[1406] הך. Perhaps we should read אַכֶּה, I smite, with Matt. xxvi. 31.
[1407] Some take this as a promise: turn My hand towards the little ones.
[1408] LXX. Heb. אמרתי, but the ו has fallen from the front of it.
[1410] xii. 2, רַעַל, a noun not found elsewhere in O. T. We found the verb in Nahum ii. 4 (see above, p. [106]), and probably in Hab. ii. 16 for והערל (see above, p. 147, n. [412]): it is common in Aramean; other forms belong to later Hebrew (cf. Eckardt, p. 85). 3, שׂרט is used in classic Heb. only of intentional cutting and tattooing of oneself; in the sense of wounding which it has here it is frequent in Aramean. 3 has besides אבן מעמסה, not found elsewhere. 4 has three nouns terminating in ־ון, two of them—תמהון, panic, and עורון, judicial blindness—in O. T. only found here and in Deut. xxviii. 28, the former also in Aramean. 7 למען לא is also cited by Eckardt as used only in Ezek. xix. 6, xxvi. 20, and four times in Psalms.
[1411] xii. 6, תחתיה.
[1412] The text reads against Judah, as if it with Jerusalem suffered the siege of the heathen. But (1) this makes an unconstruable clause, and (2) the context shows that Judah was against Jerusalem. Therefore Geiger (Urschrift, p. 58) is right in deleting על, and restoring to the clause both sense in itself and harmony with the context. It is easy to see why על was afterwards introduced. LXX. καὶ ἐν τῇ Ἰουδαίᾳ.
[1413] Since Jerome, commentators have thought of a stone by throwing or lifting which men try their strength, what we call a “putting stone.” But is not the idea rather of one of the large stones half-buried in the earth which it is the effort of the husbandman to tear from its bed and carry out of his field before he ploughs it? Keil and Wright think of a heavy stone for building. This is not so likely.
[1414] שׂרט, elsewhere only in Lev. xxi. 5, is there used of intentional cutting of oneself as a sign of mourning. Nowack takes the clause as a later intrusion; but there is no real reason for this.
[1415] Heb. upon Judah will I keep My eyes open to protect him, and this has analogies, Job xiv. 3, Jer. xxxii. 19. But the reading its eyes, which is made by inserting a ו that might easily have dropped out through confusion with the initial ו of the next word, has also analogies (Isa. xlii. 7, etc.), and stands in better parallel to the next clause, as well as to the clauses describing the panic of the heathen.