_THE BOOK OF NAHUM_
The Book of Nahum consists of a double title and three odes. The title
runs _Oracle of Niniveh: Book of the Vision of Nahum the Elḳôshite_.
The three odes, eager and passionate pieces, are all of them apparently
vibrant to the impending fall of Assyria. The first, chap. i. with the
possible inclusion of chap. ii. 2,[199] is general and theological,
affirming God’s power of vengeance and the certainty of the overthrow
of His enemies. The second, chap. ii. with the omission of ver. 2,[200]
and the third, chap, iii., can hardly be disjoined; they both present a
vivid picture of the siege, the storm and the spoiling of Niniveh.
The introductory questions, which title and contents start, are in the
main three: 1. The position of Elḳôsh, to which the title assigns the
prophet; 2. The authenticity of chap. i.; 3. The date of chaps, ii.,
iii.: to which siege of Niniveh do they refer?
1. THE POSITION OF ELḲÔSH.
The title calls Nahum the Elḳôshite—that is, native or citizen of
Elḳôsh.[201] Three positions have been claimed for this place, which is
not mentioned elsewhere in the Bible.
The first we take is the modern Al-Ḳûsh, a town still flourishing
about twenty-four miles to the north of the site of Niniveh,[202]
with “no fragments of antiquity” about it, but possessing a “simple
plaster box,” which Jews, Christians and Mohammedans alike reverence as
the tomb of Nahum.[203] There is no evidence that Al-Ḳûsh, a name of
Arabic form, is older than the Arab period, while the tradition which
locates the tomb there is not found before the sixteenth century of
our era, but on the contrary Nahum’s grave was pointed out to Benjamin
of Tudela in 1165 at ‘Ain Japhata, on the south of Babylon.[204] The
tradition that the prophet lived and died at Al-Ḳûsh is therefore due
to the similarity of the name to that of Nahum’s Elḳôsh, as well as
to the fact that Niniveh was the subject of his prophesying.[205] In
his book there is no trace of proof for the assertion that Nahum was a
descendant of the ten tribes exiled in 721 to the region to the north
of Al-Ḳûsh. He prophesies for Judah alone. Nor does he show any more
knowledge of Niniveh than her ancient fame must have scattered to the
limits of the world.[206] We might as well argue from chap. iii. 8-10
that Nahum had visited Thebes of Egypt.
The second tradition of the position of Elḳôsh is older. In his
commentary on Nahum Jerome says that in his day it still existed,
a petty village of Galilee, under the name of Helkesei,[207] or
Elkese, and apparently with an established reputation as the
town of Nahum.[208] But the book itself bears no symptom of its
author’s connection with Galilee, and although it was quite possible
for a prophet of that period to have lived there, it is not very
probable.[209]
A third tradition places Elḳôsh in the south of Judah. A Syriac version
of the accounts of the prophets, which are ascribed to Epiphanius,[210]
describes Nahum as “of Elḳôsh beyond Bêt Gabrê, of the tribe of
Simeon”;[211] and it may be noted that Cyril of Alexandria says[212]
that Elkese was a village in the country of the Jews. This tradition
is superior to the first in that there is no apparent motive for its
fabrication, and to the second in so far as Judah was at the time
of Nahum a much more probable home for a prophet than Galilee; nor
does the book give any references except such as might be made by a
Judæan.[213] No modern place-name, however, can be suggested with any
certainty as the echo of Elḳôsh. Umm Lâḳis, which has been proved not
to be Lachish, contains the same radicals, and some six and a quarter
miles east from Beit-Jibrin at the upper end of the Wady es Sur there
is an ancient well with the name Bir el Ḳûs.[214]
2. THE AUTHENTICITY OF CHAP. I.
Till recently no one doubted that the three chapters formed a unity.
“Nahum’s prophecy,” said Kuenen in 1889, “is a whole.” In 1891[215]
Cornill affirmed that no questions of authenticity arose in regard
to the book; and in 1892 Wellhausen saw in chap. i. an introduction
leading “in no awkward way to the proper subject of the prophecy.”
Meantime, however, Bickell,[216] discovering what he thought to be
the remains of an alphabetic Psalm in chap. i. 1-7, attempted to
reconstruct throughout chap. i.—ii. 3 twenty-two verses, each beginning
with a successive letter of the alphabet. And, following this, Gunkel
in 1893 produced a more full and plausible reconstruction of the same
scheme.[217] By radical emendations of the text, by excision of what he
believes to be glosses and by altering the order of many of the verses,
Gunkel seeks to produce twenty-three distichs, twenty of which begin
with the successive letters of the alphabet, two are wanting, while in
the first three letters of the twenty-third, [שׁבי], he finds very
probable the name of the author, Shobai or Shobi.[218] He takes this
ode, therefore, to be an eschatological Psalm of the later Judaism,
which from its theological bearing has been thought suitable as an
introduction to Nahum’s genuine prophecies.
