prophecy of its destruction. The existence of Phraortes at the period to which he is assigned is now beUeved to be an anachronism. See Medes. Junius and Tre- mellius select the last years of Josiah as the period at which Nahum prophesied; but at this time not Nineveh, but Babylon, was the object of alarm to the Hebrews. The arguments by which Strauss (Xahumi de Mno Va- ticinium, prol. c. 1, 3) endeavors to prove that the proph- ecy belongs to the time at which Manasseh was in cap- tivity at Babylon, that is, between the years 680 and 6G7 B.C., are not convincing. Assuming that the position which Nahum occupies in the canon between Micah and Habakkuk supplies, as the limits of his prophetical career, the reigns of Hezekiah and Josiah, he endeavors to show from certain apparent resemblances to the writings of the older prophets — Joel, Jonah, and Isaiah — that Nahum rnust have been familiar with their writ- ings, and consequently later in point of time than any of them. But a careful examination of the passages by which this argument is maintained will show that the phrases and turns of expression upon which the resem- blance is supposed to rest are in no way remarkable or characteristic, and might have been freely used by any one familiar with Oriental metaphor and imagerj- with- out incurring the charge of plagiarism. Two exceptions arc Nah. ii, 10, where a striking expression is used Avhich only occurs besides in Joel ii, 6, and Nah. i, 15 (Heb. ii, 1), the first clause of which is nearlj- word for word the same as that of Isa. Hi, 7. But these passages, by themselves, would equally prove that Nahum was anterior both to Joel and Isaiah, and that his diction was copied by them. Other references which are sup- posed to indicate imitations of older writers, or, at least, familiarity with their writings, are Nah. i, 3 compared with Jon. iv, 2 ; Nah. i, 13 with Isa. x, 27 ; Nah. iii, 10 with Isa. xiii, 16 ; Nah.ii, 2 [1] with Isa. xxiv, 1 ; Nah. iii, 5 with Isa. xlvii, 2, 3 ; and Nah. iii, 7 with Isa. Ii, 19. For the purpose of showing that Nahum preceded Jere- miah, Strauss quotes other passages in which the later prophet is believed to have had in his mind expressions of his predecessor with which he was familiar. The most striking of these Jire Jer.x, 19 compared with Nah. iii, 19 ; .Jer. xiii, 26 with Nah. iii, 5 ; Jer. i, 37, Ii, 30 with Nah. iii, 13. AVords which are assumed by the same commentator to be peculiar to the times of Isaiah are appealed to by him as evidences of the date of the prophecy. But the only examples which he quotes prove nothing : r|I3"LJ, sheteph (Nah. i, 8, A. V. " flood"), occurs in Job, the Psalms, and in Proverbs, but not once in Isaiah ; and iTl^IiTS, metsurdh (Nah. ii, 1 [2], A. V. " munition"), is found only once in Isaiah, though it occurs frequently in the Chronicles, and is not a word likely to be uncommon or peculiar, so that nothing can be inferred from it. Besides, all this would be as ap- propriate to the times of Hezekiah as to those of Manas- seh. That the prophecy was written before the final downfall of Nineveh, and its capture by the Medes and Chakteans (cir. B.C. 625), will be admitted. The allu- sions to the Assyrian power imply that this was still un- broken (i, 12; i'i, 13, 14; iii, 15-17). The glory of the kingdom was at its brightest in the reign of Esarhaddon (B.C. 680-660), who for thirteen years made Babylon the seat of the empire; and this fact would incline us to fix the date of Nahum rather in the reign of his father Sennacherib, for Nineveh alone is contemplated in the destruction threatened to the Assj-rian power, and no hint is given that its importance in the kingdom was diminished, as it necessarily would be, by the establish- ment of another capital. That Palestine was suffering from the effects of Ass}Tian invasion at the time of Nahum's writing seems probable from the allusions in i, 11, 12, 13 ; ii, 2 ; and the vivid description of the As- syrian armament in ii, 3, 4. At such a time the prophecy woidd be appropriate ; and if i, 14 refers to the death of Sennacherib in the house of Nisroch, it must have been written before that event. The capt-
ure of No Ammon, or Thebes, has not been identified with anything like certainty. It is referred to as of recent occurrence, and it has been conjectured with probability that it was sacked by Sargon in the in- vasion of Egypt alluded to in Isa. xx, 1. These cir- cumstances seem to determine the fourteenth year of Hezekiah (B.C. 712) as the period before which the proph- ecy of Nahum could not have been written. The con- dition of Assyria in the reign of Sennacherib would correspond with the state of things implied in -the prophecy ; and it is on all accounts most probable that Nahum flourished in the latter half of the reign of Heze- kiah, and wrote his prophecy soon after the date above mentioned, either in Jerusalem or its neighborhood, where the echo still lingered of " the rattling of the wheels, and of the prancing horses, and of the jumping chariots" of the Assyrian host, and " the flame of the sword and lightning of the spear" still flashed in the memory of the beleaguered citizens. The arguments in favor of this date, adduced by Eichhorn (in his Ein- leit.), supporting the same conclusion reached by Vitringa {Typus Boctr.Proph.Tp.Sl), have not been overthrown by Davidson in his late Introd. to the 0. T. ; and it may therefore be regarded as measurably acquiesced in by the majority of modern critics.