[1217] Zeph. i. 14; “Mal.” iii. 2.
[1218] So (and not elders) in contrast to children.
[1219] Canopy or pavilion, bridal tent.
[1220] למשל בם, which may mean either rule over them or mock them, but the parallelism decides for the latter.
[1221] A.V., adhering to the Massoretic text, in which the verbs are pointed for the past, has evidently understood them as instances of the prophetic perfect. But “this is grammatically indefensible”: Driver, in loco; see his Heb. Tenses, § 82, Obs. Calvin and others, who take the verbs of ver. 18 as future, accept those of the next verse as past and with it begin the narrative. But if God’s answer to His people’s prayer be in the past, so must His jealousy and pity. All these verbs are in the same sequence of time. Merx proposes to change the vowel-points of the verbs and turn them into futures. But see above, p. [395]. ver. 21 shows that Jehovah’s action is past, and Nowack points out the very unusual character of the construction that would follow from Merx’s emendation. Ewald, Hitzig, Kuenen, Robertson Smith, Davidson, Robertson, Steiner, Wellhausen, Driver, Nowack, etc., all take the verbs in the past.
[1222] This is scarcely a name for the locusts, who, though they might reach Palestine from the N.E. under certain circumstances, came generally from E. and S.E. But see above, p. [397]: so Kuenen, Wellhausen, Nowack. W. R. Smith suggests the whole verse as an allegorising gloss. Hitzig thought of the locusts only, and rendered הצפוני ὁ τυφωνικός, Acts xxvii. 14; but this is not proved.
[1223] I.e. the Dead Sea (Ezek. xlvii. 18; Zech. xiv. 8) and the Mediterranean.
[1224] The construction shows that the clause preceding this, ועלה באשו, is a gloss. So Driver. But Nowack gives the other clause as the gloss.
[1225] Nah. iii. 17; Exod. x. 19.
[1226] De Civitate Dei, III. 31.