The text of chap. i.—ii. 4 has been badly mauled and is clamant for
reconstruction of some kind. As it lies, there are traces of an
alphabetical arrangement as far as the beginning of ver. 9,[219]
and so far Gunkel’s changes are comparatively simple. Many of his
emendations are in themselves and apart from the alphabetic scheme
desirable. They get rid of difficulties and improve the poetry of the
passage.[220] His reconstruction is always clever and as a whole forms
a wonderfully spirited poem. But to have produced good or poetical
Hebrew is not conclusive proof of having recovered the original, and
there are obvious objections to the process. Several of the proposed
changes are unnatural in themselves and unsupported by anything
except the exigencies of the scheme; for example, 2_b_ and 3_a_ are
dismissed as a gloss only because, if they be retained, the _Aleph_
verse is two bars too long. The gloss, Gunkel thinks, was introduced
to mitigate the absoluteness of the declaration that Jehovah is a God
of wrath and vengeance; but this is not obvious and would hardly have
been alleged apart from the needs of the alphabetic scheme. In order
to find a _Daleth_, it is quite arbitrary to say that the first אמלל
in 4_b_ is redundant in face of the second, and that a word beginning
with _Daleth_ originally filled its place, but was removed because
it was a rare or difficult word! The re-arrangement of 7 and 8_a_ is
very clever, and reads as if it were right; but the next effort, to
get a verse beginning with _Lamed_, is of the kind by which anything
might be proved. These, however, are nothing to the difficulties which
vv. 9-14 and chap. ii. 1, 3, present to an alphabetic scheme, or to
the means which Gunkel takes to surmount them. He has to re-arrange
the order of the verses,[221] and of the words within the verses. The
distichs beginning with _Nun_ and _Ḳoph_ are wanting, or at least
undecipherable. To provide one with initial _Resh_ the interjection
has to be removed from the opening of chap. ii. 1, and the verse made
to begin with רגלי and to run thus: _the feet of him that bringeth
good news on the mountains; behold him that publisheth peace_. Other
unlikely changes will be noticed when we come to the translation. Here
we may ask the question: if the passage was originally alphabetic, that
is, furnished with so fixed and easily recognised a frame, why has it
so fallen to pieces? And again, if it has so fallen to pieces, is it
possible that it can be restored? The many arbitrarinesses of Gunkel’s
able essay would seem to imply that it is not. Dr. Davidson says: “Even
if it should be assumed that an alphabetical poem lurks under chap. i.,
the attempt to restore it, just as in Psalm x., can never be more than
an academic exercise.”
Little is to be learned from the language. Wellhausen, who makes no
objection to the genuineness of the passage, thinks that about ver. 7
we begin to catch the familiar dialect of the Psalms. Gunkel finds
a want of originality in the language, with many touches that betray
connection not only with the Psalms but with late eschatological
literature. But when we take one by one the clauses of chap, i.,
we discover very few parallels with the Psalms, which are not at
the same time parallels with Jeremiah’s or some earlier writings.
That the prophecy is vague, and with much of the air of the later
eschatology about it, is no reason for removing it from an age in
which we have already seen prophecy beginning to show the same
apocalyptic temper.[222] Gunkel denies any reference in ver. 9_b_ to
the approaching fall of Niniveh, although that is seen by Kuenen,
Wellhausen, König and others, and he omits ver. 11_a_, in which most
read an allusion to Sennacherib.
Therefore, while it is possible that a later poem has been prefixed to
the genuine prophecies of Nahum, and the first chapter supplies many
provocations to belief in such a theory, this has not been proved,
and the able essays of proof have much against them. The question is
open.[223]
3. THE DATE OF CHAPS. II. AND III.
We turn now to the date of the Book apart from this prologue. It was
written after a great overthrow of the Egyptian Thebes[224] and when
the overthrow of Niniveh was imminent. Now Thebes had been devastated
by Assurbanipal about 664 (we know of no later overthrow), and Niniveh
fell finally about 607. Nahum flourished, then, somewhere between 664
and 607.[225] Some critics, feeling in his description of the fall of
Thebes the force of a recent impression, have placed his prophesying
immediately after that, or about 660.[226] But this is too far away
from the fall of Niniveh. In 660 the power of Assyria was unthreatened.
