The Books of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah

By Thomas Renz

In this commentary, Thomas Renz reads Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah as three carefully crafted writings of enduring relevance, each of which makes a vital contribution to the biblical canon. Discussing the historical settings, Renz takes up both long-standing issues, such as the relationship of Zephaniah to Josiah’s reforms, and the socioeconomic conditions of the time suggested by recent archaeological research. The place of these writings within the Book of the Twelve is given fresh consideration, including the question of what one should make of the alleged redaction history of Nahum and Habakkuk. 

The author’s careful translation of the text comes with detailed textual notes, illuminating some of the Bible’s most outstanding poetry (Nahum) and one of the biblical chapters that is among the most difficult to translate (Habakkuk 3). The thorough verse-by-verse commentary is followed by stimulating theological reflection, opening up avenues for teaching and preaching from these prophetic writings. No matter their previous familiarity with these and other Minor Prophets, scholars, pastors, and lay readers alike will find needed guidance in working through these difficult but important books of the Bible.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Release date: Jun 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9781467461849

Book preview

2012.

Introduction to Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah

I. THE NATURE OF PROPHETIC BOOKS

The question of the nature of prophetic books is still contested. Roberts claims that if one were looking for a modern analogy to the ancient prophetic book, a collection of relatively short sermons by a particular minister would be a good analogy. When reading such a modern collection, one cannot assume that the sermons will be arranged in a particular, logical order. Consequently, sometimes … too much attention to the book as a whole may lead to misinterpretation of a particular sermon.¹ Yet my previous research led me to conclude that at least the book of Ezekiel had been carefully arranged to communicate a message.² Because many prophetic books are plausibly thought to go back to the oral ministry of a prophet, the genre of anthology is a distinct option, but the possibility that there is a coherent rationale behind the arrangement of a prophetic book and that the book itself functions as a piece of communication cannot be excluded. The question needs to be asked for each book afresh. There is, in my view, no one genre prophetic book—not in the narrow sense anyway.

In the light of ancient Near Eastern evidence, it is probable that many prophecies were written down soon after being uttered. Collections of prophetic oracles are found elsewhere, but there is nothing known to us that is comparable to prophetic books of the kind we have in the Bible.³ Therefore, based on the observation that in the ancient world oracles were transcribed with a concern for accuracy and then transmitted unchanged from one generation to another, we cannot conclude that within ancient Israel and Judah prophetic words could not have been recast to speak into new contexts. Even the larger prophetic books in the Bible reflect a literary shape suggesting a process that involved more than anthologizing individual oracles. The prophetic books seem to be the product of careful theological reflection.

As indicated in the preface to this commentary, I am skeptical about a number of redaction-critical proposals made in relation to Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah. But this does not mean that I rule out a process of redaction on principle. Bearing in mind that much of biblical literature is anonymous, there is no reason to believe that every word within a book associated with a particular prophet must have been said or written down by that prophet. Nonetheless, it seems to me a fair assumption that the people who collected prophecies and arranged them in rhetorically shaped books were respectful of the original prophecies and that any redactional expansions sought to develop the text itself—sometimes even in an unexpected direction—rather than to merely add words that would speak to their generation.⁴ To put it differently, redactors were first of all close readers. A passage like Isa 16:13–14 clearly indicates its origin at a later time than the preceding verses, but there is no reason to think that later elaborations, whether by the prophet or by someone else, were always marked in this way.

The distinction between prophetic discourse speaking about God in the third person and oracles consisting of first-person divine speech has been more or less emphasized by different commentators. My own view is that the distinction is often blurred in prophetic literature, which frequently uses third-person references to God in first-person divine speech (enallage), a feature that will be discussed further in relation to Zephaniah.⁵ Rhetorically, we may distinguish three main types of communication that feature prophetic and divine speech:⁶ (1) prophetic discourse, like a sermon, which cites divine speech; (2) divine oracles, or instances in which someone impersonates God in order to bring a revelation from him, to which prophetic commentary is appended; and (3) prophetic-divine speech, in which the speakers are not clearly distinguished. To suggest these three types is to claim that a distinction between prophetic and divine speech is sometimes warranted rhetorically but that there are also cases in which it will not be helpful to claim a hard-and-fast distinction between the two.⁷

II. THE MINOR PROPHETS IN THE CANON

The traditional Jewish understanding of the prophetic literature is that it expounds the Torah; the traditional Christian understanding is that it points forward to Christ. Both are true in my view. Once it is part of the canon of Scripture, no part of prophetic literature is understood as competing with or substituting for the fundamental revelation that is Torah. The Minor Prophets are only a small part of the prophetic literature, if one follows the traditional Jewish understanding that includes Joshua to Kings in the prophetic canon. While obvious links with the Former Prophets are few and far between, the basic theological outlook and even some of the characteristic vocabulary is similar. This has often been explained with the thesis that the prophetic books underwent a redaction by those responsible for or familiar with the Former Prophets. Yet it is hard to distinguish between the common phraseology due to similar social and ideological background and that due to actual identity of authorship (redaction), and some books are closer to the Deuteronomistic style than others (see below). All in all, considering that (1) the prophets build on tradition in their condemnation of the sins of their people, (2) the redactors of the prophetic books were likely to increase the links with other parts of the tradition rather than decrease them, and (3) the injunction toward the end of the Book of the Twelve to remember the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel, statutes and ordinances, we have strong encouragement to pay attention to links with the Torah.⁸

But the links are not all backward. The Christian interpreter will want to ask in what sense the prophets proclaim Christ, and the answer will most often be in a typological sense. The forward links relate to God’s history with his people, to the exposition of his design for creation, and to the reality of guilt and reconciliation. These issues are embodied in God’s central self-revelation in Jesus Christ, and the full significance of the prophetic word is therefore discerned in the light of Jesus Christ. For those like myself who accept the truth of the New Testament, the link to the second part of the Christian two-part canon is not one among many one could make but is as firm and important a link (forward) as the (backward) link to Torah.

Is there a specific contribution made by the Minor Prophets to the canon? Many of the same motifs and themes are found in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. But none of these gives us the idea of a succession of prophets like the Book of the Twelve. The prophets in the narrative corpus of the Bible fulfill such a variety of functions that one does not get the same sense from them of a prophetic tradition exhorting and encouraging the people of God across the centuries. The similarities of themes dealt with in the Minor Prophets create a sense of unity across the ages, but the particularities of each of the books testify to a dynamic vitality and the fact that the prophetic word is spoken into specific situations.

