in the sense of to bring together, or complete, as the performers of sacrifice, like ἕρδων, the sacrificer (Dietr.); whereas the connection suggested by Hitzig (on Zeph.) with (Arabic) kfr, to be unbelieving, in the opposite sense of the religious, is very far-fetched, and does not answer either to the Hebrew or the Syriac use of the word.[1]
The singular ויקטּר is striking, inasmuch as if the imperf. c. Vav rel. were a continuation of נתנוּ, we should expect the plural, “and who had burnt incense,” as it is given in the Chaldee. The lxx, Vulg., and Syr. have rendered לקטּר, from which ויקטּר has probably arisen by a mistake in copying. In the following clause, “and those who had burnt incense to Baal, to the sun and to the moon,” etc., Baal is mentioned as the deity worshipped in the sun, the moon, and the stars (see at 2Ki 21:3). מזּלות, synonymous with מזּרות in Job 38:32, does not mean the twenty-eight naxatra, or Indian stations of the moon,[2] but the twelve signs or constellations of the zodiac, which were regarded by the Arabs as menâzil, i.e., station-houses, in which the sun took up its abode in succession when describing the circuit of the year (cf. Ges. Thes. p. 869, and Delitzsch on Job 38:32).
Verse 6
The image of Asherah (האשׁרה = הא פּסל, 2Ki 21:3, 2Ki 21:7), which Manasseh placed in the temple and then removed after his return from Babylon (2Ch 33:15), but which Amon had replaced, Josiah ordered to be burned and ground to powder in the valley of Kidron, and the dust to be thrown upon the graves of the common people. ויּדק, from דקק, to make fine, to crush, refers to the metal covering of the image (see at Exo 32:10). Asa had already had an idol burned in the Kidron valley (1Ki 15:13), and Hezekiah had ordered the idolatrous abominations to be taken out of the city and carried thither (2Ch 29:16); so that the valley had already been defiled. There was a burial-place there for העם בּני, i.e., the common people (cf. Jer 26:23), who had no graves of their own, just as at the present day the burial-ground
- ↑ In any case the derivation from כמר, to be black (Ges. Thes. p. 693), and the explanation given by Fürst from vi occultandi magicasque, h. e. arcanas et reconditas artes exercendi, and others given in Iden’s Dissertatt. theol. philol. i. diss. 12, are quite untenable.
- ↑ According to A. Weber, Die vedischen Nachrichten von den naxatra, in the Abhandlungen der Berl. Acad. d. Wiss. 1860 and 1861. Compare, on the other hand, Steinschneider, Hebr. Bibliographie, 1861, No. 22, pp. 93, 94, his article in the Deutsch. morgld. Zeitschrift, 1864, p. 118ff.
