Friday Culture Word: *'nk/tin
Mankowski, 35, would have us understand הִנְנִ֨י שָׂ֤ם אֲנָךְ as "I am going to put [an object of] tin . . ." but I see no reason to think that a tin object is involved. Rather it seems to me that YHWH is telling Amos that he will harden something (himself ?, Isreal ?) by alloying it with tin. The Old Greek of Amos 7:7-8 renders אֲנָךְ, αδαμαντα, steel, hard stuff.
Scholars once attempted justified the idea that אֲנָךְ was a plume line on the mistaken belief that the word, both the Akkadian and the Hebrew, meant lead, i.e. the lead weight on the end of a plume line. See for example, May, 132.
Now why is this a culture word rather than a simple loanword from Akkadian, with or without an intermediary? Referencing to previous positions, Mankowski, 35, explains,
Although Ellen, following Zimmern, insists "we have no reason to doubt that [אֲנָךְ] came into Hebrew from an Akkadian source," his confidence is misplaced. The fact that anak-designates a metal, the range of its extra Semitic distribution, and the lack of a distinctive phonetic shape oblige us to treat it as a culture word, subject to a diffusion too general to establish meaningful loan-relationships.
As part of his discussion of work by Zimmern, Landsberger, 287, n 10, says, "(H)e derives the Akkadian (and by implication the other derivatives) from Sumerian whereas actually we are dealing with a typical 'Kultlurewort'."
For the sake of rigor, I should note that בְּדִיל is the more common word for tin in Biblical Hebrew. Why among the whole of Biblical Hebrew Amos 7:7-8 alone uses אֲנָךְ is good but unanswered, perhaps unanswerable, question.