III. THE UNITY OF THE BOOK OF THE TWELVE

Many scholars have come to believe that the Minor Prophets constitute in some sense a single literary entity. They claim that such a unity is suggested by the traditional designation the Book of the Twelve and by the scribal tradition of copying the Twelve on a single scroll. These conventions indeed indicate that the writings of the Minor Prophets were thought to belong together. Certainly, each writing associated with a minor prophet is on its own too short to count as a book in the full sense.⁹ It is no surprise, therefore, that these writings were collected together and that early counts of the books in the Hebrew canon were given as twenty-two (the number of letters of the Hebrew alphabet) or twenty-four (the number of letters of the Greek alphabet).¹⁰ In a sense, it is uncontroversial to speak of the Book of the Twelve as a unit that comprises all the Minor Prophets. What is debatable is whether the individual writings therein belong together as chapters of a carefully constructed book that develops an argument or whether they form an anthology—a more or less loose collection of writings that share similar themes and motifs.¹¹ The canonical text does not include a separate superscription for the Book of the Twelve, and while the headings used for the different collections are sufficiently similar to invite comparison, they are not in my view similar enough to suggest a single origin.

EXCURSUS: ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL MANUSCRIPTS

The Minor Prophets have been transmitted as a unit for a long time (e.g., in 8ḤevXIIgr), but the manuscript evidence does not tell us in which sense the Twelve formed a canon of shorter prophetic writings. A unified composition would be put on one scroll for literary reasons; an anthology could be put on one scroll for pragmatic reasons, and maybe also to suggest a historical succession of prophets.¹² Philippe Guillaume argues that there are substantially fewer manuscripts of the Twelve at Qumran than usually assumed and that none of the manuscripts transmitting the complete collection of the Twelve is earlier than the first century BC, the date of 8ḤevXIIgr.¹³ He concludes: Nothing supports claims that the XII formed a collection before their translation in Greek.¹⁴ In fact, the twelve writings are still treated as separate books in Codex Sinaiticus (fourth century AD), with the individual minor prophets being given book titles and having the column in which each book ends left blank, just like the major prophets.

The Leningrad Codex (AD 1008), the oldest complete manuscript of the Hebrew Bible in Hebrew, concludes biblical books with the record of a verse count. It does so for each of the Minor Prophets, albeit usually in a slightly abbreviated form.¹⁵ The Aleppo Codex (AD tenth century), even older but no longer preserved in full,¹⁶ also offers a verse count for each of the Minor Prophets, but only in short form, the number being signified by Hebrew letters. Medieval codices give verse counts sometimes for individual books within the Twelve but sometimes only for the Book of the Twelve. The St. Petersburg Codex of the Latter Prophets (AD 916) offers a verse count for the Book of the Twelve only.¹⁷ It does, however, leave three empty lines between the individual writings.¹⁸

According to the production notes at the end of the book, the Cairo Codex of the Prophets was created at the end of the year 827, after the destruction of the second temple (= AD 895), although carbon dating indicates that it is not earlier than the eleventh century.¹⁹ While not the oldest known surviving Hebrew manuscript that contains the entire text of the Nevi’im (Former and Latter Prophets), it belongs to roughly the same period as the Aleppo and Leningrad Codices. One of its interesting features is the use of bqšw ʾt-yhwh kl (seek YHWH everyone, from Zeph 2:3) or dršw yhwh bhmṣʾw (seek YHWH while he may be found, from Isa 55:6) at the end of each book.²⁰ In between Joshua and Judges (text damaged), Judges and Samuel, Samuel and Kings, and so on, this inscription is part of a whole column that marks the break between books. The individual minor prophets, except for Habakkuk, are separated by the inscription but by no additional space or artwork. So again, the individual minor prophets are treated as distinct entities but not as full-scale books. A verse count is offered for the Book of the Twelve and not for individual parts thereof. Whether the lack of an inscription between Nahum and Habakkuk is an oversight or meant as an invitation to read them together as one is difficult to determine. Nahum-Habakkuk form a good unit, but it seems unlikely that the scribes of this codex thought of eleven rather than twelve minor prophetic books.

Apart from such questions of designation, there are two main lines of argument to support the idea that this collection of prophetic writings is designed to be read as a complete literary work. One focuses on interconnections within the Book of the Twelve and the other on discerning an overarching plot or global structure. Some connections between neighboring books are impressive and may indicate an attempt to stitch consecutive books together.²¹ But others are less persuasive and suggest that no such attempt of stitching books together was carried through the whole corpus.²² Indeed, Franz Delitzsch, who appears to have been the first to observe these keyword connections, thought that they were the reason for the sequence in which the already completed books were arranged rather than the product of redactional work specifically designed to stitch the books together.²³ In the light of the varying quality of these links, this view has something to be said for it. But even if the links were redactional, this is not sufficient evidence for substantial editorial work with the aim of creating a larger literary unit. As regards additional literary and thematic connections between the books, similar links can be seen with books outside the Twelve, especially to the book of Isaiah.²⁴ Such links could be either the unintentional result of a common tradition or the product of an intentional cross-referencing that invites reading the canonical books as a theologically coherent whole, rather than editorial work seeking to establish a strong literary-rhetorical unit.

The search for keyword connections as well as the attempt to trace a storyline through the collection are at first sight hampered by the fact that the sequence of the Minor Prophets varies in different traditions. But a case has been made for purposeful ordering of each major tradition.²⁵ Indeed, it has been suggested that the different sequences of LXX and MT reflect the fact that the Book of the Twelve as a whole might address two very different hermeneutical agendas that originated ultimately in different historical periods.²⁶ Alas, we do not have evidence from antiquity to confirm that readers perceived these differing agendas. Nogalski examines two examples that he believes demonstrate that in some instances the Book of the Twelve was read as a corpus in its own right even in antiquity: Sirach and Jerome.²⁷ (He explicitly disclaims that this was necessarily the dominant reading.) But the first example cannot serve to substantiate the presence of a specific hermeneutical agenda that relates to the order in which the prophetic writings appear in the corpus, while the second only attests to a belief that the order of the writings was determined by chronology.

Nogalski observes that Sirach’s summary in 49:10 picks up the significant role hope plays in this corpus, even if more passages are devoted to judgment, and argues that Sirach’s commitment to throne and altar influenced the specific example cited from the collection in 49:11–12 (referencing Zerubbabel and Jeshua son of Jozadak). This means that we are not able to deduce from Sirach 49:10–12 what sequence the prophetic writings followed in the Book of the Twelve accessible to Sirach and his readers or whether the sequence mattered to him. The longer prophetic books offer Sirach the opportunity to identify some of the experiences of the prophets Isaiah (Sir 48:20–25), Jeremiah (Sir 49:6–7), and Ezekiel (Sir 49:8), alongside key features of the writings attributed to them, but the same cannot be said for his summary of the Book of the Twelve. The summary of the Twelve is serviceable, but it could equally describe the major prophetic books, which also offer hope for the temple and Zion, especially to readers who are looking for it. Thus, the summary would not need to be changed if Hosea, Joel, or Malachi were missing—or indeed Nahum, Habakkuk, or Zephaniah. In other words, the reference in Sirach demonstrates the existence of the corpus, but it does not prove that Sirach considered this corpus a literary unit with a specific argument rather than an anthology of smaller writings attributed to individual prophets whose message was similar to that of the prophets who left behind more substantial works.

