[190] LXX. In the days of thy festival, which it takes with the previous verse. The Heb. construction is ungrammatical, though not unprecedented—the construct state before a preposition. Besides נוגי is obscure in meaning. It is a Ni. pt. for נוגה from יגה, to be sad: cf. the Pi. in Lam. iii. 33. But the Hiphil הוגה in 2 Sam. xx. 13, followed (as here) by מן, means to thrust away from, and that is probably the sense here.
[191] LXX. thine oppressed in acc. governed by the preceding verb, which in LXX. begins the verse.
[192] The Heb., מַשְׂאֵת, burden of, is unintelligible. Wellhausen proposes מִשְׂאֵת עֲלֵיהֶם.
[193] This rendering is only a venture in the almost impossible task of restoring the text of the clause. As it stands the Heb. runs, Behold, I am about to do, or deal, with thine oppressors (which Hitzig and Ewald accept). Schwally points מְעַנַּיִךְ (active) as a passive, מְעֻנַּיִךְ, thine oppressed. LXX. has ἰδοὺ ἐγὼ ποιῶ ἐν σοὶ ἕνεκεν σοῦ, i.e. it read אִתֵּךְ לְמַעֲנֵךְ. Following its suggestion we might read אֶת־כֹּל לְמַעֲנֵךְ, and so get the above translation.
[194] Micah iv. 6.
[195] This rendering (Ewald’s) is doubtful. The verse concludes with in the whole earth their shame. But בָּשְׁתָּם may be a gloss. LXX. take it as a verb with the next verse.
[196] LXX. do good to you; perhaps אטיב for אביא.
[197] So Heb. literally, but the construction is very awkward. Perhaps we should read in that time I will gather you.
[198] Before your eyes, i.e. in your lifetime. It is doubtful whether ver. 20 is original to the passage. For it is simply a variation on ver. 19, and it has more than one impossible reading: see previous note, and for שבותיכם read שבותכם.
[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.
[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, 3b; ג in גוער, 4; ד is wanting—Bickell proposes to substitute a New-Hebrew word דצק, Gunkel דאב, for אמלל, 4b; ה in ותשא, 5b; ז by removing לפני of ver. 6a to the end of the clause (and reading it there לפניו), and so leaving זעמו as the first word; ח in חמתו in 6b; ט in טוב, 7a; י by eliding ו from וידע, 7b; כ in כלה , 8; ל is wanting, though Gunkel seeks to supply it by taking 9c, beginning לא, with 9b, before 9a; מ begins 9a.
[220] See below in the translation.
[221] As thus: 9a, 11b, 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.
[236] Above, pp. 78 ff., 85 ff.
[238] ver. 3, if the reading be correct.
[239] Gunkel amends to in mercy to make the parallel exact. But see above, p. 82.
[240] Gunkel’s emendation is quite unnecessary here.
[242] So LXX. Heb. = for a stronghold in the day of trouble.
[243] Thrusts into, Wellhausen, reading ינדף or ידף for ירדף. LXX. darkness shall pursue.
[244] Heb. and R.V. drenched as with their drink. LXX. like a tangled yew. The text is corrupt.
[245] The superfluous word מלא at the end of ver. 10 Wellhausen reads as הלא at the beginning of ver. 11.
[246] Usually taken as Sennacherib.
[247] The Hebrew is given by the R.V. though they be in full strength and likewise many. LXX. Thus saith Jehovah ruling over many waters, reading משל מים רבים and omitting the first וכן. Similarly Syr. Thus saith Jehovah of the heads of many waters, על משלי מים רבים. Wellhausen, substituting מים for the first וכן, translates, Let the great waters be ever so full, they will yet all ...? (misprint here) and vanish. For עבר read עברו with LXX., borrowing ו from next word.
[248] Lit. and I will afflict thee, I will not afflict thee again. This rendering implies that Niniveh is the object. The A.V., though I have afflicted thee I will afflict thee no more, refers to Israel.
[249] Omit ver. 13 and run 14 on to 12. For the curious alternation now occurs: Assyria in one verse, Judah in the other. Assyria: i. 12, 14, ii. 2 (Heb.; Eng. ii. 1), 4 ff. Judah: i. 13, ii. 1 (Heb.; Eng. i. 15), 3 (Heb.; Eng. 2). Remove these latter, as Wellhausen does, and the verses on Assyria remain a connected and orderly whole. So in the text above.
