Chapter XIV
. on “Edom and Israel.”
[1004] Heb. xii. 16.
[1005] Romans ix. 13. The citation is from the LXX.: τὸν Ἰακὼβ ἠγάπησα, τὸν δὲ Ἠσαῦ ἐμίσησα.
[1006] This was mainly _after_ the beginning of exile. Shortly before that Deut. xxiii. 7 says: _Thou shalt not abhor an Edomite, for he is thy brother_.
[1007] So even so recently as 1888, Stade, _Gesch. des Volkes Israel_, II., p. 112.
[1008] See above, p. 169. This interpretation is there said to be Wellhausen’s; but Cheyne, in a note contributed to the _Z.A.T.W._, 1894, p. 142, points out that Grätz, in an article “Die Anfänge der Nabatäer-Herrschaft” in the _Monatschrift für Wissenschaft u. Geschichte des Judenthums_, 1875, pp. 60-66, had already explained “Mal.” i. 1-5 as describing the conquest of Edom by the Nabateans. This is adopted by Buhl in his _Gesch. der Edomiter_, p. 79.
[1009] The verb in the feminine indicates that the population of Edom is meant.
[1010] i. 6.
[1011] Psalm ciii. 9. In Psalm lxxiii. 15 believers are called _His children_; but elsewhere sonship is claimed only for the king—ii. 7, lxxxix. 27 f.
[1012] Hosea xi. 1 ff. (though even here the idea of discipline is present) and Isa. lxiii. 16.
[1013] iii. 4.
[1014] Isa. lxiv. 8, cf. Deut. xxxii. 11 where the discipline of Israel by Jehovah, shaking them out of their desert circumstance and tempting them to their great career in Palestine, is likened to the father-eagle’s training of his new-fledged brood to fly: A.V. mother-eagle.
[1015] Cf. Cheyne, _Origin of the Psalter_, p. 305, n. O.
[1016] Vol. I., Chap. IX.
[1017] Or used polluted things with respect to Thee. For similar construction see Zech. vii. 5: צמתוני. This in answer to Wellhausen, who, on the ground that the phrase gives גאל a wrong object and destroys the connection, deletes it. Further he takes מגאל, not in the sense of pollution, but as equivalent to נבזה, _despised_.
[1018] Obviously _in their hearts = thinking_.
[1019] LXX. _is there no harm?_
[1020] _Pacify the face of_, as in Zechariah.
[1021] So LXX. Heb. _is great_, but the phrase is probably written by mistake from the instance further on: _is glorified_ could scarcely have been used in the very literal version of the LXX. unless it had been found in the original.
[1022] מקום, here to be taken in the sense it bears in Arabic of _sacred place_. See on Zeph. ii. 11: above, p. 64, n. 159.
[1023] Wellhausen deletes מגש as a gloss on מקטר, and the vau before מנחה.
[1024] Heb. _say_.
[1025] Heb. also has ניבו, found besides only in Keri of Isa. lvii. 19. But Robertson Smith (_O.T.J.C._, 2, p. 444) is probably right in considering this an error for נבזה, which has kept its place after the correction was inserted.
[1026] This clause is obscure, and comes in awkwardly before that which follows it. Wellhausen omits.
[1027] גָּזוּל. Wellhausen emends אֶת־הָעִוֵּר borrowing the first three letters from the previous word. LXX. ἁρπάγματα.
[1028] LXX.
[1029] Cf. Lev. iii. 1, 6.
[1030] Quoted by Pusey, _in loco_.
[1031] See Cheyne, _Origin of the Psalter_, 292 and 305 f.
[1032] _Isaiah i.—xxxix._ (Expositor’s Bible), p. 188.
[1033] See most admirable remarks on this subject in Archdeacon Wilson’s _Essays and Addresses_, No. III. “The Need of giving Higher Biblical Teaching, and Instruction on the Fundamental Questions of Religion and Christianity.” London: Macmillan, 1887.
[1034] Doubtful. LXX. adds καὶ διεσκεδάσω τῆν εὐλόγιαν ὑμῶν κὰι οὐκ ἔσται ἐν ὑμῖν: obvious redundancy, if not mere dittography.
[1035] An obscure phrase, הִנְנִי גֹּדֵעַ לָכֶם אֶת־הַזֶרַע, _Behold, I rebuke you the seed_. LXX. _Behold_, _I separate from you the arm_ or _shoulder_, reading זְרֹעַ for זֶרַע and perhaps גֹּדֵעַ for גֹּעֵר, both of which readings Wellhausen adopts, and Ewald the former. The reference may be to the arm of the priest raised in blessing. Orelli reads _seed = posterity_. It may mean the whole _seed_ or _class_ or _kind_ of the priests. The next clause tempts one to suppose that את־הזרע contains the verb of this one, as if scattering something.
[1036] Heb. וְנָשָָׂא אֶתְכֶם אֵלָיו, _and one shall bear you to it_. Hitzig: filth shall be cast on them, and they on the filth.
