[358] The text reads _their breaches_, and some accordingly point סֻכַּת _hut_, as if it were the plural _huts_ (Hoffmann, _Z.A.T.W._, 1883, 125; Schwally, _id._, 1890, 226, n. 1; Guthe in Kautzsch's _Bibel_). The LXX. has the sing., and it is easy to see how the plur. fem. suffix may have risen from confusion with the following conjunction. [359] This against Cornill, _Einleitung_, 176. [360] iii. 1. [361] III. _Wars_, x. 8. With the above verses of the Book of Amos Lev. xxvi. 5 has been compared: "your threshing shall reach to the vintage and the vintage to the sowing time." But there is no reason to suppose that either of two so natural passages depends on the other. [362] LXX. _God of Hosts_. CHAPTER XI _COMMON-SENSE AND THE REIGN OF LAW_ AMOS iii. 3-8; iv. 6-13; v. 8, 9; vi. 12; viii. 8; ix. 5, 6. Fools, when they face facts, which is seldom, face them one by one, and, as a consequence, either in ignorant contempt or in panic. With this inordinate folly Amos charged the religion of his day. The superstitious people, careful of every point of ritual and very greedy of omens, would not ponder real facts nor set cause to effect. Amos recalled them to common life. _Does a bird fall upon a snare, except there be a loop on her? Does the trap itself rise front the ground, except it be catching something_--something alive in it that struggles, and so lifts the trap? _Shall the alarum be blown in a city, and the people not tremble?_ Daily life is impossible without putting two and two together. But this is just what Israel will not do with the sacred events of their time. To religion they will not add common-sense. For Amos himself, all things which happen are in sequence and in sympathy. He has seen this in the simple life of the desert; he is sure of it throughout the tangle and hubbub of history. One thing explains another; one makes another inevitable. When he has illustrated the truth in common life, Amos claims it for especially four of the great facts of the time. The sins of society, of which society is careless; the physical calamities, which they survive and forget; the approach of Assyria, which they ignore; the word of the prophet, which they silence,--all these belong to each other. Drought, Pestilence, Earthquake, Invasion conspire--and the Prophet holds their secret.