And you rejoice and adorn yourselves for no purpose: For a thing in which there is naught, and for a victory and valor which they did not accomplish and which did not come from them.
For you say, “Have we not by our own strength and our power and the might of our hands
1 taken horns for ourselves, with which to gore all the nations, together, to the ends of the earth?!”
2 Whereas it was My hand that did this to them,
3 and (it was) for the purpose that My name not be desecrated,
4 and it was not for them (i.e., for Israel),
for they have turned justice into poison weed (Amos 6:12). In the same way that the horse by its valor cannot run and trample a rock, nor can an ox by its strength plow it and cleave it, for a rock will dislocate and break its bones, so, too, will they (the Israelites) not tread on the high places of their enemies
5 by their strength and valor; rather, their enemies shall break them.
1. Rabbi Eliezer adds the warning language of Deuteronomy 8:17 to that of Amos.
2. Rabbi Eliezer invokes the language of Deuteronomy 33:17, of which doubtless he was reminded by the word קרנים, qarnaim, “horns,” that appears there, as well.
3. Rabbi Eliezer uses the language of Isaiah 41:20.
4. See Ezekiel 20:9. By implicitly presenting the prophetic speech as having ended in 6:12, and by introducing God as the speaker of 6:13, Rabbi Eliezer deftly anticipates God’s speech in the following verse.
5. Rabbi Eliezer alludes to the language of Deuteronomy 33:29.