Nor is 652, the year of the revolt of Babylon, Egypt and the princes
of Palestine, a more likely date.[227] For although in that year
Assyrian supremacy ebbed from Egypt never to return, Assurbanipal
quickly reduced Elam, Babylon and all Syria. Nahum, on the other hand,
represents the very centre of the empire as threatened. The land of
Assyria is apparently already invaded (iii. 13, etc.). Niniveh, if
not invested, must immediately be so, and that by forces too great
for resistance. Her mixed populace already show signs of breaking up.
Within, as without, her doom is sealed. All this implies not only the
advance of an enormous force upon Niniveh, but the reduction of her
people to the last stage of hopelessness. Now, as we have seen,[228]
Assyria proper was thrice overrun. The Scythians poured across her
about 626, but there is no proof that they threatened Niniveh.[229]
A little after Assurbanipal’s death in 625, the Medes under King
Phraortes invaded Assyria, but Phraortes was slain and his son Kyaxares
called away by an invasion of his own country. Herodotus says that
this was after he had defeated the Assyrians in a battle and had begun
the siege of Niniveh,[230] but before he had succeeded in reducing
the city. After a time he subdued or assimilated the Medes, and then
investing Niniveh once more, about 607, in two years he took and
destroyed her.
To which of these two sieges by Kyaxares are we to assign the Book
of Nahum? Hitzig, Kuenen, Cornill and others incline to the first on
the ground that Nahum speaks of the yoke of Assyria as still heavy on
Judah, though about to be lifted. They argue that by 608, when King
Josiah had already felt himself free enough to extend his reforms
into Northern Israel, and dared to dispute Necho’s passage across
Esdraelon, the Jews must have been conscious that they had nothing
more to fear from Assyria, and Nahum could hardly have written as he
does in i. 13, _I will break his yoke from off thee and burst thy
bonds in sunder_.[231] But this is not conclusive, for _first_, as we
have seen, it is not certain that i. 13 is from Nahum himself, and
_second_, if it be from himself, he might as well have written it about
608 as about 625, for he speaks not from the feelings of any single
year, but with the impression upon him of the whole epoch of Assyrian
servitude then drawing to a close. The eve of the later siege as a
date for the book is, as Davidson remarks,[232] “well within the verge
of possibility,” and some critics prefer it because in their opinion
Nahum’s descriptions thereby acquire greater reality and naturalness.
But this is not convincing, for if Kyaxares actually began the siege
of Niniveh about 625, Nahum’s sense of the imminence of her fall is
perfectly natural. Wellhausen indeed denies that earlier siege. “Apart
from Herodotus,” he says, “it would never have occurred to anybody to
doubt that Nahum’s prophecy coincided with the fall of Niniveh.”[233]
This is true, for it is to Herodotus alone that we owe the tradition of
the earlier siege. But what if we believe Herodotus? In that case, it
is impossible to come to a decision as between the two sieges. With our
present scanty knowledge of both, the prophecy of Nahum suits either
equally well.[234]
Fortunately it is not necessary to come to a decision. Nahum, we
cannot too often insist, expresses the feelings neither of this nor
of that decade in the reign of Josiah, but the whole volume of hope,
wrath and just passion of vengeance which had been gathering for more
than a century and which at last broke into exultation when it became
certain that Niniveh was falling. That suits the eve of either siege by
Kyaxares. Till we learn a little more about the first siege and how far
it proceeded towards a successful result, perhaps we ought to prefer
the second. And of course those who feel that Nahum writes not in the
future but the present tense of the details of Niniveh’s overthrow,
must prefer the second.
* * * * *
That the form as well as the spirit of the Book of Nahum is poetical is
proved by the familiar marks of poetic measure—the unusual syntax, the
frequent absence of the article and particles, the presence of elliptic
forms and archaic and sonorous ones. In the two chapters on the siege
of Niniveh the lines are short and quick, in harmony with the dashing
action they echo.
As we have seen, the text of chap. i. is very uncertain. The subject
of the other two chapters involves the use of a number of technical
and some foreign terms, of the meaning of most of which we are
ignorant.[235] There are apparently some glosses; here and there the
text is obviously disordered. We get the usual help, and find the usual
faults, in the Septuagint; they will be noticed in the course of the
translation.
FOOTNOTES:
[199] In the English version, but in the Hebrew chap. ii. vv. 1 and
3; for the Hebrew text divides chap. i. from chap. ii. differently
from the English, which follows the Greek. The Hebrew begins chap. ii.
with what in the English and Greek is the fifteenth verse of chap. i.:
_Behold, upon the mountains_, etc.
[200] In the English text, but in the Hebrew with the omission of vv. 1
and 3: see previous note.