[250] Syr. make it thy sepulchre. The Hebrew left untranslated above might be rendered for thou art vile. Bickell amends into dunghills. Lightfoot, Chron. Temp. et Ord. Text V.T. in Collected Works, I. 109, takes this as a prediction of Sennacherib’s murder in the temple, an interpretation which demands a date for Nahum under either Hezekiah or Manasseh. So Pusey also, p. 357.
[251] LXX. destruction כָּלָה, for כֻּלה.
[252] Davidson: restoreth the excellency of Jacob, as the excellency of Israel, but when was the latter restored?
[254] The authorities are very full. First there is M. Botta’s huge work Monument de Ninive, Paris, 5 vols., 1845. Then must be mentioned the work of which we availed ourselves in describing Babylon in Isaiah xl.—lxvi., Expositor’s Bible, pp. 52 ff.: “Memoirs by Commander James Felix Jones, I.N.,” in Selections from the Records of the Bombay Government, No. XLIII., New Series, 1857. It is good to find that the careful and able observations of Commander Jones, too much neglected in his own country, have had justice done them by the German Colonel Billerbeck in the work about to be cited. Then there is the invaluable Niniveh and its Remains, by Layard. There are also the works of Rawlinson and George Smith. And recently Colonel Billerbeck, founding on these and other works, has published an admirable monograph (lavishly illustrated by maps and pictures), not only upon the military state of Assyria proper and of Niniveh at this period, but upon the whole subject of Assyrian fortification and art of besieging, as well as upon the course of the Median invasions. It forms the larger part of an article to which Dr. Alfred Jeremias contributes an introduction, and reconstruction with notes of chaps. ii. and iii. of the Book of Nahum: “Der Untergang Niniveh’s und die Weissagungschrift des Nahum von Elḳosh,” in Vol. III. of Beiträge zur Assyriologie und Semitischen Sprachwissenschaft, edited by Friedrich Delitzsch and Paul Haupt, with the support of Johns Hopkins University at Baltimore, U.S.A.: Leipzig, 1895.
[256] Colonel Billerbeck (p. 115) thinks that the south-east frontier at this time lay more to the north, near the Greater Zab.
[257] First excavated by M. Botta, 1842–1845. See also George Smith, Assyr. Disc., pp. 98 f.
[258] iii. 12.
[259] iii. 14.
[260] See Jones and Billerbeck.
[261] Delitzsch places the עיר רחבות of Gen. x. 11, the “ribit Nina” of the inscriptions, on the north-east of Niniveh.
[262] ii. 4 Eng., 5 Heb.
[263] ii. 3 Eng., 4 Heb.
[264] Ibid. LXX.
[265] iii. 2.
[266] iii. 3.
[267] It is the waters of the Tigris that the tradition avers to have broken the wall; but the Tigris itself runs in a bed too low for this: it can only have been the Choser. See both Jones and Billerbeck.
[268] ii. 6.
[269] If the above conception of chaps. ii. and iii. be correct, then there is no need for such a re-arrangement of these verses as has been proposed by Jeremias and Billerbeck. In order to produce a continuous narrative of the progress of the siege, they bring forward iii. 12–15 (describing the fall of the fortresses and gates of the land and the call to the defence of the city), and place it immediately after ii. 2, 4 (the description of the invader) and ii. 5–11 (the appearance of chariots in the suburbs of the city, the opening of the floodgates, the flight and the spoiling of the city). But if they believe that the original gave an orderly account of the progress of the siege, why do they not bring forward also iii. 2 f., which describe the arrival of the foe under the city walls? The truth appears to be as stated above. We have really two poems against Niniveh, chap. ii. and chap. iii. They do not give an orderly description of the siege, but exult over Niniveh’s imminent downfall, with gleams scattered here and there of how this is to happen. Of these “impressions” of the coming siege there are three, and in the order in which we now have them they occur very naturally: ii. 5 ff., iii. 2 f., and iii. 12 ff.
[270] ii. 2 goes with the previous chapter. See above, pp. 94 f.
[271] ii. 13, iii. 5.
[272] See above, Vol. I., Chap. IV., especially pp. 54 ff.
[273] ii. 8.
[274] Isaiah xl.—lxvi. (Expositor’s Bible), pp. 197 ff.
