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]
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]