(1) LXX.: _Behold, I roll_ (κυλίω) _under you as a waggon full of straw is rolled_. A.V.: _I am pressed under you as a cart is pressed_. Pusey: _I straiten myself under you, etc._ These versions take עוּק in the sense of צוּק, _to press_, and תחת in its usual meaning of _beneath_; and the result is conformable to the well-known figure of the Old Testament by which God is said to be laden and weary with the transgressions of His people. But this does not mean an actual descent of judgment, and yet vv. 14-16 imply that such an intimation has been made in ver. 13; and besides טעיק and תעיק are both in the Hiphil, the active, _to press_, or causative, _make to press_. (2) Accordingly some, adopting this sense of the verb, take תחת in an unusual sense of _down upon_. Ewald: _I press down upon you as a cart that is full of sheaves presseth_. Guthe (in Kautzsch's _Bibel_): _Ich will euch quetschen_. Rev. Eng. Ver.: _I will press you in your place_.--But וקע has been taken in other senses. (3) Hoffmann (_Z.A.T.W._, III. 100) renders it _groan_ in conformity with Arab. 'îḳ. (4) Wetzstein (_ibid._, 278 ff.) quotes Arab. 'âḳ, to _stop_, _hinder_, and suggests _I will bring to a stop_. (5) Buhl (12th Ed. of Gesenius' _Handwört_, sub עוּק), in view of possibility of עגלה being threshing-roller, recalls Arab. 'aḳḳ, _to cut in pieces_. (6) Hitzig (_Exeg. Handbuch_) proposed to read מפיק and תפיק: _I will make it shake under you, as the laden waggon shakes_ (the ground). So rather differently Wellhausen: _I will make the ground quake under you, as a waggon quakes under its load of sheaves_. I have only to add that, in the Alex. Cod. of LXX., which reads κωλύω for κυλίω, we have an interesting analogy to Wetzstein's proposal; and that in support of the rendering of Ewald, and its unusual interpretation of תחתיכם which seems to me on the whole the most probable, we may compare Job xxxvi. 16, תחתיה מוצק לא. This, it is true, suggests rather the choking of a passage than the crushing of the ground; but, by the way, that sense is even more applicable to a harvest waggon laden with sheaves. [267] _Waggon full of sheaves._--Wellhausen goes too far when he suggests that Amos would have to go outside Palestine to see such a waggon. That a people who already knew the use of chariots for travelling (cf. Gen. xlvi. 5, JE) and waggons for agricultural purposes (1 Sam. vi. 7 ff.) did not use them at least in the lowlands of their country is extremely improbable. Cf. _Hist. Geog._, Appendix on _Roads and Wheeled Vehicles in Syria_. CHAPTER VIII _CIVILISATION AND JUDGMENT_ AMOS iii.-iv. 3.