[275] Read מַפֵּץ with Wellhausen (cf. Siegfried-Stade’s Wörterbuch, sub פּוּץ) for מֵפִיץ, Breaker in pieces. In Jer. li. 20 Babylon is also called by Jehovah His מַפֵּץ, Hammer or Maul.
[276] Keep watch, Wellhausen.
[277] This may be a military call to attention, the converse of “Stand at ease!”
[278] Heb. literally: brace up thy power exceedingly.
[279] Heb. singular.
[280] Rev. ix. 17. Purple or red was the favourite colour of the Medes. The Assyrians also loved red.
[281] Read כאשׁ for באשׁ.
[282] פלדות, the word omitted, is doubtful; it does not occur elsewhere. LXX. ἡνίαι; Vulg. habenæ. Some have thought that it means scythes—cf. the Arabic falad, “to cut”—but the earliest notice of chariots armed with scythes is at the battle of Cunaxa, and in Jewish literature they do not appear before 2 Macc. xiii. 2. Cf. Jeremias, op. cit., p. 97, where Billerbeck suggests that the words of Nahum are applicable to the covered siege-engines, pictured on the Assyrian monuments, from which the besiegers flung torches on the walls: cf. ibid., p. 167, n. ***. But from the parallelism of the verse it is more probable that ordinary chariots are meant. The leading chariots were covered with plates of metal (Billerbeck, p. 167).
[283] So LXX., reading פרשים for ברשים of Heb. text, that means fir-trees. If the latter be correct, then we should need to suppose with Billerbeck that either the long lances of the Aryan Medes were meant, or the great, heavy spears which were thrust against the walls by engines. We are not, however, among these yet; it appears to be the cavalry and chariots in the open that are here described.
[284] Or broad places or suburbs. See above, pp. 100 f.
[285] See above, p. 106, end of n. 282.
[286] Heb. They stumble in their goings. Davidson holds this is more probably of the defenders. Wellhausen takes the verse as of the besiegers. See next note.
[287] הסֹּכֵךְ. Partic. of the verb to cover, hence covering thing: whether mantlet (on the side of the besiegers) or bulwark (on the side of the besieged: cf. מָסָךְ, Isa. xxii. 8) is uncertain. Billerbeck says, if it be an article of defence, we can read ver. 5 as illustrating the vanity of the hurried defence, when the elements themselves break in vv. 6 and 7 (p. 101: cf. p. 176, n. *).
[288] Sluices (Jeremias) or bridge-gates (Wellhausen)?
[289] Or breaks into motion, i.e. flight.
[290] הֻצּב, if a Hebrew word, might be Hophal of נצב and has been taken to mean it is determined, she (Niniveh) is taken captive. Volck (in Herzog), Kleinert, Orelli: it is settled. LXX. ὑπόστασις = מצב. Vulg. miles (as if some form of צבא?). Hitzig points it הַצָּב, the lizard, Wellhausen the toad. But this noun is masculine (Lev. xi. 29) and the verbs feminine. Davidson suggests the other הַצָּב, fem., the litter or palanquin (Isa. lxvi. 20): “in lieu of anything better one might be tempted to think that the litter might mean the woman or lady, just as in Arab. ḍḥa’inah means a woman’s litter and then a woman.” One is also tempted to think of הַצְּבי, the beauty. The Targ. has מלכתא, the queen. From as early as at least 1527 (Latina Interpretatio Xantis Pagnini Lucensis revised and edited for the Plantin Bible, 1615) the word has been taken by a series of scholars as a proper name, Huṣṣab. So Ewald and others. It may be an Assyrian word, like some others in Nahum. Perhaps, again, the text is corrupt.
Mr. Paul Ruben (Academy, March 7th, 1896) has proposed instead of העלתה, is brought forth, to read העתלה, and to translate it by analogy of the Assyrian “etellu,” fem. “etellitu” = great or exalted, The Lady. The line would then run Huṣṣab, the lady, is stripped. (With העתלה Cheyne, Academy, June 21st, 1896, compares עתליה, which, he suggests, is “Yahwe is great” or “is lord.”)
[291] Heb. מֵימֵי הִיא for מימי אשר היא, from days she was. A.V. is of old. R.V. hath been of old, and Marg. from the days that she hath been. LXX. her waters, מֵימֶיהָ. On waters fleeing, cf. Ps. civ. 7.
[292] Buḳah, umebuḳah, umebullāḳah. Ewald: desert and desolation and devastation. The adj. are feminine.