As for Nogalski’s comments on Jerome, which focus on Jerome’s treatment of Jonah, Nogalski is right to note that in his preface to the Vulgate, Jerome says that the Book of the Twelve is one book and establishes the principle that those writings that are undated should be placed in the same period as the last one mentioned, following the order in the Hebrew text. (Jerome does not offer an explanation for the different order in the Christian tradition of which he was a part.) But Nogalski fails to take into account that Jerome wrote commentaries on the individual prophetic writings and did not do so in their presumed chronological or any canonical order. Nahum was the first book on which Jerome commented (AD 392–393), once he apparently decided to offer commentaries on each of the twelve,²⁸ followed by Micah, Zephaniah, Haggai, and Habakkuk in short order, and then, having been interrupted by the Origenist controversy, Jonah and Obadiah (AD 396) and a decade later Zechariah, Malachi, Hosea, Joel, and Amos (AD 406). Jerome’s exegesis of the historical sense is based on the presumed historical setting of each individual prophet. He does not ask what the historical sense of Jonah (or Nahum, Habakkuk, or Zephaniah) was in a Persian period Book of the Twelve. Nogalski believes that Jerome’s placement of Jonah as contemporary with Hosea, Amos, and Isaiah reflects his application of the reading strategy of the Twelve in the MT sequence.²⁹ This may well be so, in line with the principle expressed in the preface to the Vulgate of the Twelve. But the eighth-century setting can be inferred from 2 Kgs 14:23–25, which Jerome cites, without reference to the preceding date in the Book of the Twelve (Amos 1:1), and Jerome makes no reference to the presumed reading strategy in his introduction to Jonah, nor even in his introduction to Obadiah, the also-undated book preceding Jonah in the Hebrew text. In fact, as is typical for Jerome, he appeals to the Hebrews who say that this is the man who, under Ahab, the king of Samaria and the very wicked Jezebel, fed in caves the one hundred prophets who did not bend their knees to Baal.³⁰ Not only is there no appeal to Amos 1:1, but the implied setting is in fact earlier than Amos’s by some seven decades. What this demonstrates is that there was considerable interest at the time in dating these prophetic figures and that people were clutching at any evidence that might help with this. Using the last-mentioned date within the anthology to date an otherwise undated prophet seems to have been one of the strategies adopted, possibly as a last resort (as it was overridden in the case of Obadiah by the link with a figure named Obadiah in Ahab’s time). This seems to have happened with dates given for Nahum.

Nahum, whose announcement of the fall of Nineveh sounds definitive, must obviously have prophesied later than Jonah, whose announcement of Nineveh’s destruction was either postponed or annulled by repentance. But how much later? Nogalski observes that both the author or emender of Tob 14:3–4 (some texts read Jonah, others Nahum)³¹ and Josephus (Jewish Antiquities 9.239–42) place Nahum in the eighth century. He links this with the principle that an undated prophet is to be dated with reference to the last dated prophet mentioned in the (Hebrew) Book of the Twelve, in this case Mic 1:1.³² This may have been the reasoning, but it is less clear that the specific dating played a significant role in the theological reflection around Nineveh. Jonah’s chronological priority was a given, as noted above, and specific attempts to correlate Jonah and Nahum were surely prompted by historical and theological interests that would have been present even if the two writings had not been transmitted within the same scroll. It is noteworthy that Josephus places Nahum in the reign of Jotham (Ant. 9.236–38),³³ the first mentioned king in Mic 1:1, rather than that of Hezekiah, the last mentioned, thus bringing Nahum as close to Jonah as possible. This was perhaps to suggest that Nineveh’s repentance was very short-lived. Other than using the sequence of writings to help determine a prophet’s chronology, there is little evidence that anyone in antiquity read the Book of the Twelve as a single literary unit in a way that noticeably influenced the interpretation of the individual prophetic writings therein.

It is to be expected that the debate around how to read the Book of the Twelve will continue for a little while longer. Useful presentations with opposing views can be found in the compilations of essays edited by James D. Nogalski and Marvin A. Sweeney;³⁴ by Ehud Ben Zvi and James D. Nogalski;³⁵ by Rainer Albertz, James D. Nogalski, and Jakob Wöhrle;³⁶ by Elena di Pede and Danatella Scaiola;³⁷ and by Heiko Wenzel.³⁸ In my view, the Book of the Twelve is not the result of extensive reshaping of the individual writings, although it seems that some thought went into arranging them in a certain order. Thus, the order Micah-Nahum-Habakkuk-Zephaniah in MT highlights similarities between Micah and Nahum and between Nahum and Habakkuk,³⁹ encouraging readers to read these prophetic writings alongside each other. (The LXX sequence ensures that Jonah and Nahum are read together.) Such similarities could easily have arisen as a result of prophets being influenced by each other and by a common liturgical tradition (esp. Exod 34:6–7).⁴⁰ This view has been shaped by basic methodological preferences (on which I side with Ben Zvi more often than Nogalski) and was confirmed by my examination of specific issues, such as references to Torah within the Book of the Twelve and the relationship of Habakkuk to its co-texts,⁴¹ as well as my supervision of an MTh in which my student Simon Wakeling made a strong, but in my view not ultimately persuasive, case for reading the Book of the Twelve as a cohesive, single entity.⁴²

I do not exclude the possibility that the book of Malachi was written specifically to conclude the Book of the Twelve, nor that significant redactional work reshaped the book of Hosea to serve as an introduction to the collection, nor that either of these things are true for the book of Joel. It need not be denied that we can learn things by studying the Book of the Twelve as a whole, and it may well be profitable to notice connections within this prophetic collection especially—and perhaps not just because a theological interpretation needs to consider individual biblical books in the context of the canon as a whole (including the New Testament). But I see no evidence for significant editorial work in Nahum, Habakkuk, or Zephaniah to encourage reading them as chapters of a larger whole, and I want to affirm the individual integrity of these prophetic books as means of communication.⁴³ The collection that we designate the Book of the Twelve is neither the smallest defensible literary unit within which to study Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah nor the largest within which we need to study these writings. If the individual writings originated largely independent of a larger literary context,⁴⁴ the context of the Book of the Twelve may be best discussed when offering further reflections than in the actual exegesis.

