vi. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF CHS. 2 and 3.—The most striking characteristics of the poetry of Nahum are its intense force and its picturesque- ness. Although, as Dr. Pusey has remarked, it is only in the original that ‘the grandeur, energy, power, and vividnessof Nahumcan be fully felt,’ still even in an English dress no one can be insensible to the onward rush of the movement in 2'*, the graphic word-picture of 3* 8, the aptness and force of the figures of the lion and his cubs (2"*:), and of the locusts’ flight (37), the pathos of 818, and similar features. ‘ Of all the minor prophets none seems to reach the sublimity, the fire, and the daring spirit (audaces spiritus) of Nahum,’—such is the judgment passed on our prophet by Bishop Lowth in his classical work on Hebrew Poetry
NAHUM
NAIN
477
* Of all the prophets,’ writes a more recent autho- rity, ‘he is the one who in dignity and force approaches most nearly to Isaiah’ (Driver, LOT® 336; οἵ, Kirkpatrick, Doct. of the Prophets, p. 250). It is unfortunate that in several passages even of the genuine prophecy the text is uncertain. The use by the prophet of so many apparently technical terms (cf. G. A. Smith’s list, Twelve Prophets, ii. 89) further helps to obscure his meaning.
The direct teaching of the book is mainly con- fined to ch. 1. Its leading thought we have already seen to be the attribute of J” as ‘a God jealous * (cf. Ex 20° 3414, Dt 4%) and avenging,’ who, though He suffer long, will assuredly ‘take vengeance on his adversaries’ (cf. Is 34° 634, Dt 32"). The elaboration of this aspect of the Divine nature serves to throw into higher relief the assur- ance that follows—
‘The Lord is good to them that wait upon him (LXX).’ ‘In the day of trouble will He deliver them.’t ‘(Yea) the Lord knoweth them that put their trust in him.’
Passing to chs. 2 and 3, we note one important respect in which Nahum differs from all his pre- decessors in the prophetic office. His mind is so full of the iniquities and impending punishment of Nineveh, that he has no thought for the short- comings of his own people. In this he presents a striking contrast to his contemporaries, Zephaniah and Jeremiah. Nahum’s heart, it has been said, ‘for all its bigness, holds room only for the bitter- nesses, the baflled hopes, the unappeased hatreds of a hundred years’ (G. A. Smith, op. cit. ii. 90). In ch, 3, especially, the prophet’s indignation burns with a white feat as he lays bare the moral gangrene at the heart of the Assyrian nation, the moral atrophy which was the real source of the weakness that made its sudden and complete collapse without a parallel in history (ef. Strabo, xvi. 1. 3: ἡ μὲν οὖν Nivos πόλις ἠφανίσθη παραχρῆμα, κιτιλ). Wanton bloodshed, inhuman cruelty, commercial immorality, bad faith in her political celations,—in his denunciation of these Nahum gave voice less to his own personal conviction than to the outraged conscience of humanity. Assyria in his hands becomes an object-lesson to Bie empires of the modern world, teaching, as an eternal principle of the divine government of the world, the absolute necessity, for a nation’s continued vitality, of that righteousness, per- sonal, civic, and national, which alone ‘exalteth a nation.’
Lirgratorg.—The older commentaries are discussed by Ὁ, Strauss (see below); list of titles at close of art. ‘Nahum’ in Kitto’s Biblical Cyclop.® (1866). The chief modern commen- taries are those on the Minor Prophets generally by Ewald, Pusey, Keil, Hitzig-Steiner4 (1881), Orelli (in Strack and Zock- ler’s series, Eng. tr., T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh), Wellhausen (translation and critical notes in Skizzen und Vorarbeiten, pt. vy. 8rd ed. [1899}) ; A. B. Davidson, Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah (in Cambridge Bible 1896—the best English com- mentary); Nowack (1897); G. A. Smith, The T'welve Prophets, vol. ii. (1898). Τὸ these may be added Farrar, Minor Prophets (‘Men of the Bible’ series), and Kirkpatrick, Doctrine of the Prophets (2nd ed.). A detailed commentary on the military references is supplied by the monograph of Ad. Billerbeck and Alf. Jeremias, ‘Der Untergang Nineveh’s und die Weissagungs- schrift des Nahum von Etkosch,’ in Delitzsch und Haupt’s Beitrige zur Assyriologie, Bd. iii., 1898, pp. 87-188. A complete monograph, though now largely out of date, is that of Otto Strauss, Nahumi de Nino Vaticinium (1853).
For the more purely critical study of Nahum see the essays of Bickell, Gunkel, and G. B. Gray, on ch. 1 cited in the body of the article ; also P, Ruben, ‘An Oracle of Nahum’ (1/2214), in PSBA xx., May 1898, pp. 173-185. For the Versions in general, L. Reinke, Zur Krittk der dilteren Versionen des Propheten Nahum, 1867, For the LXX, Karl Vollers, Das Dodekapro- pheton der Alezandriner, 1880, and Schuurmans-Stekhoven, De Alexandrijnsche Vertaling van het Dodekapropheton, 1887. For the Targum of Jonathan, in addition to Reinke, op. cit. p. 551f.,
* On the Divine attribute of jealousy see A. B. Davidson's note on 13, t Adopting Bickell’s restoration aby.
see the critical edition with notes by M. Adler in the JQR vii. 1894, pp. 630-657. For the Syriac, M. Sebok, Die Syr. Ueber- setz, ἃ. 12 klein. Propheten, 1887. A, R. S, KENNEDY.
NAIDUS (A Ndedos, B Ndados), 1 Es 9%, ap parently=Benaiah, Ezr 10”,