Amos 1:3

For three transgressions of Damascus, and for four Similarly Amos 1:6; Amos 1:9; Amos 1:11; Amos 1:13, Amos 2:1; Amos 2:4; Amos 2:6. The numbers are of course to be understood not literally, but typically, a concrete number being chosen for the sake of assisting the imagination: three would be a sufficient number, but they are augmented by a fourth, conceived implicitly as an aggravation of the three; the measure of guilt, in other words, is not merely full, it is more than full. "The three transgressions stand for a whole sum of sin, which had not yet brought down extreme punishment; the fourth was the crowning sin, after which God would no longer spare" (Pusey). For similar examples of "ascending enumeration," in which the second number expresses usually something (as the case may be) more complete, or sufficient, or severe, than the first, see Psalms 62:11; Job 33:14; Job 40:5 (once, twice); Job 33:29 (twice, thrice); Hosea 6:2, Sir 23:16; Sir 26:28; Sir 50:25 (two and three); Proverbs 30:15; Proverbs 30:18; Proverbs 30:21; Proverbs 30:29, Sir 26:5 (three and four); Proverbs 6:16; Job 5:19 (six and seven); Micah 5:5; Ecclesiastes 11:2 (seven and eight); Sir 25:7 (nine and ten).

transgressions in the English word, the metaphor is that of oversteppinga line or law; in the Hebrew, as the use of the corresponding verb, in 1 Kings 12:19; 2 Kings 1:1 al.clearly shews, it is that of rebellionagainst authority. So always in this word. -Transgress" represents etymologically -âbhar,to go beyond, overstep, in Deuteronomy 17:2; Joshua 7:11; Numbers 22:18; Proverbs 8:29, and occasionally besides; but a subst. "transgression" (-abhçrâh) is found first in post-Biblical Hebrew.

I will not turn awaythe punishment thereof lit. I will not turn it back, the object denoted by the pronoun being, as is sometimes the case in Hebrew poetry, understood from the context: comp. Numbers 23:20; Isaiah 43:13 (both with the same word), Isaiah 48:16. Here, the object to be supplied is the destined punishment, or doom.

because&c. introducing a typical example of the "transgressions" of Damascus, sufficient to justify the penalty threatened.

threshed trodden. Our modes of -threshing" are so different from that alluded to here that the use of the same term conveys a very inaccurate idea of what is intended. The primitive method of threshing still, indeed, in use in the East was to tread outthe corn by the feet of animals (Deuteronomy 25:4; Jeremiah 50:11; Micah 4:13 "Arise, and thresh(tread), O daughter of Zion; for I will make thy horn iron, and thy hoofsI will make bronze"); and the same verb was still used, even when instruments, such as those described in the next note but one, came to be employed.

Gilead the rough and rugged, but picturesque, hill-country, extending from the deep glen of the Jarmuk on the North, to the valley of Heshbon or perhaps even to the Arnon on the South. Lying, as it did, on the debateable border-line between Syria and Israel (cf. Genesis 31:44-53), it was naturally the first to suffer in the Syrian incursions.

with sharp threshing-boards of iron(or of basalt)] boards some 7 ft. long by 3 ft. broad, armed underneath with jagged stones, and sometimes with knives as well, which, being weighted and drawn over the corn by oxen, chop up the ears, and separate the grain from the chaff. Ironmay be meant literally; or (as in Deuteronomy 3:11) it may denote the hard black basalt which abounds in the volcanic region East of Jordan: this is even at the present day called -iron" by the natives, and is also used for the teeth of threshing-boards. See further the Additional Note, p. 227. The reference is, no doubt, to cruelties perpetrated by Hazael, when he invaded Gilead during the reigns of Jehu and Jehoahaz, c. 842 802 b.c.: comp. 2 Kings 8:12 (Elisha's prediction to Hazael of the cruelties which he would perpetrate against Israel); 2 Kings 10:32 f. (which states how, in the days of Jehu, Hazael smote "all the land of Gilead, the Gadites, the Reubenites, and the Manassites, from Aroer that is by the Wady of Arnon, and Gilead and Bashan"); and 2 Kings 13:7 (where he is said to have left Jehoahaz only "fifty horsemen, and ten chariots, and ten thousand footmen; for the king of Syria had destroyed them, and made them like dust in respect of threshing(treading)." The Syrians (if the present passage is to be understood literally) had during these wars dragged instruments of torture, such as are here alluded to, over their Israelitish prisoners. But even if the expression be meant figuratively, cruel and inhuman conduct will still be denoted by it.