IV. NAHUM, HABAKKUK, AND ZEPHANIAH IN THE BOOK OF THE TWELVE

The question of the place of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah within the Book of the Twelve relates to the issue of the redaction and literary unity of the Book of the Twelve (see above). The three books are usually seen as belonging closely together; they are in the same sequence in all manuscripts. In his two-volume work on the origin of the Book of the Twelve, Nogalski proposed that (an earlier form of) Zephaniah originally formed a Deuteronomistic corpus with versions of Hosea, Amos, and Micah.⁴⁵ But he argues that in the formation of a Book of the Nine, a predecessor to the Book of the Twelve, three sub-groupings were formed, the middle one comprising Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah. What do these three books have in common that marks them as a group? If we consider literary style, subject matter, and manner of narration, there is nothing to distinguish these three as a group from other prophetic books in the Twelve and beyond. In House’s view, Micah summarizes the first half of the Book of the Twelve before Nahum announces the crisis, which is brought to a climax and turning point in Habakkuk. Zephaniah embodies both the climax and the falling action prior to the resolution offered in the last three prophetic writings.⁴⁶ He suggests that Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah focus on the punishment, while the previous six prophetic volumes focused on sin and the final three will focus on restoration. House recognizes that most prophetic collections contain all three elements, so how much one of these elements is in the foreground is a matter of degree. In his view, Zephaniah completes the bottom of the U-shaped [storyline of the Book of the Twelve] and begins the journey upwards.⁴⁷ To my mind, the broad brush with which House paints fails to do justice to the individual writings. In a sense there is a journey upwards with YHWH’s answer in Hab 2 and the prophet’s response in Hab 3, while the bulk of Zephaniah could very much represent the bottom of the U-shape. The end of Zephaniah takes us vigorously on the journey upwards but so does, for example, the end of Amos.⁴⁸

This leaves me with what was essentially the position advocated by Delitzsch:⁴⁹ the traditional arrangement of the collection is broadly in the order of chronological setting so that the prophets of the Assyrian period (including Nahum) precede the material that relates to the Babylonian period (Habakkuk, but especially Zephaniah) and the books of the Persian period prophets (Haggai, Malachi). But chronological considerations have sometimes been discarded in favor of thematic considerations and keyword connections. Within the MT sequence, Hosea opens the Book of the Twelve as the largest of the Minor Prophets, followed by Joel, which (a) opens with a lament over the destruction of the crop, continuing, by way of reversal, the nature theme with which Hosea ended; (b) includes a call to repentance in 2:12 that is reminiscent of Hos 14:1(2); and (c) more or less closes with the depiction of YHWH roaring from Zion in 3:16 (4:16), with which Amos begins (1:2). The phrase about inheriting the remnant of Edom in Amos 9:12 may well have encouraged the positioning of Obadiah straight after Amos, and Jonah is indeed in some sense an envoy sent among the nations (Obad. 1). Jonah, Micah, and Nahum share the use of Exod 34:6–7 (see also Joel 2:13).⁵⁰ Micah separates Nahum from Jonah (not so in much of the Greek tradition, in which Nahum follows straight from Jonah). The reason may have been a desire to bring the two allusions to the Exod 34:6–7 tradition in Micah (toward the end of the book) and Nahum (at the beginning of the book) closer together. But this has the effect of creating a greater gap between the allusions in Jonah and those in Micah and Nahum. The sequence Micah-Jonah-Nahum would have been no less effective for bringing allusions to Exod 34 into closer proximity. It appears to me, therefore, that the juxtaposition of Nahum and Habakkuk created by the order Micah-Nahum is the more important reason. Here chronological and thematic considerations coalesce. Nahum concerns the end of the Assyrian empire and Habakkuk the rise of the Babylonian one not only by way of being set in that period but also by actually addressing the significance of these empires. Zephaniah is the only minor prophet explicitly set in the (preexilic) Babylonian period.⁵¹ No exilic prophet is among the Minor Prophets. The exilic period, as far as explicit setting is concerned anyway, is the domain of the Major Prophets and their editors.

Thus, the main reason for grouping Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah together in the Book of the Twelve and for discussing them in one commentary is their setting at the point of changing empires, which had a huge impact on the life of the nation of Judah. The thematic links between these books are explained by their historical context. A few scholars have argued that Nahum and Habakkuk form a literary unit, arranged in a palistrophe:⁵²

But the generic differences between the two hymns are significant, as are those between the two instances of threatening speech, and there are no clear verbal signals or connections to suggest such an arrangement was in the mind of any of the authors or editors involved in the process.⁵³ Fabry notes the absence of Habakkuk’s key term ḥāmās (violence, 1:2–3, 9; 2:8, 17 [2×]) from Nahum.⁵⁴

V. NAHUM, HABAKKUK, AND ZEPHANIAH AND THEIR CONSTITUENT UNITS

The macrostructure of a biblical book is rarely, if ever, uncontroversial. Proposals for the literary structure of a book are reading strategies. In modern books, some sort of structure is often provided by the author in the form of headings and a table of contents.⁵⁵ Readers usually feel the need to divide biblical texts in units smaller than those provided by titles or headings. The use of conventional introductory formulae is sometimes used as a cue for such subdivisions. It is worth bearing in mind that proposals for the literary structure of a book are often not right or wrong but rather more or less appropriate or successful. Criteria for appropriateness and successfulness vary depending on the purpose of the structure, but most readers will probably agree that structures that account for a greater number of the characteristic features of a text are to be considered more successful.

Instead of merely providing a structural outline for each of the three books, the following offers a discussion of noteworthy features which ought to be considered in deciding on a structure.⁵⁶ Such a consideration of features of the text gives a sense of the texture of the piece of writing, whether one agrees with the literary structure on which this commentary will settle or not. Indeed, with regard to all three of the writings explored in this commentary, it is unlikely that we will ever come to an agreement on a structure that fulfills all purposes—especially not one that operates on several levels. But it is evident that some parts of the text hang more closely together than others, and by paying attention to such things as alterations of speaker, addressee, topic or setting, transitional expressions such as therefore, exclamatory utterances, rhetorical questions, and repetitions both in successive lines and of earlier material, we gain a greater intimacy with the text. It is debatable how far the ancients thought of literary structures. I am skeptical about the importance of complex structures of divisions and subdivisions in a context in which even what we would call literature was mostly oral. I want to avoid superimposing a carefully worked out structure that corresponds to my own aesthetic sense. But it need not be questioned that ancient readers felt a difference between more and less pronounced breaks, and my aim will be to get the right feel for the text in that respect.

As for the smallest units, there is still little agreement concerning the issue of rhythm in the Hebrew text. I use a twofold method to determine the rhythm of a passage and count feet and stresses on the basis of the masoretic accentuation.⁵⁷ The number of feet (word units) corresponds to the number of masoretic accents (conjunctive and disjunctive) and the number of stresses to the number of disjunctive accents.⁵⁸ The masoretic accentuation is designed to fulfill a variety of functions. Its main purpose appears to be to regulate the musical modulation or recitation.⁵⁹ This suggests that the Masoretes were interested in the length of units and in rhythm, even if for a different purpose than modern commentators. I have dealt with the relationship between colometry and masoretic accentuation in more detail in a separate monograph.⁶⁰ This commentary largely refrains from technical discussions of the poetry and uses line and lines interchangeably with colon and cola. Hence, a bicolon can be spoken of here as consisting of two and a tricolon of three lines. Others use line for a bicolon and half-line for a colon. The usage in this commentary was influenced by the way I have chosen to present the translation of these prophetic texts, with each colon being on a separate line.

