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Or the circumstances of Nahum's life nothing is known, except that he was a native of Elkosh (Ch. i. 1.), a village of Galilee, the ruins of which were shown to Jerome, as he informs us, Proem. in Com. in Nah. As to the time in which this prophet flourished, the most common, and the most probable opinion, gathered from the contents of the admirable little poem, the only production of his, which has come down to us, is, that he lived during the reign of Manasseh, whilst the tribe of Judah was yet in their own country, and after the captivity of the ten tribes. See i. 12-15. ii. 1, 2. He predicts the deliverance of his country from the Assyrians, and the destruction of Nineveh, the capital city of their enemies. This destruction he sets forth, as determined against them by God, in the language of poetry, not of history. He does not indicate the manner in which, nor the nation by which, the destruction of Nineveh was to be effected.

Nahum stands in the very first rank of the Hebrew poets. What he has left constitutes a complete and regular poem, distinguished by a certain classic elegance, which shows that care and study were united with genius in its production. His description is extremely vivid, and his language rich and forcible, and abounding in beautiful images.

I. 2.-keepeth indignation: i. e. remembers and punishes their offences. See Ps. ciii. 9. Jer. iii. 12.

4.-flower of Lebanon: i. e. the growth or cedars of Lebanon. 8.- her place: i. e. of Nineveh.

- darkness: a common meta

phor, denoting destruction. See Job xv. 22, &c.

9. Not the second time: i. e. her destruction shall be completed by the first blow. See 1 Sam. xxvi. 8.

10. — entangled, &c.: i. e. in inextricable difficulty, staggering in

their purposes.

11. - one. Some suppose a particular Assyrian king to be denoted, as Tiglath pileser, &c.; others, the Assyrian kings successively.

12. thee: i. e. Judah.

14.- concerning thee: i. e. the king of Assyria. —be sown: i. è. thy race shall become extinct.

II. 3.—his mighty men: the army which should come against Nineveh.

5. — He calleth, &c.: i. e. the Assyrian king calls for his warriors to defend the wall, who through haste and trepidation stumble on their way.

5.- assault-shelter. I have been obliged to coin a word, to denote a machine, similar to the vineæ, or testudines, of the Romans, i. e. moveable sheds, under cover of which the besiegers made their assaults. In the middle ages a similar machine was called mantelet. See Ivanhoe, Ch. xxvii. note.

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6. - The gates of rivers: a metaphor denoting the great number of the inhabitants of Nineveh, which passed through, or the great number of enemies, which now streamed or flowed into them. Comp. Is. ii. 2.

7.

uncovered: i. e. insulted, treated like a prostitute. See Is. xlvii. 2, 3.

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10. — void, &c. The original is strongly emphatic. The words are of the same sound, forming what is called a paranomasia. They increase in length, as they point out great, greater, and greatest desolation. Bukah, u-mebukah, u-mebullakah.

11.- lions, &c. i. e. Where is Nineveh, whose inhabitants were as bold and rapacious as lions, and which was as full of plunder as a lion's den of ravine?

5.

III. 3.-lightning of the spear. Comp. Hom. Il. x. 154. xi. 65. 4.-sold nations by her whoredoms: i. e. by her intercourse or alliances with foreign nations, she brought them into subjection to her. over thy face. The metaphor is borrowed from the mode of punishing prostitutes in ancient times, viz. to strip them naked, or throw their clothes over their heads, and thus expose them to public execration,

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8. No-Ammon. By this name is undoubtedly denoted ancient Thebes, the splendid metropolis of ancient Egypt, called by the Greeks Diospolis, and celebrated by Homer, (Il. ix. 383,) as the city of a hundred gates; izαтóμлvλαί. The name No-Ammon was given to it from the circumstance that it was the chief seat of the worship of Jupiter Ammon; No-Ammon denoting the portion or possession of Ammon. The grandeur of its temples, obelisks, statues, &c. is apparent from its ruins, which are still the wonder of the world. When and by whom the destruction of Thebes here alluded to took place is uncertain. Gesenius supposes, that it was effected by Tartan, the general of Sargon, king of Assyria, about seven hundred and sixteen years before Christ. See Is. ch. xx.

11. — drink, &c.: i. e. of the cup of misery, or punishment, hidden: i. e. unknown, as if thou hadst never existed. 18.shepherds: i. e. rulers, prefects.

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RESPECTING the life of Habakkuk, aud the time in which he lived, we have no historical record. The story, in the apocryphal part of Daniel, that he brought food to Daniel in the lion's den, is sufficiently refuted by its fabulous aspect, and especially by its inconsistency with the contents of this poem. From these we may infer, with considerable probability, that he lived not far from the beginning of the Chaldean period, when the poet saw the growing power of the Chaldeans, and in his mind's eye discerned the calamities which his country was to receive from them. Ch. i. 6. The actual destruction of the Jewish nation is not referred to or implied in any part of the poem. The most common, and by far the most probable opinion in regard to the date of the prophecy is, that it was delivered in the reign of Jehoiakim. The prophet was therefore a contemporary of Jeremiah. Jahn argues from Ch. i. 2-4, which he considers as a description of Jewish immorality, that he must have lived in the early part of the reign of Manasseh. I think he is mistaken in the application of those verses; and

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