[275] _In Damascus on a couch: on a Damascus couch: on a Damascus-cloth couch:_ or _Damascus-fashion on a couch_--alternatives all equally probable and equally beyond proof. The text is very difficult, nor do the versions give help. (1) The consonants of the word before _a couch_ spell _in Damascus_, and so the LXX. take it. This would be in exact parallel to the _in Samaria_ of the previous half of the clause. But although Jeroboam II. is said to have recovered Damascus (2 Kings xiv. 28), this is not necessarily the town itself, of whose occupation by Israel we have no evidence, while Amos always assumes it to be Aramean, and here he is addressing Israelites. Still retaining the name of the city, we can take it with _couch_ as parallel, not to _in Samaria_, but to _on the side of a diwan_; in that case the meaning may have been _a Damascus couch_ (though as the two words stand it is impossible to parse them, and Gen. xv. 2 cannot be quoted in support of this, for it is too uncertain itself, being possibly a gloss, though it is curious that as the two passages run the name Damascus should be in the same strange grammatical conjunction in each), or possibly _Damascus-fashion on a couch_, which (if the first half of the clause, as some maintain, refers to some delicate or affected posture then come into fashion) is the most probable rendering. (2) The Massoretes have pointed, not _bedammeseq_ = _in Damascus_, but _bedemesheq_, a form not found elsewhere, which some (Ges., Hitz., Ew., Rev. Eng. Ver., etc.) take to mean some Damascene stuff (as perhaps our Damask and the Arabic _dimshaq_ originally meant, though this is not certain), _e.g._ _silk_ or _velvet_ or _cushions_. (3) Others rearrange the text. _E.g._ Hoffmann (_Z. A. T. W._, III. 102) takes the whole clause away from ver. 12 and attaches it to ver. 13, reading _O those who sit in Samaria on the edge of the diwan, and in Damascus on a couch, hearken and testify against the house of Jacob_. But, as Wellhausen points out, those addressed in ver. 13 are the same as those addressed in ver. 9. Wellhausen prefers to believe that after the words _children of Israel_, which end a sentence, something has fallen out. The LXX. translator, who makes several blunders in the course of this chapter, instead of translating ערשׂ couch, the last word of the verse, merely transliterates it into ἱερεῖς!! [276] Cf. vi. 4: _that lie on ivory diwans and sprawl on their couches_. [277] Van Lennep, _Bible Lands and Customs_, p. 460. [278] See p. 205, _n._ 4. [279] The words for hook in Hebrew--the two used above, צִנּוֹת and סִירות; and a third, חוֹחַ--all mean originally _thorns_, doubtless the first hooks of primitive man; but by this time they would signify metal hooks--a change analogous to the English word _pen_. [280] Cf. Isa. xxxvii. 29; 2 Chron. xxxiii. 11. On the use fish-hooks, Job xl. 26 (Heb.), xli. 2 (Eng.); Ezek. xxix. 4.