[320] Ver. 26 is very difficult, for both the text and the rendering of all the possible alternatives of it are quite uncertain. (1) As to the _text_, the present division into words must be correct; at least no other is possible. But the present order of the words is obviously wrong. For _your images_ is evidently described by the relative clause _which you have made_, and ought to stand next it. What then is to be done with the two words that at present come between--_star of your god_? Are they both a mere gloss, as Robertson Smith holds, and therefore to be struck out? or should they precede the pair of words, צלמיכם כיון, which they now follow? This is the order of the text which the LXX. translator had before him, only for כון he misread רֵיפָן or רֵיוָן: καὶ ἀνελάβετε τὴν σκηνὴν τοῦ Μωλὸχ καὶ τὸ ἄστρον τοῦ Θεοῦ ὑμῶν Ῥαιφάν [Ῥεφάν, Q], τοὺς τύπους αὐτῶν [om. AQ] οὓς ἐποιήσατε ἑαυτοῖς. This arrangement has the further evidence in its favour, that it brings _your god_ into proper parallel with _your king_. The Hebrew text would then run thus:-- [אלהיכם כוכב] ואת מלככם סכות את ונשאתם לכם עשיתם אשר צלמיכם כיון (2) The translation of this text is equally difficult: not in the verb ונשאתם, for both the grammar and the argument oblige us to take it as future, _and ye shall lift up_; but in the two words סכות and כיון. Are these common nouns, or proper names of deities in apposition to _your king_ and _your god_? The LXX. takes סכות as = _tabernacle_, and כיון as a proper name (Theodotion takes both as proper names). The Auth. Eng. Ver. follows the LXX. (except that it takes _king_ for the name _Moloch_). Schrader (_Stud. u. Krit._, 1874, 324; _K.A.T._, 442 f.) takes them as the consonants of Sakkut, a name of the Assyrian god Adar, and of Kewan, the Assyrian name for the planet Saturn: _Ye shall take up Sakkut your king and Kewan your star-god, your images which_... Baethgen goes further and takes both the מלך of מלכיכם and the צלם of צלמיכם as Moloch and Ṣelam, proper names, in combination with Sakkut and Kewan (_Beitr. z. Sem. Rel._, 239). Now it is true that the Second Book of Kings implies that the worship of the host of heaven existed in Samaria before its fall (2 Kings xvii. 16), but the introduction into Samaria of Assyrian gods (among them Adar) is placed by it after the fall (2 Kings xvii. 31), and besides, Amos does not elsewhere speak of the worship of foreign gods, nor is the mention of them in any way necessary to the argument here. On the contrary, even if Amos were to mention the worship of idols by Israel, would he have selected at this point the Assyrian ones? (See, however, Tiele, _Revue de l'Histoire des Religions_, III., p. 211, who makes Koun and the planet Keiwan purely Phœnician deities.) Some critics take סכות and כיון as common nouns in the construct state. So Ewald, and so most recently Robertson Smith (_O.T.J.C._, 2): _the shrine of your king and the stand of your images_.