VI. AN OUTLINE OF THE LATE NEO-ASSYRIAN AND EARLY NEO-BABYLONIAN PERIOD

In this section, we will briefly consider the implied historical setting of the three books interpreted in this commentary. On my reading, and broadly speaking, Nahum is set in the period before the fall of Nineveh in 612 BC, which brought the Neo-Assyrian Empire to an end, but after 664/663, because it looks back to the fall of Thebes (see below). Habakkuk is set in the period around the rise of the Neo-Babylonian Empire; I will argue below that the setting is in fact after the rise of the Babylonians rather than shortly before, as many others believe. Zephaniah is placed in the days of Josiah in the second half of the seventh century, around the decline and end of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The question whether Zephaniah should be dated early or late in Josiah’s three-decade reign is discussed in the introduction to Zephaniah. For this general overview, it is sufficient to note that the three books are set in the period between 660 and 600 BC. This alone makes it interesting to deal with them in one volume. None of the other prophetic books are set in this period of transition from the Neo-Assyrian to the Neo-Babylonian Empire. The setting need not imply that the three books were written at that time, but it is my best guess that in the case of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah, the implied setting is also the time at which (most of) the material originated and was put together.

The beginning of the Neo-Assyrian Empire is usually dated from the reign of Ashur-dan II (934–912), under whom a long period of Assyrian decline was reversed. Its climax came with Tiglath-pileser III (744–727), who seems to have come to the throne as a usurper. In several western campaigns, he consolidated Assyrian control over Syria and the eastern Mediterranean, turning local rulers into Assyrian vassals obliged to pay annual tributes. Failure to pay was punished, usually by the appointment of a new ruler, territorial reductions, deportations of members of the upper class, and increased tribute payments. Further anti-Assyrian activity could lead to destruction and annexation. Notably, Damascus fell in 732. The Assyrian preference was for keeping profitable commercial centers such as Tyre and Gaza intact without annexing them. In this way, they tried to extract maximum benefit from these cities at minimum cost.

Tiglath-pileser III was succeeded by his son Shalmaneser V (727–722), who destroyed Shechem and besieged Tyre, bringing Sidon, Akko, and the inland territories of Tyre under Assyrian control. Samaria fell in 722, ending the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Sargon II (721–705) had to quell a series of rebellions triggered by the instability that preceded his reign but proved largely successful doing so both in the west, where he collected tribute from Hezekiah among others and stationed a garrison at the Egyptian border, and in the east, where he ultimately ousted Merodach-baladan, the king of Babylon, who for a while had succeeded in uniting his country in opposition to Assyrian domination. After Sargon’s death, Merodach-baladan briefly regained the throne of Babylon, but Sargon’s successor, Sennacherib (704–681), who concentrated much of his military effort on Babylonia, proved too strong for him. Sennacherib also campaigned in the west, bringing much destruction to Judah in 701, including, famously, the sacking of the Judean fortresses Lachish and Azekah, but without conquering Jerusalem itself. It seems that Assyrian culture and religion were not forced upon subject nations, but its dominance could not but shape even those who sought to resist Assyria, let alone any who wanted to ingratiate themselves with the empire.

Esarhaddon (681–669) strengthened Assyrian domination in the east, pursuing a policy of appeasement and rebuilding Babylon. Egyptian attempts to shake off the Assyrian yoke were met by the invasion of Egypt; Esarhaddon took Memphis and gained control of the Nile delta.⁶¹ Assyria seemed at the height of its power, but Esarhaddon’s successor Assurbanipal (668–627 [?]) was required to recapture Memphis twice, the second time penetrating far enough into Egypt to take the city of Thebes (ca. 664/663). The latter event, which ended Nubian rule over Egypt, is remembered in Nah 3:8. To Judeans, Assyrian power might have seemed irresistible at that time. But Assurbanipal faced serious problems in the east. Esarhaddon had laid careful plans for his succession, appointing one of his sons, Assurbanipal, heir to the throne in Assyria but another, Shamash-shuma-ukin, heir to the throne in Babylonia. If his idea was to thereby strengthen the union of Assyria and Babylonia, it proved a major error of judgment. Shamash-shuma-ukin gained the support of the Babylonians against his brother and, allied with Elamites and Arabs, sought to gain independence from Assyria. The resulting civil war lasted four years (652–648). It was ultimately won by Assurbanipal, who then conducted raids into Elam, capturing and destroying Susa. Assurbanipal was also keenly interested in cultural pursuits and undertook extensive building projects. With Assurbanipal’s attention focused on the east, Egypt apparently transitioned from being an Assyrian vassal to being an ally on a more equal footing, able to exercise influence on the eastern Mediterranean coast.

Either toward the end of Assurbanipal’s reign or upon his death, the Babylonians tried again to be free of Assyrian control. Under Nabopolassar’s leadership, this fight for freedom was ultimately won. Nabopolassar was crowned king of Babylon (625–605), marking the beginning of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. Elam was very weak at the time, but the Medes allied themselves with the Babylonians as well, and together they managed to inflict one defeat after another on Assyria. In 614, Assur was captured. Nineveh fell in 612. The retreating Assyrian troops, now supported by the Egyptian army, were defeated at Harran in 610. In 605, Nabopolassar’s son Nebuchadnezzar II led a surprise attack against the Egyptian army at Carchemish, forcing them to flee south. The news of his father’s death prompted Nebuchadnezzar to return to Babylon to be crowned king (604–562) before returning to the west to take control of cities and territories formerly under Assyrian (and Egyptian) vassalage.

Assyria, which had exercised such a strong hold on the eastern Mediterranean shores for some three centuries, had brought the Kingdom of Israel to an end and inflicted oppression and devastation on Judah. But it was finished in a comparatively short period of time. Egypt was humiliated. And Babylonia under Nebuchadnezzar II became the new superpower to be feared. Nebuchadnezzar’s relentless campaigning ensured that his empire included more or less the same territory as the former Assyrian Empire. His attempt in 601 to conquer Egypt was not successful, however. This prompted Jerusalem’s king, Jehoiakim, to renounce the allegiance to Babylon that he had sworn after the Babylonian victory at Carchemish. The Babylonian response was the beginning of the end of the Kingdom of Judah, a tragedy that the Bible well documents elsewhere.

Nahum speaks to a people for whom Assyria seemed invincible, predicting the fall of Nineveh and the end of its empire. Zephaniah speaks into the period when Assyrian domination began to be less keenly felt but the Neo-Babylonian Empire was not yet on the horizon. Habakkuk addresses the problem that the divinely promised rise of the Neo-Babylonian Empire merely substituted one evil for another.