[293] Literally: and the faces of all them gather lividness.
[294] For מרעה Wellhausen reads מערה, cave or hold.
[295] LXX., reading לבוא for לביא.
[296] Heb. her chariots. LXX. and Syr. suggest thy mass or multitude, רבכה. Davidson suggests thy lair, רבצכה.
[297] Literally and the chariot dancing, but the word, merakedah, has a rattle in it.
[298] Doubtful, מַעֲלֶה. LXX. ἀναβαίνοντος.
[299] Jeremias (104) shows how the Assyrians did this to female captives.
[300] Jer. xlvi. 25: I will punish Amon at No. Ezek. xxx. 14–16: . . . judgments in No. . . . I will cut off No-Amon (Heb. and A.V. multitude of No, reading המון; so also LXX. τὸ πλῆθος for אמון) . . . and No shall be broken up. It is Thebes, the Egyptian name of which was Nu-Amen. The god Amen had his temple there: Herod. I. 182, II. 42. Nahum refers to Assurbanipal’s account of the fall of Thebes. See above, p. 11.
[301] היארים. Pl. of the word for Nile.
[302] Arabs still call the Nile the sea.
[303] So LXX., reading מַיִם for Heb. מִיָּם.
[304] So LXX.; Heb. thee.
[305] Heb. be drunken.
[306] I.e. against, because of.
[307] Jer. l. 37, li. 30.
[308] Heb. and LXX. add devour thee like the locust, probably a gloss.
[309] Cf. Jer. ix. 33. Some take it of the locusts stripping the skin which confines their wings: Davidson.
[310] מנזריך. A.V. thy crowned ones; but perhaps like its neighbouran Assyrian word, meaning we know not what. Wellhausen reads ממזרך, LXX. ὁ συμμικτός σοῦ (applied in Deut. xxiii. 3 and Zech. ix. 6 to the offspring of a mixed marriage between an Israelite and a Gentile), deine Mischlinge: a term of contempt for the floating foreign or semi-foreign population which filled Niniveh and was ready to fly at sight of danger. Similarly Wellhausen takes the second term, טפסר. This, which occurs also in Jer. li. 27, appears to be some kind of official. In Assyrian dupsar is scribe, which may, like Heb. שׁטר, have been applied to any high official. See Schrader, K.A.T., Eng. Tr., I. 141, II. 118. See also Fried. Delitzsch, Wo lag Parad., p. 142. The name and office were ancient. Such Babylonian officials are mentioned in the Tell el Amarna letters as present at the Egyptian court.
[311] Heb. day of cold.
[312] ישכנו, dwell, is the Heb. reading. But LXX. ישנו, ἐκοίμισεν. Sleep must be taken in the sense of death: cf. Jer. li. 39, 57; Isa. xiv. 18.
[313] Except one or two critics who place it in Manasseh’s reign. See below.
[314] See next note.
[315] So Pusey. Delitzsch in his commentary on Habakkuk, 1843, preferred Josiah’s reign, but in his O. T. Hist. of Redemption, 1881, p. 226, Manasseh’s. Volck (in Herzog, Real Encyc.,² art. “Habakkuk,” 1879), assuming that Habakkuk is quoted both by Zephaniah (see above, p. 39, n.) and Jeremiah, places him before these. Sinker (The Psalm of Habakkuk: see below, p. 127, n. 342) deems “the prophecy, taken as a whole,” to bring “before us the threat of the Chaldean invasion, the horrors that follow in its train,” etc., with a vision of the day “when the Chaldean host itself, its work done, falls beneath a mightier foe.” He fixes the date either in the concluding years of Manasseh’s reign, or the opening years of that of Josiah (Preface, 1–4).
[316] Pages 53, 49. Kirkpatrick (Smith’s Dict. of the Bible,² art. “Habakkuk,” 1893) puts it not later than the sixth year of Jehoiakim.
[317] Einl. in das A. T.
[318] Beiträge zur Jesaiakritik, 1890, pp. 197 f.
[319] See Further Note on p. 128.
[320] Studien u. Kritiken for 1893.
[321] Cf. the opening of § 30 in the first edition of his Einleitung with that of § 34 in the third and fourth editions.
[322] Budde’s explanation of this is, that to the later editors of the book, long after the Babylonian destruction of Jews, it was incredible that the Chaldean should be represented as the deliverer of Israel, and so the account of him was placed where, while his call to punish Israel for her sins was not emphasised, he should be pictured as destined to doom; and so the prophecy originally referring to the Assyrian was read of him. “This is possible,” says Davidson, “if it be true criticism is not without its romance.”