[1037] Others would render _My covenant being with Levi_. Wellhausen: _for My covenant was with Levi_. But this new Charge or covenant seems contrasted with a former covenant in the next verse.
[1038] Num. xxv. 12.
[1039] This sentence is a literal translation of the Hebrew. With other punctuation Wellhausen renders _My covenant was with him, life and peace I gave them to him, fear..._
[1040] Or _peace_, שָׁלוֹם.
[1041] Or _revelation_, Torah.
[1042] וְנַם־אֲנִי: cf. Amos iv.
[1043] See above, p. 344.
[1044] Here occur the two verses and a clause, 11-13_a_, upon the foreign marriages, which seem to be an intrusion.
[1045] See Vol. I., p. 259.
[1046] Heb. literally: _And not one did, and a remnant of spirit was his_; which (1) A.V. renders: _And did not he make one? Yet he had the residue of the spirit_, which Pusey accepts and applies to Adam and Eve, interpreting the second clause as _the breath of life_, by which Adam _became a living soul_ (Gen. ii. 7). In Gen. i. 27 Adam and Eve are called one. In that case the meaning would be that the law of marriage was prior to that of divorce, as in the words of our Lord, Matt. xix. 4-6. (2) The Hebrew might be rendered, _Not one has done this who had any spirit left in him_. So Hitzig and Orelli. In that case the following clauses of the verse are referred to Abraham. _“But what about the One?”_ (LXX. insert _ye say_ after _But_)—the one who did put away his wife. Answer: _He was seeking a Divine seed_. The objection to this interpretation is that Abraham did not cast off the wife of his youth, Sarah, but the foreigner Hagar. (3) Ewald made a very different proposal: _And has not One created them, and all the Spirit_ (cf. Zeph. i. 4) _is His? And what doth the One seek? A Divine seed._ So Reinke. Similarly Kirkpatrick (_Doct. of the Proph._, p. 502): _And did not One make_[you both]_? And why_ [did]_the One _[do so]_? Seeking a goodly seed_. (4) Wellhausen goes further along the same line. Reading הלא for ולא, and וישאר for ושאר, and לנו for לו, he translates: _Hath not the same God created and sustained your (? our) breath? And what does He desire? A seed of God._
[1047] Literally: _let none be unfaithful to the wife of thy youth_, a curious instance of the Hebrew habit of mixing the pronominal references. Wellhausen’s emendation is unnecessary.
[1048] See Gesenius and Ewald for Arabic analogies for the use of clothing = wife.
[1049] See above, p. 340.
[1050] Wellhausen omits.
[1051] Heb. עֵר וְעֹנֶה, _caller and answerer_. But LXX. read עד, _witness_ (see iii. 5), though it pointed it differently.
[1052] 13_a_, _But secondly ye do this_, is the obvious addition of the editor in order to connect his intrusion with what follows.
[1053] See above, pp. 311, 313 f.
[1054] Delete _silver_: the longer LXX. text shows how easily it was added.
[1055] _Made an end of_, reading the verb as Piel (Orelli). LXX. _refrain from_. _Your sins_ are understood, the sins which have always characterised the people. LXX. connects the opening of the next verse with this, and with a different reading of the first word translates _from the sins of your fathers_.
[1056] Heb. קבע, only here and Prov. xxii. 32. LXX. read עקב, _supplant_, _cheat_, which Wellhausen adopts.
[1057] תְּרוּמָה, _the heave offering_, the tax or tribute given to the sanctuary or priests and associates with the tithes, as here in Deut. xii. 11, to be eaten by the offerer (_ib._ 17), but in Ezekiel by the priests (xliv. 30); taken by the people and the Levites to the Temple treasury for the priests (Neh. x. 38, xii. 44): corn, wine and oil. In the Priestly Writing it signifies the part of each sacrifice which was the priests’ due. Ezekiel also uses it of the part of the Holy Land that fell to the prince and priests.
[1058] טֵרֶף in its later meaning: cf. Job xxiv. 5; Prov. xxxi. 15.
[1059] _I.e._ locust.
[1060] _A dew of lights._ See _Isaiah i.—xxxix._ (Expositor’s Bible), pp. 448 f.
[1061] So LXX.; Heb. _then_.
[1062] Ezek. xiii. 9.
[1063] חשב, _to think_, _plan_, has much the same meaning as here in Isa. xiii. 17, xxxiii. 8, liii. 3.
[1064] Heb. _when I am doing_; but in the sense in which the word is used of Jehovah’s decisive and final doing, Psalms xx., xxxii., etc.
[1065] Hab. i. 8.
[1066] See note to Amos vi. 4: Vol. I., p. 174, n. 3.
[1067] Or _dust_.
_JOEL_
_The Day of Jehovah is great and very awful, and who may abide it?_
_But now the oracle of Jehovah—Turn ye to Me with all your heart, and with fasting and with weeping and with mourning. And rend your hearts and not your garments, and turn to Jehovah your God, for gracious and merciful is He, long-suffering and abounding in love._
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