1. J. J. M. Roberts, Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah, OTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1991), 9.

2. See Thomas Renz, The Rhetorical Function of the Book of Ezekiel, VTSup 76 (Leiden: Brill, 1999).

3. According to William R. Osborne’s review in JETS 2 (2013): 252–55, R. Russell Mack (Neo-Assyrian Prophecy and the Hebrew Bible: Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah, Perspectives on Hebrew Scripture and Its Contexts 14 [Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2011]) assumes that prophecy looked alike all across the region during the seventh century. The dissimilarity between Neo-Assyrian literature and the books of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah leads him to conclude that the latter must be later compositions that developed earlier genres. I have no access to Mack’s work.

4. The German word Fortschreibung is often used in this context. It has no ready equivalent in English. Attempts to identify and then resolve contradictions within the text by attributing different parts of the text to different layers, as if prophetic books were proceedings of conferences, seem to me less plausible.

5. Paul R. House (Zephaniah: A Prophetic Drama, BLS 16 [Sheffield: Almond Press, 1988]) relies on a firm distinction between the speeches of Zephaniah and YHWH and yet allows that YHWH refers to himself in both the first and third person. Marvin A. Sweeney (Zephaniah: A Commentary, Hermeneia [Philadelphia: Fortress, 2003]) does not allow for enallage in divine speech. He uses quotation marks in his translation to delimit divine speech but cannot altogether avoid gray areas. Cf. the marking of divine speech in Zeph 2:5–7 on p. 124 with his commentary on p. 129, and note the identification of 2:12 as prophetic speech on p. 145.

6. There is of course also a sense in which everything we find in prophetic literature is human speech and a sense in which it is all to be received as the word of God, but my concern here is with the literary features of the text.

7. Cf. Michael H. Floyd, Minor Prophets: Part 2, FOTL 22 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 166–67, on the fine line between prophets speaking for YHWH and speaking for themselves.

8. It seems to me reasonable to assume that the Torah contains a substantial amount of early material to which the prophets could refer back. In particular, I am persuaded of the largely preexilic origin of the priestly material and accept the existence of an early Deuteronomic core. Were these sources dated later, the relationship would take on a more typological nature. In other words, as portrayed in the prophetic books, the prophets based their proclamation on a tradition of the type now contained in the Torah.

9. By way of illustration, the Minor Prophets comprise 180 cols. in the Cairo Codex (see Excursus: Ancient and Medieval Manuscripts immediately below). Even if they are taken together, the only other book in the codex to be shorter is Judges (110 cols.). Zechariah, the most substantial minor prophet, fits into 39 cols.; the rest average at fewer than 13 cols.

10. 1–2 Samuel, 1–2 Kings, 1–2 Chronicles, and Ezra-Nehemiah are counted one book each. The lower count also associates Ruth with Judges and Lamentations with Jeremiah.

11. Cf. David Willgren, The Formation of the Book of Psalms: Reconsidering the Transmission and Canonization of Psalmody in Light of Material Culture and the Poetics of Anthologies, FAT 2/88 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), for a study that raises similar questions about the book of Psalms, concluding that the book is an anthology. Willgren’s comments on the Book of the Twelve are cautious (see pp. 46–47, 51–52, 54, 75, 77, 79) but point in the same direction.

12. For discussion, see Barry A. Jones, The Formation of the Book of the Twelve: A Study in Text and Canon, SBLDS 149 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995); Odil Hannes Steck, Zur Abfolge Maleachi–Jona in 4Q76 (4QXIIa), ZAW 108 (1996): 249–53; Russell Earl Fuller, The Form and Formation of the Book of the Twelve, in Forming Prophetic Literature: Essays on Isaiah and the Twelve in Honor of John D. W. Watts, ed. James W. Watts and Paul R. House, JSOTSup 235 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1996), 86–101; and the essays listed below in n. 14.

13. Note that, e.g., in MurXII, three empty lines (five before and after Obadiah because the change of book coincides with a change of column) separate the individual writings. See Josef M. Oesch, Petucha und Setuma: Untersuchungen zu einer überlieferten Gliederung im hebräischen Text des Alten Testament, OBO 27 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; Fribourg: Presses Universitaires, 1979), 286.

14. Philippe Guillaume, A Reconsideration of Manuscripts Classified as Scrolls of the Twelve Minor Prophets (XII), JHebS 7 (2007): art. 16, doi:10.5508/jhs.2007.v7.a16. See also his article The Unlikely Malachi-Jonah Sequence (4QXIIa), JHebS 6 (2006): art. 15, doi:10.5508/jhs.2006.v6.a15, which counters Jones’s proposal (n. 12). Cf. Mika S. Pajunen and Hanne von Weissenberg, The Book of Malachi, Manuscript 4Q76 (4QXIIa), and the Formation of the ‘Book of the Twelve’, JBL 135 (2015): 731–51, who conclude that in its present state 4Q76 attests only to the books of Malachi and Jonah (738). Christophe L. Nihan (Remarques sur la question de l’«unité» des XII, in The Book of the Twelve—One Book or Many? Metz Conference Proceedings, 5–7 November 2015, ed. Elena di Pede and Danatella Scaiola, FAT 2/91 [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016], 145–65) highlights the fluidity of textual traditions and of the sequencing of books (147–56).

15. Elsewhere, the phrase the count of the verses usually precedes the number in Hebrew words and is found in the Twelve with Obadiah and Nahum. Hosea, Amos, and Zechariah only have the actual verse count. Joel, Jonah, Micah, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, and Malachi each conclude with the number followed by verses.

16. Of the original 491 pages of the Aleppo Codex, 196 have been lost, including three pages from Amos 8:13 to Mic 5:1 (including the books of Obadiah and Jonah) and four pages from the end of Zephaniah to Zech 9:17 (including Haggai).

17. Cf. Christian D. Ginsburg, Introduction to the Massoretico-Critical Edition of the Hebrew Bible (London: Trinitarian Bible Society, 1897; repr., Jerusalem: Ktav, 1966), 95.

18. An image of the Hosea-Joel transition in the St. Petersburg Codex of the Latter Prophets is at https://www.alamy.com/ (Image ID: EAJXRY); see https://bit.ly/2DanOOS.

19. Cf. Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 3rd ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2011), 45–46.

20. The line from Isaiah concludes Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Micah, and Malachi; the other books conclude with the line from Zephaniah. Only Habakkuk is not given a concluding inscription.

21. Hos 14:1(2) // Joel 2:12; Joel 3:16 (4:16) // Amos 1:2; Amos 9:12 // Obad 19; Obad 1 // Jonah (a messenger sent to the nations); Jonah 4:2 // Mic 7:18–19 // Nah 1:2–3; Nah 1:1 // Hab 1:1 (same genre designation); Hab 2:20 // Zeph 1:7.

