Глава 8

1–3. Vision of a basket with ripe fruits. 4–6. Exposing the greed of traders. 7–14. Proclamation of God's judgment over a criminal people. Am.8:1. The Lord God revealed such a vision to me: here is a basket of ripe fruits. Ch. VIII begins with a description of a new vision. “Here is a basket of ripe fruits” (keluv kaiz): sl. keluv can mean either a fruit basket or a fowler's cage; in the latter sense the word is used by the prophet Jeremiah (Jer 5.27). LXX gave the same meaning to the word in the passage in question in the book. Amos; from here to glory: “and behold, a bird-catcher’s vessel” (ἄγγος ἰξευτοῦ). Am.8:2. And He said, What do you see, Amos? I answered: a basket of ripe fruits. Then the Lord said to me: The end has come for my people Israel: I will forgive them no more. The ripe fruits that are shown to the prophet are an image that Israel is ripe for judgment and punishment. Expressing this thought, the prophet allows for a play on words, using the consonance of kaiz (ripe fruits) and kez (end). If we take together with the LXX keluv (basket) in the sense of “fowler’s vessel,” then the image shown to the prophet will denote, according to the interpretation of church teachers, the impending capture of the people of Israel by enemies (Blessed Theodoret, Geronim, Cyril of Alexandria). Am.8:3. The songs of the palace in that day will be turned to lamentation, says the Lord God; There will be many corpses, they will be thrown silently everywhere. "Songs of the Chamber", Heb. schiroth hejchal at LXX transferred τά φατνώματα τοῦ ναοῦ, slav. “stropov (rafters) of the church”, in Vulg. cardines templi, door hooks in the church. According to the text of the LXX and the Vulgate in Art. 3, the prophet foretells the destruction of the church, no doubt not of Jerusalem (Theodore Mopsues.), about which there was no talk, but of Bethel. At the same time, the prophet uses a figurative expression, imagining that on the day of the destruction of the church, the rafters of the church or the door hooks would burst into tears. Reading the current mazor. the text of the schiroth (song) presents some difficulties; firstly, plural h. from schir (song) should be schirim, not schiroth; secondly, the combination vehejlilu schiroth “and the songs will burst into tears” is not natural. In view of this, instead of schiroth, songs, new commentators usually read sharoth, singers (Hoffmann, Wellg., Novak) or follow the reading of the Greek text (Goonaker), and hejchal (in the LXX νοοῦ, church) is understood as collected. meaning "palace". The image introduced by LXX into the speech of the prophet is found in Isa. 14:31, 23:1, 14; Zechariah 11.2, etc. “In every place they will cast them silently” (hischlich has); the word chas (silently) is also considered a noun (slav. “I will bring silence”), both an adverb (silently) and an exclamation (be silent), which breaks out from the prophet when contemplating (in the spirit) many corpses (Goonaker: they will throw them in every place. Silence!). The last interpretation is preferable to the others. In any case, there is no need to see (Novak) a corruption of the text in the word has and assume that it appeared instead of hasch, i.e., an abbreviation of the verb haschlich (Harper). Am.8:4. Hear this, you who hunger to devour the poor and destroy the needy: In Art. 4–6, the prophet again turns to the upper classes of Israeli society, and specifically to the rich grain merchants, and denounces them for oppressing the poor. – Destroy the poor: in Heb. anivvej arez, the poor of the earth, as in glory. Am.8:5. you who say: “Someday the new moon will pass so that we can sell grain, and the Sabbath, so that we can open the barns, reduce the measure, increase the price of the shekel, and deceive with unfaithful scales, In their pursuit of profit, the rich people denounced by the prophet were burdened even by new moons and Saturdays, since on these days, according to the law and custom, trade ceased. The rich wished that these days would pass quickly so that they could engage in their deceptive trade. “Reduce the measure” (ephah): epha – measure of bulk solids; reduce the measure - give less than you should. “Increase the price of the shekel”: in euros. lehohdil schekel – increase the shekel; The shekel is a measure of weight, and then a famous coin; sellers, increasing the weight