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 neighbour an 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.