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we must assume that the former was the case. The fact that in Nah 1:8, Nah 1:13 and Nah 3:10 there are resemblances to Isa 10:23, Isa 10:27 and Isa 13:16, where our prophet is evidently the borrower, furnishes no decisive proof to the contrary. For the relation in which prophets who lived and laboured at the same time stood to one another was one of mutual giving and receiving; so that it cannot be immediately inferred from the fact that our prophet made use of a prophecy of his predecessor for his own purposes, that he must have been dependent upon him in all his kindred utterances. When, on the other hand, Ewald and Hitzig remove our prophecy to a much later period, and place it in the time of the later Median wars with Assyria, either the time of Phraortes (Herod. i. 102), or that of Cyaxares and his first siege of Nineveh (Herod. i. 103), they found this opinion upon the unscriptural assumption that it was nothing more than a production of human sagacity and political conjecture, which could only have been uttered “when a threatening expedition against Nineveh was already in full operation” (Ewald), and when the danger which threatened Nineveh was before his eyes-a view which has its roots in the denial of the supernatural character of the prophecy, and is altogether destitute of any solid foundation.
The style of our prophet is not inferior to the classical style of Isaiah and Micah, either in power and originality of thought, or in clearness and purity of form; so that, as R. Lowth (De sacr. poësi Hebr. 281) has aptly observed, ex omnibus minoribus prophetis nemo videtur aequare sublimitatem, ardorem et audaces spiritus Nahumi; whereas Ewald, according to his preconceived opinion as to the prophet's age, “no longer finds in this prophet, who already formed one of the later prophets, so much inward strength, or purity and fulness of thought.” For the exegetical writings on the book of Nahum, see my Lehrbuch der Einleitung, 299, 300.