Amos 1:3-5

Damascus. It is Yahweh who speaks by the mouth of the prophets. The mention of Damascus, the capital of the Aramaean or Syrian kingdom, would at once arrest attention, for until recently Israel had been engaged in a severe struggle (p. 69) with this kingdom (Damascus stands here for the whole region). Damascus, then, had committed sins (lit. rebellions) not once or twice or thrice, but again and again (three, yea, four). It might look as though an earlier threat of punishment had been forgotten by Yahweh and the sentence of doom revoked. But such was not the case (I will not turn it back, a formula repeated in Amos 1:6; Amos 1:9; Amos 1:11; Amos 1:13; Amos 2:1; Amos 2:4; Amos 2:6). For it is typical of the brutal crimes of the Syrians that they threshed Gilead with sharp threshing instruments of iron (or basalt). When this barbarity was perpetrated is not known. It may have been done by Hazael when he conquered Gilead in the reigns of Jehu and Jehoahaz (2 Kings 10:32 f; 2 Kings 13:3; 2 Kings 13:7; for the same kind of barbarity cf. 2 Samuel 12:31; Proverbs 20:26). But in any case, in punishment of their brutality Yahweh (Amos 1:4) will send fire (a symbol of war; cf. Deuteronomy 4:24; Judges 9:20) into the house of Hazael, i.e. the dynasty founded by that usurper (2 Kings 8:15), and it shall devour the paces of Benhadad, i.e. Hazael's son and successor, Benhadad III (2 Kings 13:24). The inhabitants (Amos 1:5) of the valley of Aven, the broad plain that stretched between the two ranges of Lebanon and Hermon (cf. Joshua 11:17; the Coele-Syria of the Greeks, modern el-Bekâ-), will be cut off from their pleasant abode. The same fate will befall the rulers of those who hold the sceptre at Beth-eden (mg.), probably the Assyrian Bî t-adini, a district on both sides of the Euphrates about 200 miles NNE. of Damascus. Damascus itself will suffer; its defences, depicted as the bars which secured the gates of the city (cf. Deuteronomy 3:5; Nahum 3:13), will be broken. Then the people of Syria (Aram), or those who are left of them, will go into exile to Kir, that is, to their original home (Amos 9:7). 2 Kings 16:9 also tells us that the Syrians were deported to Kir, after Tiglath-pileser IV had attacked Damascus and slain Rezin, its king (732 B.C.). Its situation is unknown. It is possible that the name should be pronounced Kor, and has some connexion with the Karians mentioned by Arrian (III. viii. 5) along with the Sittakenians (Winckler, Forsch., ii. 254ff.).

Amos 1:3. threshing instruments: boards armed underneath with bits of stone or iron (Thomson, i. 150ff.; Driver, pp. 130, 227).

Amos 1:4. palaces: we must not be misled by the word, which sometimes means fortress or citadel (1 Kings 16:18).

Amos 1:5. the inhabitant: mg. may be correct, him that sitteth. Aven: LXX has On for Aven (lit. wickedness, idolatry). On is the Egyptian name for Heliopolis in Egypt, and in Ezekiel 30:17 it is pointed Aven. Possibly the name On was applied also to Baalbek in Syria, since this too was called Heliopolis as being another centre of sun-worship. holdeth the sceptre: or possibly, upholds the people (lit. the tribe, another meaning of shebet; cf. LXX).