of the shekel, received more from buyers than they should have. Am.8:6. to buy the poor for silver and the poor for a pair of shoes, and to sell the grain of grain.” The rich wished that the Sabbath or holidays would pass as quickly as possible, other than those set out in Art. 5. considerations. The Prophet points out these considerations in v. 6th “To buy the poor with silver”: the prophet wants to show that the poor were an object of trade for the rich. “And the poor for a pair of shoes”: Obviously, this refers to the enslavement of the poor due to insignificant debts. The rich could achieve their goals in relation to the indebted poor only with the help of the court. And since the court was not held on Saturdays and holidays, the rich wanted these days to pass quickly. Am.8:7. The Lord swore by the glory of Jacob: truly I will never forget one of their deeds! From the 7th Art. the announcement of judgment begins. – The Lord swore by the glory of Jacob, (bigeon jaakov): in Am 6.8 the prophet uses the word geon (Russian word “glory”) to mean arrogance, which the Lord abhors; the word geon in the expression under consideration should take the same meaning, as in slav. "to the contempt of Jacob." The Lord swears about Jacob’s arrogance, that is, the Lord presents arrogance as evidence or evidence against Israel as a particularly serious sin. Some commentators, however, taking geon jaakov to mean the glory of Jacob, believe that the Lord swears by the one who is the source of this glory, that is, by himself. Am.8:8. Will not this cause the earth to shake, and will not everyone who lives on it weep? It will all swell like a river, and will rise and fall like the river of Egypt. The deeds of Israel are such that the earth cannot bear them. “Will not the earth shake from this”: the prophet not only wants to make the onset of an earthquake understandable (Wellhausen, Novak), but also directly predicts it; The prophet's question presupposes a positive answer. The prophet compares the shaking of the earth during the upcoming earthquake with the rising and falling of water in the Nile River. Some commentators (Novak) do not think this comparison is entirely successful, since the water in the Nile is sinking and decreasing gradually. But it is possible that the prophet does not mean the picture of the Nile flood, but the picture of the Nile waterfalls (Goonaker). According to the explanation of church teachers and ancient commentators on Art. 7 can also be understood as an expression in figurative form of a prophecy about the invasion of the land of Israel by enemies - the Assyrians: just as the Egyptian river covers the entire land, so many enemies will cover the land of Israel (Blessed Theodoret); “The Assyrians will come, like the Nile, overflowing, and drive out and force the Israelites to leave their land” (St. Ephraim the Syrian). Am.8:9. And it will come to pass on that day, says the Lord God: I will cause the sun to go down at noon and darken the earth in the midst of the bright day. The shaking of the earth will be combined with other terrible phenomena in nature. “I will make the sun set at noon”: the expression does not need to be understood (Jungers) in the strictly literal sense that the sun will set at noon; the prophet wants to say that the light of the sun at noon will be the same as it is at sunset. It is not known whether the prophet is talking about an eclipse of the sun or whether his words should be understood metaphorically. The prophet could observe the picture of the eclipse on February 9, 784 and June 15, 763, then, according to astronomers’ calculations, there were solar eclipses visible in Palestine. Am.8:10. And I will turn your festivals into mourning and all your songs into mourning, and I will put sackcloth on every loin and baldness on every head; and I will make the country mourn as for an only son, and its end will be like a bitter day: On the day of disaster, all joy will disappear and everyone will, as it were, be clothed in mourning. “And there is baldness on every head”: an indication of the custom of shaving the head as a sign of mourning (cf. Isa 3:23, 15:2, 22:12; Micah 1.16). At the end of the verse, the mourning that lies ahead for the country is compared to the mourning for the deceased only son. In glory the end of the verse reads: “and I will lay him down as the pity of a loved one, and those who are with him as a day of illness”; the words “being with him” correspond to Hebrew. aharithah, the end of it. Am.8:11. Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord God, when I will send a famine on the earth - not a famine of bread, not a thirst for water, but a thirst for hearing the words of the Lord. According to the prophet, the particular severity of the coming judgment for Israel will be the deprivation of the words of the Lord or divine revelations. The possession of divine revelation constituted Israel's advantage over the pagan nations (Deut. 18.13–22) and was proof of his election by God. Deprivation of the divine word means, therefore, the impending rejection of the people by God. Am.8:12. And they will walk from sea to sea and wander from north to east, seeking the word of the Lord, and will not find it. “And they will walk from sea to sea”: according to some commentators, the prophet means in the above expression the Dead Sea and the Mediterranean (Hitzig, Miguel) or the Eastern and Atlantic Ocean (Keil); but it is better to understand the expression in an indefinite sense - throughout the whole earth. At the same time, Ev. nua (Russian i.e. will walk) means actually to sway, stagger, walk with a smooth gait, i.e. expresses the idea of ​​longing for the word of God. Instead of the given words in glory. reads: “and the waters will shake from sea to sea”; the word ὕδατα, water, arose in the LXX from mijam (from the sea), which was read twice and the first time read as maim (water). Explaining the reading of the Greek. text, blessed Theodoret adds the conjunction “like” before the word water; they will be shaken like waters, i.e. “like troubled waters the Israelites will wander, rushing to and fro.” Am.8:13. On that day beautiful maidens and youths will melt away from thirst, “On that day” - on the day of judgment, which is understood by the prophet in v. 13, as a long period. “Thirst”: both physical and spiritual thirst for hearing the word of God. By calling the virgins and youths, the prophet wants to say that if they, the stronger ones, melt away from thirst, then how great will be the suffering of others! Am.8:14. who swear by the sin of Samaria and say: “As your God lives, Dan! and the way to Bathsheba lives!” “They will fall and never rise again.” The reason for the upcoming punishment is serving false gods. “Who swear by the sin of Samaria” (glorified by “the cleansing of Samaria”): an oath of veneration (cf. Deut. 6.13, 10.20; Jer. 12.16; Isa. 48.1); the sin of Samaria is without a doubt the Bethel idol, which in Hosea 8.6 is called the “calf of Samaria.” “As your God lives, Dan! and the way (chej derech) to Beersheba is alive”: Dan and Beersheba - two points of illegal cult - were at the same time border points of the country of the people of God - Dan in the north and Beersheba in the south. The expression from Dan to Beersheba in the Bible refers to the entire territory of the land of Israel. By naming Dan and Bathsheba (and not Bethel and Gilgal), the prophet also wants to express the idea that just as lawlessness has gripped the entire country, so punishment will befall it from end to end. The expression “alive the way to Bathsheba” is unusual, since the formula chej, long live, is found in the priest. writers are usually applied to living beings (2 Kings 2.27; Job 27.2; Gen 42.15–16; 1 Kings 1.26). Some commentators believe that they swore by the road to Bathsheba, just as the Arabs swear by the pilgrimage to Mecca (Kwabenbauer). Others, due to the ambiguity of the expression in question, present proofs of its text. LXX has the expression translated; ζῆ ὁ θεὸς σου Βηρσαβεέ, slav. “Your god Bathsheba lives.” In view of this, it is believed that in the original text, instead of derech (path), it was read elcha, your god (Novak). But nowhere is it said about the god of Bersheba: according to 2 Kings 23.8, there was only a high place in Bathsheba, and not an idol. Winkler and Goonaker read dodcha, which is similar in style, instead of derech. The altar of Dod is mentioned in the Mesha inscription. Dod of Bathsheba is a deity considered the patron saint of the city. Prof. Yungerov, leaving the existing text of the expression, translates it: may it be prosperous, may the path to Bathsheba not perish. You might be interested in: