλὸχ καὶ τὸ ἄστρον τοῦ Θεοῦ ὑμῶν Ῥαιφάν [Ῥεφάν, Q], τοὺς τύπους αὐτῶν [om. AQ] οὓς ἐποιήσατε ἑαυτοῖς. This arrangement has the further evidence in its favour, that it brings your god into proper parallel with your king. The Hebrew text would then run thus:—