22. E.g., the link between Obad 1 and Jonah is not, strictly speaking, of a literary nature. Jonah 4:2; Mic 7:18–19; and Nah 1:2–3 all reflect Exod 34:6–7, a tradition that is often alluded to in other parts of Scripture. The maśśāʾ designation in Nah 1:1 and Hab 1:1 is of course also found in Zech 9:1; 12:1; Mal 1:1 and outside the Book of the Twelve.

23. Franz Delitzsch, Wann weissagte Obadja? Zeitschrift für die gesamte lutherische Theologie und Kirche 12 (1851): 91–102. Delitzsch did not consider the second option in this essay, which is really concerned with the dating of the ministry of the prophet Obadiah.

24. See, e.g., Erich Bosshard-Nepustil, Rezeptionen von Jesaia 1–39 im Zwölfprophetenbuch: Untersuchungen zur literarischen Verbindung von Prophetenbüchern in babylonischer und persischer Zeit, OBO 154 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; Fribourg: Presses Universitaires, 1997); Gerlinde Baumann, Connected by Marriage, Adultery, and Violence: The Prophetic Marriage Metaphor in the Book of the Twelve and in the Major Prophets, in Society of Biblical Literature 1999 Seminar Papers, SBLSP 38 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 1999), 552–69.

25. For the MT, see Paul R. House, The Unity of the Twelve, JSOTSup 77 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1990). For LXX and MT, see Marvin A. Sweeney, The Place and Function of Joel in the Book of the Twelve, in Society of Biblical Literature 1999 Seminar Papers, 570–95. Jones (Formation) argues that the original order of books within the collection is that of 4QXIIa, of which the LXX is a close variation.

26. Sweeney, Place and Function, 595.

27. James D. Nogalski, The Book of the Twelve Is Not a Hypothesis, in di Pede and Scaiola, Book of the Twelve, 37–59.

28. In his commentary on Obadiah, Jerome makes reference to an earlier allegorical reading of the book offered in his youth of which he is now ashamed; see Commentaries on the Twelve Prophets, ed. Thomas P. Scheck, vol. 1, Ancient Christian Texts (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2016), 276–77.

29. Nogalski, Not a Hypothesis, 51.

30. Jerome, Twelve, 277–78. Cf. 1 Kgs 18:3–4.

31. Tobit, who had been deported by the Assyrians, assembles his sons to instruct them with words that include, I believe the word of God that Jonah/Nahum spoke about Nineveh, that all these things will take place and overtake Assyria and Nineveh.

32. Nogalski, Not a Hypothesis, 52.

33. See Ant. 9.239, although later Nahum is said to have prophesied 115 years before the fall of Nineveh (9.242), which would place him firmly in the reign of Ahaz according to modern reconstructions of the chronology.

34. James D. Nogalski and Marvin A. Sweeney, eds., Reading and Hearing the Book of the Twelve, SBL SymS 15 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2000).

35. Ehud Ben Zvi and James D. Nogalski, eds., Two Sides of a Coin: Juxtaposing Views on Interpreting the Book of the Twelve/the Twelve Prophetic Books, Analecta Gorgiana 201 (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2009).

36. Rainer Albertz, James D. Nogalski, and Jakob Wöhrle, eds., Perspectives on the Formation of the Book of the Twelve: Methodological Foundations—Redactional Processes—Historical Insights, BZAW 433 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012).

37. Di Pede and Scaiola, Book of the Twelve.

38. Heiko Wenzel, ed., The Book of the Twelve: An Anthology of Prophetic Books or the Result of Complex Redactional Processes?, Osnabrücker Studien zur Jüdischen und Christlichen Bibel 4 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018). See also two literature reviews: Ida Willi-Plein, Das Zwölfprophetenbuch, TRu 64 (1999): 351–95; Paul L. Redditt, Recent Research on the Book of the Twelve as One Book, CurBR 9 (2001): 47–80. Some issues for interpretation with special reference to Hosea and Amos are outlined in Jörg Jeremias, Neuere Tendenzen der Forschung an den Kleinen Propheten, in Perspectives in the Study of the Old Testament and Early Judaism: A Symposium in Honour of Adam S. van der Woude on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday, ed. Florentino García Martínez and Edward Noort, VTSup 73 (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 122–36.

39. Cf. Klaas Spronk, Synchronic and Diachronic Approaches to the Book of Nahum, in Synchronic or Diachronic? A Debate on Method in Old Testament Exegesis, ed. Johannes C. Moor (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 185.

40. Developing a proposal by Raymond C. VanLeeuwen (Scribal Wisdom and Theodicy in the Book of the Twelve, in In Search of Wisdom: Essays in Memory of John G. Gammie, ed. Leo G. Perdue, Bernard Brandon Scott, and William Johnston Wiseman [Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox Press, 1993], 31–34), Wakeling (The Minor Prophets as a Unity Developing Theodicy, Ecclesia Reformanda 2 [2010]: 124–53) argues that citations of and allusions to Exod 34:6–7 give coherence to the Book of the Twelve. Cf. Jakob Wöhrle, A Prophetic Reflection on Divine Forgiveness: The Integration of the Book of Jonah into the Book of the Twelve, JHebS 9 (2009): art. 7, doi:10.5508/jhs.2009.v9.a7; So Many Cross-References! Methodological Reflections on the Problem of Intertextual Relationships and Their Significance for Redaction Critical Analysis, in Albertz, Nogalski, and Wöhrle, Perspectives on the Formation, 3–20; Donatella Scaiola, The Twelve, One or Many Books? A Theological Proposal, in di Pede and Scaiola, Book of the Twelve, 180–93, esp. 190–93.

41. Thomas Renz, Torah in the Minor Prophets, in Reading the Law: Studies in Honour of Gordon J. Wenham, ed. J. Gordon McConville and Karl Möller, LHBOTS 461 (London: T&T Clark, 2007), 73–94; Habakkuk and Its Co-Texts, in Wenzel, Book of the Twelve, 13–36.

42. An essay based on the thesis was later published as Wakeling, Minor Prophets (see n. 40).

43. Note the illuminating research into the nature of anthologies in antiquity by Martin Beck, Das Dodekapropheton als Anthologie, ZAW 118 (2006): 558–81.

44. I believe this to be the case for Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah. Joel and Malachi—and maybe Obadiah and Jonah—are the most likely candidates for having been composed with the larger collection in mind.

45. James D. Nogalski, Literary Precursors to the Book of the Twelve, BZAW 217 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1993); Redactional Processes in the Book of the Twelve, BZAW 218 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1993). Nogalski was followed by Aaron Schart, Redactional Models: Comparisons, Contrasts, Agreements, Disagreements, in SBL Seminar Papers 1998, Part Two (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 1998), 893–908. Nogalski’s PhD student Nicholas R. Werse recently offered a careful modification in Reconsidering the Book of the Four: The Shaping of Hosea, Amos, Micah, and Zephaniah as an Early Prophetic Collection, BZAW 517 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2019).

