[815] Isa. x. 28 ff. This makes it quite conceivable that Micah i. 9, _it hath struck right up to the gate of Jerusalem_, was composed immediately after the fall of Samaria, and not, as Sinend imagines, during the campaign of Sennacherib. Against the latter date there is the objection that by then the fall of Samaria, which Micah i. 6 describes as present, was already nearly twenty years past. [816] The address is either to the tribes, in which case we must substitute _land_ for _earth_ in the next line; or much more probably it is to the Gentile _nations_, but in this case we cannot translate (as all do) in the third line that the Lord will be a witness _against_ them, for the charge is only against Israel. They are summoned in the same sense as Amos summons a few of the nations in chap. iii. 9 ff.--The opening words of Micah are original to this passage, and interpolated in the exordium of the other Micah, 1 Kings xxii. 28. [817] Jehovah's _Temple_ or _Place_ is not, as in earlier poems, Sinai or Seir (cf. Deborah's song and Deut. xxxiii.), but Heaven (cf. Isaiah xix. or Psalm xxix.). [818] So LXX. and other versions. [819] Wellhausen's objections to this phrase are arbitrary and incorrect. A ruin in the midst of soil gone out of cultivation, where before there had been a city among vineyards, is a striking figure of desolation. [820] Which is precisely how Herod's Samaria lies at the present day. [821] So Ewald. [822] It must be kept in mind that all the verbs in the above passage may as correctly be given in the future tense; in that case the passage will be dated just before the fall of Samaria, in 722-1, instead of just after. [823] יענה בנות, that is, the ostriches: cf. Arab, wa'ana, "white, barren ground." The Arabs call the ostrich "father of the desert: abu sahârâ." [824] LXX. [825] Isa. x. 28 ff. [826] It is well put by Robertson Smith's _Prophets_^2, pp. 289 ff. [827] iii. 12. [828] LXX. ἐν Ἀκειμ; Heb. "weep not at all." [829] לְֽעַפְרָה cannot be the Ophrah, עָפְרָה, of Benjamin. It may be connected with עֹפֶר, a gazelle; and it is to be noted that S. of Beit-Jibrin there is a wady now called El-Ghufr, the corresponding Arabic word. But, as stated in the text above, the name ought to be one of a Philistine town. [830] Beauty town. This is usually taken to be the modern Suafîr on the Philistine plain, 4-1/2 miles S.E. of Ashdod, a site not unsuitable for identification with the Σαφειρ of the _Onom._, "between Eleutheropolis and Ascalon," except that Σαφειρ is also described as "in the hill country." Guérin found the name Safar a very little N. of Beit-Jíbrin (_Judée_, II. 317). [831] March-town: perhaps the same as Ṣenan (צֵנַן) of Josh. xv. 37; given along with Migdal-Gad and Hadashah; not identified. [832] Unknown. [833] "Bitternesses": unknown. [834] Tell-el-Hesy. [835] _Ambassadors_ or _letters of dismissal_. [836] See above, p. 376.