[323] This in opposition to Budde’s statement that the description of the Chaldeans in i. 5–11 “ist eine phantastische Schilderung” (p. 387).
[324] It is, however, a serious question whether it would be possible in 615 to describe the Chaldeans as a nation that traversed the breadth of the earth to occupy dwelling-places that were not his own (i. 6). This suits better after the battle of Carchemish.
[325] See above, p. 121, n. 322.
[327] Pages 49 and 50.
[329] Wellhausen in 1873 (see p. 661); Giesebrecht in 1890; Budde in 1892, before he had seen the opinions of either of the others (see Stud. und Krit., 1893, p. 386, n. 2).
[330] Cornill quotes a rearrangement of chaps, i., ii., by Rothstein, who takes i. 2–4, 12 a, 13, ii. 1–3, 4, 5 a, i. 6–10, 14, 15 a, ii. 6 b, 7, 9, 10 a b β, 11, 15, 16, 19, 18, as an oracle against Jehoiakim and the godless in Israel about 605, which during the Exile was worked up into the present oracle against Babylon. Cornill esteems it “too complicated.” Budde (Expositor, 1895, pp. 372 ff.) and Nowack hold it untenable.
[331] As of course was universally supposed according to either of the other two interpretations given above.
[332] Z.A.T.W., 1884, p. 154.
[333] Cf. Isa. v. 8 ff. (x. 1–4), etc.
[334] So LXX.
[335] Cf. Davidson, p. 56, and Budde, p. 391, who allows 9–11 and 15–17.
[336] E.g. Isa. xl. 18 ff., xliv. 9 ff., xlvi. 5 ff., etc. On this ground it is condemned by Stade, Kuenen and Budde. Davidson finds this not a serious difficulty, for, he points out, Habakkuk anticipates several later lines of thought.
[337] See above, p. 39, n. 84.
[338] A. T. Religionsgeschichte, p. 229, n. 2.
[339] Cf. the ascription by the LXX. of Psalms cxlvi.-cl. to the prophets Haggai and Zechariah.
[340] Cf. Kuenen, who conceives it to have been taken from a post-exilic collection of Psalms. See also Cheyne, The Origin of the Psalter: “exilic or more probably post-exilic” (p. 125). “The most natural position for it is in the Persian period. It was doubtless appended to Habakkuk, for the same reason for which Isa. lxiii. 7—lxiv. was attached to the great prophecy of Restoration, viz. that the earlier national troubles seemed to the Jewish Church to be typical of its own sore troubles after the Return. … The lovely closing verses of Hab. iii. are also in a tone congenial to the later religion” (p. 156). Much less certain is the assertion that the language is imitative and artificial (ibid.); while the statement that in ver. 3—cf. with Deut. xxxiii. 2—we have an instance of the effort to avoid the personal name of the Deity (p. 287) is disproved by the use of the latter in ver. 2 and other verses.
[341] ישע את, ver. 13, cannot be taken as a proof of lateness; read probably הושיע את.
[342] Pusey, Ewald, König, Sinker (The Psalm of Habakkuk, Cambridge, 1890), Kirkpatrick (Smith’s Bible Dict., art. “Habakkuk”), Von Orelli.
[343] חֲבַקּוּק (the Greek Ἁμβακουμ, LXX. version of the title of this book, and again the inscription to Bel and the Dragon, suggests the pointing חַבַּקוּק; Epiph., De Vitis Proph.—see next note—spells it Ἁββακουμ), from חבק, to embrace. Jerome: “He is called ‘embrace’ either because of his love to the Lord, or because he wrestles with God.” Luther: “Habakkuk means one who comforts and holds up his people as one embraces a weeping person.”
[344] See above, pp. 126 ff. The title to the Greek version of Bel and the Dragon bears that the latter was taken from the prophecy of Hambakoum, son of Jesus, of the tribe of Levi. Further details are offered in the De Vitis Prophetarum of (Pseud-) Epiphanius, Epiph. Opera, ed. Paris, 1622, Vol. II., p. 147, according to which Habakkuk belonged to Βεθζοχηρ, which is probably Βεθζαχαριας of 1 Macc. vi. 32, the modern Beit-Zakaryeh, a little to the north of Hebron, and placed by this notice, as Nahum’s Elkosh is placed, in the tribe of Simeon. His grave was shown in the neighbouring Keilah. The notice further alleges that when Nebuchadrezzar came up to Jerusalem Habakkuk fled to Ostracine, where he travelled in the country of the Ishmaelites; but he returned after the fall of Jerusalem, and died in 538, two years before the return of the exiles. Bel and the Dragon tells an extraordinary story of his miraculous carriage of food to Daniel in the lions’ den soon after Cyrus had taken Babylon.