46. House, Unity, 139–51.

47. House, Unity, 151.

48. Grace Ko (The Ordering of the Twelve as Israel’s Historiography, in Prophets, Prophecy and Ancient Israelite Historiography, ed. Mark J. Boda and Lissa M. Wray Beal [Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2013], 315–32) seeks to revive House’s proposal with particular attention to Habakkuk’s location "at the lowest point of the U" (326), but she fails to explain how the U-shape would have been compromised if the positions of Habakkuk and Zephaniah had been reversed.

49. Delitzsch, Wann weissagte Obadja?

50. See Ruth Scoralick, Gottes Güte und Gottes Zorn: Die Gottesprädikationen in Exodus 34,6f und ihre intertextuellen Beziehungen zum Zwölfprophetenbuch, HBS 33 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2002) for the view that this is a key text holding the Book of the Twelve together. Jan P. Bosman (The Paradoxical Presence of Exodus 34:6–7 in the Book of the Twelve, Scriptura 87 [2004]: 233–43) stresses the very diverse use made of the text. Martin Roth (Israel und die Völker im Zwölfprophetenbuch: Eine Untersuchung zu den Büchern Joel, Jona, Micha und Nahum, FRLANT 210 [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005], 150–52, 247–48, 253–57) is explicit in rejecting the view that the various uses of Exod 34:6–7 belong to the same literary layer, as is Ehud Ben Zvi (Remembering Twelve Prophetic Characters from the Past, in di Pede and Scaiola, Book of the Twelve, 6–36), who raises methodological questions about the steps that lead scholars like Wöhrle to conclude that all passages citing Exod 34:6–7 are later additions (9–12).

51. In fact, I suspect that the core of Zephaniah is older than the core of Habakkuk. Habakkuk, while it includes a prophecy of the rise of the Babylonians, focuses on their destructive impact. Zephaniah takes a chronological step back, announcing a disaster yet to come, but its final thrust is the restoration after the destruction, and this makes its position after Habakkuk defensible in terms of the grand chronological movement implied in the collection.

52. See Rainer Kessler, Nahum-Habakuk als Zweiprophetenschrift: Eine Skizze, in Wort JHWHs, das geschah … (Hos 1,1): Studien zum Zwölfprophetenbuch, ed. Erich Zenger, HBS 35 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2002), 149–58. Cf. Duane A. Christensen, The Book of Nahum: A History of Interpretation, in Watts and House, Forming Prophetic Literature, 187–94, 193.

53. I discuss this in more detail in Thomas Renz, Habakkuk and Its Co-Texts. I find myself also in substantial agreement with Tchavdar S. Hadjiev, Zephaniah and the ‘Book of the Twelve’ Hypothesis, in Prophecy and the Prophets in Ancient Israel: Proceedings of the Oxford Old Testament Seminar, ed. John Day, LHBOTS 531 (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 325–38.

54. Heinz-Josef Fabry, Habakuk/Obadja, HThKAT (Freiburg: Herder, 2018), 129. Fabry makes this observation in connection with a list of parallels between Nahum and Habakkuk.

55. Even then, readers can conceptualize a different arrangement and may gain new insights into the text in this way.

56. Cf. CHP, esp. ch. 7; Ernst R. Wendland, The Discourse Analysis of Hebrew Prophetic Literature: Determining the Larger Textual Units of Hosea and Joel, Mellen Biblical Press Series 40 (Lewiston: Mellen, 1995).

57. The use of maqqep may not be consistent enough for this method to warrant full confidence. But insofar as word combinations can be drawn together to an accentual unit or pronounced more distinctly as separate units, ignoring the maqqep does not automatically lead to more reliable results. In cases of doubt, words combined with maqqep need careful (re)examination.

58. In rare cases such as Exod 20:2, there is double accentuation, indicating two different ways of reading (or chanting) the text, and the number of feet and stresses cannot be ascertained simply by counting accents.

59. JM 15e. Cf. Israel Yeivin, Introduction to the Tiberian Masorah, ed. and trans. E. John Revell, Masoretic Studies 5 (Missoula: Scholars Press, 1980), 158.

60. Thomas Renz, Colometry and Accentuation in Hebrew Prophetic Poetry, KUSATU 4 (Waltrop: Spenner, 2003). The book includes a colography of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah in line with my understanding of the masoretic colometry on pp. 106–21. Two mistakes need to be corrected: Nah 3:19a and Hab 1:12a are only one colon each in the masoretic scheme. Sung Jin Park, Application of the Tiberian Accentuation System for Colometry of Biblical Hebrew Poetry, JNSL 39 (2013): 113–27, while supportive, considers my application of the rules too strict, because it occasionally creates unbalanced poetic lines like these. My intention in Colometry and Accentuation was to propose a strictly objective procedure for moving from the accentuation to its implied colometry. I accept that the resulting colometry is occasionally unsatisfactory. My own colometry, therefore, is not always in agreement with that of the MT. Accepting such divergence seems to me preferable to bending the rules to make the alleged masoretic colometry fit my own.

61. For more details see the excursus Assyrian Campaigns against Egypt in the commentary on Nahum 3:8.

The Book of

NAHUM

Introduction

I. THE PROFILE OF THE BOOK

A. THE SUPERSCRIPTION

The heading in Nah 1:1 consists of two titles: maśśāʾ (a pronouncement) concerning Nineveh (A) and the document of a revelation to Nahum the Elkoshite (B). Three unusual features deserve comment. First, the use of two titles is unique and may suggest that they did not originate together, as many commentators believe.¹ The headings to Amos, Micah, and Isaiah’s pronouncement concerning Babylon (13:1), with which some commentators have compared Nah 1:1,² are constructed differently; these other headings do not truly constitute two titles, as the relative particle ʾăšer combines the different parts of the titles in one syntactical unit.

Second, the (A) title is a heading of a form used frequently in the book of Isaiah (13:1; 15:1; 17:1; 19:1; 21:1, 11, 13 [unusually with preposition]; 22:1; 23:1; 30:6), which in one instance is further qualified with the phrase which the prophet Isaiah saw (13:1; cf. Hab 1:1). This is what we might have expected here as well: "Maśśāʾ concerning Nineveh that the prophet Nahum saw." Its absolute position at the beginning of a book is unique, and it is striking that readers are told that this is a maśśāʾ concerning Nineveh separately from (and prior to) being told that it is the document of a revelation to Nahum the Elkoshite.³ Only Mal 1:1 employs a strictly nonnarrative superscription that includes the designation maśśāʾ, but its use of the designation is different, as it apparently governs the phrase word of YHWH. Thus, Mal 1:1 more closely resembles titles that use the prophetic word formula. The meaning of maśśāʾ has been much discussed. I side with those who believe that maśśāʾ designates a genre. This could be either an indirect