tain nations are singled out by name. These are not Assyria and Babylon, which had long ago perished, nor the Samaritans, Moab and Ammon, which harassed the Jews in the early days of the Return from Babylon, but Tyre, Sidon, Philistia, Edom and Egypt. The crime of the first three is the robbery of Jewish treasures, not necessarily those of the Temple, and the selling into slavery of many Jews. The crime of Edom and Egypt is that they have shed the innocent blood of Jews. To what precise events these charges refer we have no means of knowing in our present ignorance of Syrian history after Nehemiah. That the chapter has no explicit reference to the cruelties of Artaxerxes Ochus in 360 would seem to imply for it a date earlier than that year. But it is possible that ver. 17 refers to that, the prophet refraining from accusing the Persians for the very good reason that Israel was still under their rule.

Another feature worthy of notice is that the Phoenicians are accused of selling Jews to the sons of the Jevanîm, Ionians or Greeks.1 The latter lie on the far horizon of the prophet,2 and we know from classical writers that from the fifth century onwards numbers of Syrian slaves were brought, to Greece. The other features of the chapter are borrowed from earlier prophets.

For, behold, in those days and in that time,

When I bring again the captivity3 of Judah and
Jerusalem,

I will also gather all the nations,

And bring them down to the Vale of Jehoshaphat;1

1 See above, p. 381, nn. 5, 6. Or turn again the fortunes.

2 Ver. 6b.

VOL. II.

'Jehovah-judges. See above, p. 432.

28

And I will enter into judgment with them there,
For My people and for My heritage Israel,
Whom they have scattered among the heathen,
And My land have they divided.

And they have cast lots for My people: 1

They have given a boy for a harlot,

And a girl have they sold for wine and drunk it.

And again, what are ye to Me, Tyre and Sidon and
all circuits of Philistia ? 3

Is it any deed of Mine ye are repaying?
Or are ye doing anything to Me ? +

Swiftly, speedily will I return your deed on your
head,

Who have taken My silver and My gold,

And My goodly jewels ye have brought into your palaces.

The sons of Judah and the sons of Jerusalem have ye sold to the sons of the Greeks,

In order that ye might set them as far as possible from their own border.

Lo! I will stir them up from the place to which ye have sold them,

And I will return your deed upon your head.

I will sell your sons and your daughters into the
hands of the sons of Judah,

And they shall sell them to the Shebans,"
To a nation far off; for Jehovah hath spoken.

1 See above, Obadiah 11 and Nahum iii. 10.

.for food במזון Oort suggests בזונה 2

' Gelîloth, the plural feminine of Galilee-the circuit (of the Gen

tiles). Hist. Geog., p. 413.

• Scil. that I must repay.

LXX. they shall give them into captivity.

Proclaim this among the heathen, hallow a war,
Wake up the warriors, let all the fighting-men
muster and go up.1

Beat your ploughshares into swords,
And your pruning-hooks into lances.
Let the weakling say, I am strong.

2 and come, all ye nations round about,

And gather yourselves together.

Thither bring down Thy warriors, Jehovah.

Let the heathen be roused,

And come up to the Vale of Jehoshaphat,

For there will I sit to judge all the nations round

about.

3

Put in the sickle, for ripe is the harvest.

Come, get you down; for the press is full,
The vats overflow, great is their wickedness.
Multitudes, multitudes in the Vale of Decision!
For near is Jehovah's day in the Vale of Decision.
Sun and moon have turned black,

And the stars withdrawn their shining.

Jehovah thunders from Zion,

And from Jerusalem gives forth His voice:
Heaven and earth do quake.

But Jehovah is a refuge to His people,

And for a fortress to the sons of Israel.

And ye shall know that I am Jehovah your God,
Who dwell in Zion, the mount of My holiness;
And Jerusalem shall be holy,

Strangers shall not pass through her again.

Technical use of hy, to go up to war.

ay, not found elsewhere, but supposed to mean gather. Ct. Zeph. ii. I. Others read W, hasten (Driver); Wellhausen 1ny. ba, only here and in Jer. 1. 16: other Heb. word for sickle hermes. Deut. xvi. 9, xxiii. 26). 'Driver, future.

And it shall be on that day

The mountains shall drop sweet wine,

And the hills be liquid with milk,

And all the channels of Judah flow with water;

A fountain shall spring from the house of Jehovah,
And shall water the Wady of Shittim.1

Egypt shall be desolation,

And Edom desert-land,

For the outrage done to the children of Judah,
Because they shed innocent blood in their land.
Judah shall abide peopled for ever,

And Jerusalem for generation upon generation.
And I will declare innocent their blood, which I have
not declared innocent,

By Jehovah who dwelleth in Zion.

Not the well-known scene of early Israel's camp across Jordan, but it must be some dry and desert valley near Jerusalem (so most comm.). Nowack thinks of the Wadi el Sant on the way to Askalon, but this did not need watering and is called the Vale of Elah.

" Merx applies this to the Jews of the Messianic era. LXX. read ἐκζητήσω : 'nop. So Syr. Cf. 2 Kings ix. 7.

=

Steiner Shall I leave their blood unpunished? I will not leave it unpunished. Nowack deems this to be unlikely, and suggests, I will avenge their blood; I will not leave unpunished the shedders of it. 'Heb. construction is found also in Hosea xii. 5.

INTRODUCTION TO THE PROPHETS OF THE GRECIAN PERIOD

(331-B.C.)