[216] Who seems to have owed the hint to a quotation by Delitzsch on Psalm ix. from G. Frohnmeyer to the effect that there were traces of “alphabetic” verses in chap, i., at least in vv. 3–7. See Bickell’s Beiträge zur Semit. Metrik, Separatabdruck, Wien, 1894.
[217] Z.A.T.W., 1893, pp. 223 ff.
[218] Cf. Ezra ii. 42; Neh. vii. 45; 2 Sam. xvii. 27.
[219] ver. 1 is title; 2 begins with א; then ב is found in בסופה, 3b; ג in גוער, 4; ד is wanting—Bickell proposes to substitute a New-Hebrew word דצק, Gunkel דאב, for אמלל, 4b; ה in ותשא, 5b; ז by removing לפני of ver. 6a to the end of the clause (and reading it there לפניו), and so leaving זעמו as the first word; ח in חמתו in 6b; ט in טוב, 7a; י by eliding ו from וידע, 7b; כ in כלה , 8; ל is wanting, though Gunkel seeks to supply it by taking 9c, beginning לא, with 9b, before 9a; מ begins 9a.
[220] See below in the translation.
[221] As thus: 9a, 11b, 12 (but unintelligible), 10, 13, 14, ii. 1, 3.
[222] See above on Zephaniah, pp. [49] ff.
[223] Cornill, in the 2nd ed. of his Einleitung, has accepted Gunkel’s and Bickell’s main contentions.
[224] iii. 8–10.
[225] The description of the fall of No-Amon precludes the older view almost universally held before the discovery of Assurbanipal’s destruction of Thebes, viz. that Nahum prophesied in the days of Hezekiah or in the earlier years of Manasseh (Lightfoot, Pusey, Nägelsbach, etc.).