[201] Other meanings have been suggested, but are impossible.
[202] So it lies on Billerbeck’s map in Delitzsch and Haupt’s _Beiträge
zur Assyr._, III. Smith’s _Bible Dictionary_ puts it at only 2 m. N. of
Mosul.
[203] Layard, _Niniveh and its Remains_, I. 233, 3rd ed., 1849.
[204] Bohn’s _Early Travels in Palestine_, p. 102.
[205] Just as they show Jonah’s tomb at Niniveh itself.
[206] See above, p. 18.
[207] Just as in Micah’s case Jerome calls his birthplace Moresheth
by the adjective Morasthi, so with equal carelessness he calls Elḳosh
by the adjective with the article Ha-elḳoshi, the Elḳoshite. Jerome’s
words are: “Quum Elcese usque hodie in Galilea viculus sit, parvus
quidem et vix ruinis veterum ædificiorum indicans vestigia, sed tamen
notus Judæis et mihi quoque a circumducente monstratus” (in _Prol. ad
Prophetiam Nachumi_). In the _Onomasticon_ Jerome gives the name as
Elcese, Eusebius as Ἐλκεσέ, but without defining the position.
[208] This Elkese has been identified, though not conclusively, with
the modern El Kauze near Ramieh, some seven miles W. of Tibnin.
[209] Cf. Kuenen, § 75, n. 5; Davidson, p. 12 (2).
Capernaum, which the Textus Receptus gives as Καπερναούμ, but most
authorities as Καφαρναούμ and the Peshitto as Kaphar Nahum, obviously
means Village of Nahum, and both Hitzig and Knobel looked for Elḳôsh in
it. See _Hist. Geog._, p. 456.
Against the Galilean origin of Nahum it is usual to appeal to John vii.
52: _Search and see that out of Galilee ariseth no prophet_; but this
is not decisive, for Jonah came out of Galilee.
[210] Though perhaps falsely.
[211] This occurs in the Syriac translation of the Old Testament by
Paul of Tella, 617 A.D., in which the notices of Epiphanius (Bishop
of Constantia in Cyprus A.D. 367) or Pseudepiphanius are attached to
their respective prophets. It was first communicated to the _Z.D.P.V._,
I. 122 ff., by Dr. Nestle: cf. _Hist. Geog._, p. 231, n. 1. The
previously known readings of the passage were either geographically
impossible, as “He came from Elkesei beyond Jordan, towards Begabar of
the tribe of Simeon” (so in Paris edition, 1622, of the works of St.
Epiphanius, Vol. II., p. 147: cf. Migne, _Patr. Gr._, XLIII. 409); or
based on a misreading of the title of the book: “Nahum son of Elkesaios
was of Jesbe of the tribe of Simeon”; or indefinable: “Nahum was of
Elkesem beyond Betabarem of the tribe of Simeon”; these last two from
recensions of Epiphanius published in 1855 by Tischendorf (quoted
by Davidson, p. 13). In the Στιχηρὸν τῶν ΙΒ´ Προφητῶν καὶ Ἰσαιοῦ,
attributed to Hesychius, Presbyter of Jerusalem, who died 428 of 433
(Migne, _Patrologia Gr._, XCIII. 1357), it is said that Nahum was ἀπὸ
Ἑλκεσεὶν (Helcesin) πέραν τοῦ τηνβαρεὶν ἐκ φυλῆς Συμεών; to which has
been added a note from Theophylact, Ἑλκασαΐ πέραν τοῦ Ἰορδάνου εἰς
Βιγαβρὶ.
[212] Ad Nahum i. I (Migne, _Patr. Gr._, LXXI. 780): Κώμη δὲ αὕτη
πάντως ποῦ τῆς Ἰουδαίων χώρας.
[213] The selection Bashan, Carmel and Lebanon (i. 4), does not prove
northern authorship.
[214] אֶלְקוֹשׁ may be (1) a theophoric name = Ḳosh is God; and
Ḳosh might then be the Edomite deity קוֹס whose name is spelt with
a Shin on the Assyrian monuments (Baethgen, _Beiträge z. Semit.
Religionsgeschichte_, p. 11; Schrader, _K.A.T._², pp. 150, 613), and
who is probably the same as the Arab deity Ḳais (Baethgen, _id._, p.
