Amos 6:10

And a man's uncle, etc.] RV is a little different: 'And when a man's uncle' (RM 'kinsman') 'shall take him up, even he that burneth him, to bring out the bones out of the house, and shall say unto him that is in the innermost parts of the house, Is there yet any with thee? and he shall say, No; then,' etc. Taking this difficult v. as it here stands, we must remember that it was the duty of the next of kin to see to the disposal of the body, and that, whilst interment was the almost universal rule, cremation might be resorted to in special circumstances (1 Samuel 31:12). The plague-stricken man in the inner rooms of the house must not defile the Lord's name by uttering it in the immediate presence of death, as a Mohammedan may not say his prayers in an unclean spot. A simpler form of the v., suggested in part by LXX, would be: 'A remnant shall be left' (in the plague-swept house), 'and when men break through to bring out the bones from the house it shall be said to him who is in the recesses of the house, Is there yet any with thee? and he shall say, None.'

12. Read, 'Shall horses run upon the cliff? Will a man plough the sea with oxen? 'No! but in moral and religious matters they will do things as absurd as these.

13. No alteration of the original is required to obtain the following: 'Ye which rejoice in Lo-Debar, which say, Have we not taken for us Karnaim by our own strength?' For Lo-Debar see 2 Samuel 9:4; 2 Samuel 17:27, and for Karnaim Genesis 14:5; Deuteronomy 1:4; Joshua 21:27; Joshua 1Ma 5:26 : both towns lay E. of the Jordan and may have been taken by Jeroboam II.

A great change had come over the fortunes of Israel during the reigns of Joash of Israel and his son, Jeroboam II. Israel had been reduced to a very low ebb in the time of Jehoahaz by the repeated and successful assaults of the Syrians (2 Kings 13:7; 2 Kings 13:22). With the advent of Joash all this was altered. He recovered ten cities which Hazael had taken, and gained three victories (2 Kings 13:25). Jeroboam II carried these successes still further. 'He restored the border of Israel from the entering in of Hamath unto the sea of the Arabah' (RV) and appears to have been uniformly victorious. This was largely due to the fact that he never came into collision with Assyria, whereas the power of Syria had been greatly reduced by the campaigns of Shalmaneser III and Assurdan.

Such a collision was, however, inevitable (Amos 6:14). The earliest contact between Israel and Assyria of which we have any record was when Ahab, as an ally of Hadadezer of Damascus, shared in the disastrous defeat inflicted on the Syrian king by Shalmaneser II at the battle of Karkar, 854 b.c. On the famous obelisk of black basalt, now in the British Museum, ambassadors from Jehu are represented bringing tribute to the same Assyrian monarch at Hamath, 842 b.c. Tiglath-pileser III, called in the Bible 'Pul,' marched against Northern Syria in 738 b.c. and Menahem gave the king a thousand talents of silver, 'that his hand might be with him to confirm the kingdom in his hand' (2 Kings 15:19). In 732 b.c. Tiglath-pileser III invaded Israel, took a number of towns, including the whole district of Naphtali (2 Kings 15:29), and compelled Pekah, king of Israel, to pay a considerable tribute. The kingdom of Israel was destroyed in the year, 722 b.c., when Samaria was taken by Sargon in the first month of his reign, after a siege which was begun by his predecessor, Shalmaneser IV, and had lasted three years.