[346] Heb. saw.
[347] Text uncertain. Perhaps we should read, Why make me look upon sorrow and trouble? why fill mine eyes with violence and wrong? Strife is come before me, and quarrel arises.
[348] Never gets away, to use a colloquial expression.
[349] Here vv. 5–11 come in the original.
[350] ver. 12b: We shall not die (many Jewish authorities read Thou shalt not die). O Jehovah, for judgment hast Thou set him, and, O my Rock, for punishment hast Thou appointed him.
[351] Wellhausen: on the robbery of robbers.
[352] LXX. devoureth the righteous.
[353] Literally Thou hast made men.
[354] Wellhausen: cf. Jer. xviii. 1, xix. 1.
[355] So Giesebrecht (see above, p. 119, n. 318), reading העולם יריק חרבו for העל־כן יריק חרמו, shall he therefore empty his net?
[356] Wellhausen, reading יהרג for להרג: should he therefore be emptying his net continually, and slaughtering the nations without pity?
[357] מצור. But Wellhausen takes it as from נצר and = ward or watch-tower. So Nowack.
[358] So Heb. and LXX.; but Syr. he: so Wellhausen, what answer He returns to my plea.
[359] Bredenkamp (Stud. u. Krit., 1889, pp. 161 ff.) suggests that the writing on the tablets begins here and goes on to ver. 5a. Budde (Z.A.T.W., 1889, pp. 155 f.) takes the כי which opens it as simply equivalent to the Greek ὅτι, introducing, like our marks of quotation, the writing itself.
[360] וְיָפֵחַ: cf. Psalm xxvii. 12. Bredenkamp emends to וְיִפְרַח.
[361] Not be late, or past its fixed time.
[362] So literally the Heb. עֻפְּלָה, i.e. arrogant, false: cf. the colloquial expression swollen-head = conceit, as opposed to level-headed. Bredenkamp, Stud. u. Krit., 1889, 121, reads הַנֶעֱלָף for הִנֵּה עֻפְּלָה. Wellhausen suggests הִנֵּה הֶעַוָל, Lo, the sinner, in contrast to צדיק of next clause. Nowack prefers this.
[363] LXX. wrongly my.
[364] LXX. πίδτις, faith, and so in N. T.
[365] Chap. i. 5–11.
[366] So to bring out the assonance, reading הִתְמַהְמְהוּ וּתִמָהוּ.
[367] So LXX.
[368] Or Chaldeans; on the name and people see above, p. 19.
[369] Heb. singular.
[370] Omit ופרשיו (evidently a dittography) and the lame יבאו which is omitted by LXX. and was probably inserted to afford a verb for the second פרשיו.
[371] Heb. sing., and so in all the clauses here except the next.
[372] A problematical rendering. מגמה is found only here, and probably means direction. Hitzig translates desire, effort, striving. קדימה, towards the front or forward; but elsewhere it means only eastward: קדים, the east wind. Cf. Judg. v. 21, נחל קדומים נחל קישון, a river of spates or rushes is the river Kishon (Hist. Geog., p. 395). Perhaps we should change פניהים to a singular suffix, as in the clauses before and after, and this would leave מ to form with קדימה a participle from הקדים (cf. Amos ix. 10).
[373] Or their spirit changes, or they change like the wind (Wellhausen suggests כרוח). Grätz reads כֺּחַ and יַחֲלִיף, he renews his strength.
[374] Von Orelli. For אשׁם Wellhausen proposes וְיָשִׂם, and sets.
[375] The wicked of chap. i. 4 must, as we have seen, be the same as the wicked of chap. i. 13—a heathen oppressor of the righteous, i.e. the people of God.
[376] i. 3.
[377] i. 4.
[378] i. 13–17.
[379] Amos iii. 6. See Vol. I., p. 90.
[381] Its proper place in Budde’s re-arrangement is after chap. ii. 4.