108); and this would suit a position in the south of Judah, in which
region we find the majority of place-names compounded with אל. Or else
(2) the א is prosthetic, as in the place-names אכזיב on the Phœnician
coast, אכשׁף in Southern Canaan, אשדוד, etc. In this case we might
find its equivalent in the form לְקוֹש (cf. כזיב אכזיב); but no such
form is now extant or recorded at any previous period. The form Lâḳis
would not suit. On Bir el Ḳûs see Robinson, _B.R._, III., p. 14, and
Guérin, _Judée_, III., p. 341. Bir el Ḳûs means Well of the Bow, or,
according to Guérin, of the Arch, from ruins that stand by it. The
position, _east_ of Beit-Jibrin, is unsuitable; for the early Christian
texts quoted in the previous note fix it _beyond_, presumably south or
south-west of Beit-Jibrin, and in the tribe of Simeon. The error “tribe
of Simeon” does not matter, for the same fathers place Bethzecharias,
the alleged birthplace of Habakkuk, there.
[215] _Einleitung_, 1st ed.
[216] Who seems to have owed the hint to a quotation by Delitzsch on
Psalm ix. from G. Frohnmeyer to the effect that there were traces of
“alphabetic” verses in chap, i., at least in vv. 3-7. See Bickell’s
_Beiträge zur Semit. Metrik_, Separatabdruck, Wien, 1894.
[217] _Z.A.T.W._, 1893, pp. 223 ff.
[218] Cf. Ezra ii. 42; Neh. vii. 45; 2 Sam. xvii. 27.
[219] Ver. 1 is title; 2 begins with א; then ב is found in בסופה, 3_b_;
ג in גוער, ver. 4; ד is wanting—Bickell proposes to substitute a
New-Hebrew word דצק, Gunkel דאב, for אמלל, ver. 4_b_; ה in הרים,
5_a_; ו in ותשא, 5_b_; ז by removing לפני of ver. 6_a_ to the end
of the clause (and reading it there לפניו), and so leaving זעמו as the
first word; ח in חמתו in 6_b_; ט in טוב, 7_a_; י by eliding ו
from וידע, 7_b_; כ in כלה, 8; ל is wanting, though Gunkel
seeks to supply it by taking 9_c_, beginning לא, with 9_b_,
before 9_a_; מ begins 9_a_.
[220] See below in the translation.
[221] As thus: 9_a_, 11_b_, 12 (but unintelligible), 10, 13, 14, ii. 1,
3.
[222] See above on Zephaniah, pp. 49 ff.
[223] Cornill, in the 2nd ed. of his _Einleitung_, has accepted
Gunkel’s and Bickell’s main contentions.
[224] iii. 8-10.
[225] The description of the fall of No-Amon precludes the older
view almost universally held before the discovery of Assurbanipal’s
destruction of Thebes, viz. that Nahum prophesied in the days of
Hezekiah or in the earlier years of Manasseh (Lightfoot, Pusey,
Nägelsbach, etc.).
[226] So Schrader, Volck in Herz. _Real. Enc._, and others.
[227] It is favoured by Winckler, _A.T. Untersuch._, pp. 127 f.
[228] Above, pp. 15 f.; 19, 22 ff.
[229] This in answer to Jeremias in Delitzsch’s and Haupt’s _Beiträge
zur Assyriologie_, III. 96.
[230] I. 103.
[231] Hitzig’s other reason, that the besiegers of Niniveh are
described by Nahum in ii. 3 ff. as single, which was true of the siege
in 625 _c._, but not of that of 607—6, when the Chaldeans joined the
Medes, is disposed of by the proof on p. 22 above, that even in 607—6
the Medes carried on the siege alone.
[232] Page 17.
[233] In commenting on chap. i. 9; p. 156 of _Kleine Propheten_.
[234] The phrase which is so often appealed to by both sides, i. 9,
_Jehovah maketh a complete end, not twice shall trouble arise_, is
really inconclusive. Hitzig maintains that if Nahum had written this
after the first and before the second siege of Niniveh he would have
had to say, “not thrice _shall trouble arise_.” This is not conclusive:
the prophet is looking only at the future and thinking of it—_not
twice_ again _shall trouble arise_; and if there were really two sieges
of Niniveh, would the words _not twice_ have been suffered to remain,
if they had been a confident prediction _before_ the first siege?
Besides, the meaning of the phrase is not certain; it may be only a
general statement corresponding to what seems a general statement in
the first clause of the verse. Kuenen and others refer the _trouble_
not to that which is about to afflict Assyria, but to the long slavery
and slaughter which Judah has suffered at Assyria’s hands. Davidson
leaves it ambiguous.
[235] Technical military terms: ii. 2, מצורה; 4, פלדת (?); 4, הרעלו;
6, הסכך; iii. 3, מעלה (?). Probably foreign terms: ii. 8, הצב;
iii. 17, מנזריך. Certainly foreign: iii. 17, טפסריך.