[139] LXX. take this also as imperative, do judgment, and so co-ordinate to the other clauses.
[141] Some, however, think the prophet is speaking in prospect of the Chaldean invasion of a few years later. This is not so likely, because he pictures the overthrow of Niniveh as subsequent to the invasion of Philistia, while the Chaldeans accomplished the latter only after Niniveh had fallen.
[142] According to Herodotus.
[143] ver. 7, LXX.
[144] The measure, as said above, is elegiac: alternate lines long with a rising, and short with a falling, cadence. There is a play upon the names, at least on the first and last—“Gazzah” or “‘Azzah ‘Azubah”—which in English we might reproduce by the use of Spenser’s word for “dreary”: For Gaza ghastful shall be. “‘Eḳron te’aḳer.” LXX. Ἀκκαρων ἐκριζωθήσεταὶ (B), ἐκριφήσεται (A). In the second line we have a slighter assonance, ‘Ashkĕlōn lishĕmamah. In the third the verb is יְגָרְשׁוּהָ; Bacher (Z.A.T.W., 1891, 185 ff.) points out that גֵּרַשׁ is not used of cities, but of their populations or of individual men, and suggests (from Abulwalid) יירשוה, shall possess her, as “a plausible emendation.” Schwally (ibid., 260) prefers to alter to יְשָׁרְשׁוּהָ, with the remark that this is not only a good parallel to תעקר, but suits the LXX. ἐκριφήσεται.—On the expression by noon see Davidson, N. H. and Z., Appendix, Note 2, where he quotes a parallel expression, in the Senjerli inscription, of Asarhaddon: that he took Memphis by midday or in half a day (Schrader). This suits the use of the phrase in Jer. xv. 8, where it is parallel to suddenly.
[145] Canaan omitted by Wellhausen, who reads עליך for עליכם. But as the metre requires a larger number of syllables in the first line of each couplet than in the second, Kĕna’an should probably remain. The difficulty is the use of Canaan as synonymous with Land of the Philistines. Nowhere else in the Old Testament is it expressly applied to the coast south of Carmel, though it is so used in the Egyptian inscriptions, and even in the Old Testament in a sense which covers this as well as other lowlying parts of Palestine.
[146] An odd long line, either the remains of two, or perhaps we should take the two previous lines as one, omitting Canaan.
[147] So LXX.: Hebrew text and the sea-coast shall become dwellings, cots (כְּרֹת) of shepherds. But the pointing and meaning of כרת are both conjectural, and the sea-coast has probably fallen by mistake into this verse from the next. On Kereth and Kerethim as names for Philistia and the Philistines see Hist. Geog., p. 171.
[148] LXX. adds of the sea. So Wellhausen, but unnecessarily and improbably for phonetic reasons, as sea has to be read in the next line.