Additional Note on Chap. Amos 1:3 (the threshing-board)

Two principal forms of threshing-instrument are in use at present in the East. (1) A threshing- board(or - drag), usually about 7 ft. long by 3 ft. broad, consisting of two oblong planks, in Damascus generally of walnut-wood, fastened together by two wooden cross-pieces, slightly curved upwards in front (in the direction in which the instrument would be drawn), and set underneath crosswise with sharp pieces of hard

A Modern Syrian Threshing-board (from Nowack's Hebräische Archäologie, 1894, i. p. 233).

stone or basalt (such as is common in the volcanic region E. of Jordan): the driver stands upon it; and being drawn round the threshing-floor [205] by a yoke of oxen it not only shells out the grain, but grinds the straw itself into chaff [206]. This is in use in Syria and Palestine: in Syria it is called el-lôaḥ, "the plank," or el-lôaḥ el-muḥajjar, "the stoned plank"; in Jerusalem it is called nauraj[207], a name nearly the same as that borne by the Hebrew implement (môrâg) in Isaiah 41:15; 2 Samuel 24:22 [208]. (2) A threshing- wagon, consisting of a low-built oblong wagon-frame, moving upon three parallel rollers, each armed with three or four circular iron blades with toothed edges; a seat upon the frame is arranged for the driver, and the instrument is drawn similarly by oxen. Jerome describes an instrument like this in his Comm. on Is. 25:20, "Sunt autem carpenta ferrata, rotis per medium in serrarum modum se volventibus, quae stipula conterunt, et comminuunt in paleas"; similarly on Isaiah 28:27, and on the present passage ("genus plaustri, quod rotis subter ferreis atque dentatis volvitur"). This is not used in Palestine, and is rare in Syria (except in the north); but it is the usual instrument in Egypt, where it is called by the same name that the threshing-board bears in Palestine, nauraj[209]. Both instruments are alluded to in the O.T.: the drag(or board), under the same name ḥârûtz(properly something sharpened) which it has in Amos 1:3, in Isaiah 28:27, "For not with a sharp threshing-board is Nigella-seed [Tristram, N. H. B.p. 444] trodden out; nor is the wheel of a (threshing-) wagon turned about upon cummin," Job 41:30 (Heb. 22), "he (the crocodile) spreadeth a ḥârûtzupon the mire" (i.e. he leaves by his sharp scales an impression upon it, as though a sharp threshing-board had been there), 2 Samuel 12:31 (ḥârîtz[210]); and under the name môrâgin 2 Samuel 24:22; Isaiah 41:15 (where ḥârûtzqualifies it as an adj.), "Behold, I make thee (Israel) as a sharp new threshing-drag(מורנ חרוץ חדש), possessing edges [211]; thou shalt thresh (tread) mountains and beat them small, and shalt make the hills as chaff [212] "; the wagonin Isaiah 28:27 (just quoted), 28 (where read "the roller of his (threshing-) wagon" for the obscure "wheel of his cart" of the English Versions), Proverbs 20:26.

[205] This consists of a circular piece of ground, in which the earth has been firmly trodden down (הדררך, Jeremiah 51:33) by the feet; in the centre the ears and stalks of corn are piled up in a large heap (kedís, the Heb. גדיש, Exodus 22:5 (6); Judges 15:5; Job 5:26); at threshing-time the ears and stalks are pulled down from this heap, to form a ṭarḥa, or layer (the stratumof the Romans), round it, some 7 feet broad by 2 feet deep; over this the threshing-drag is drawn, and the mingled mass of corn chaff and straw which remains when the process is completed is thrown into a new heap to be ready for winnowing. See the illustration in Thomson, The Land and the Book, 1881 (South Pal.), p. 150 f.; Smith, D.B.2 I. 66.

[206] This was the Greek τρίβολα (2 Samuel 12:31, LXX.), the Lat. tribulum, or "rubber"; Vergil's trahea, or "drag," must have been a similar instrument: cf. G.1.164 ("tribulaque traheaeque").

[207] Among the common people mauraj(corresponding to the old Hebrew form) is also heard (P.E.F.Q.St. 1894, p. 114).

[208] The threshing-drag is still called by the same name (môräg) in the Ḳalamûn mountains about Ma-lûlâ: but Wetzstein never heard this word in Syria, nor is noreg(or nauraj) in use there.

[209] Lane, Mod. Egyptians5, 11, 28; Arab. Lex. p. 2783. See more fully Wetzstein's very instructive essay on "Die Syrische Dreschtafel", in Bastian's Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1873, p. 271 ff.; and Anderlind, "Ackerbau und Thierzucht in Syrien," in the Ztsch. des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins, IX. (1886), pp. 41, 44.

[210] R.V. harrows. It is, however, uncertain whether the text here really imputes to David the cruelty implied by the English Versions: see R.V. marg., and the present writer's Notes on the Hebrew Text of Samuel, ad loc.

[211] Lit. mouths(as of a sword, Psalms 149:6).

[212] LXX. represent môrâgby τροχοὶ (in Isaiah 41:15; τροχὺς ἁμάξης ἀλοῶντας καινούς), thinking of the wheels of the threshing-wagon. The Syr. גרגרא (from gârar, to drag along) denotes both instruments: see the descriptions of the Syriac lexicographers quoted by Payne Smith, Thes. Syr. col. 767: it is mentioned as an instrument of torture by Bar Hebraeus, Chron. p. 142.