date only from the Exile, or the following years, before Jerusalem was rebuilt. Again, vv. 18-20 appear to stand by themselves. It seems likely, therefore, that chap. vii. 7-20 is a Psalm composed of little pieces from various dates, which, combined, give us a picture of the secular sorrows of Israel, and of the conscience she ultimately felt in them, and conclude by a doxology to the everlasting mercies of her God. FOOTNOTES: [774] See above, pp. 6 f. [775] Note that the Hebrew and English divisions do not coincide between chaps. iv. and v. In the Hebrew chap. iv. includes a fourteenth verse, which in the English stands as the first verse of chap. v. In this the English agrees with the Septuagint. [776] Caspari. [777] In the fourth edition of Bleek's _Introduction_. [778] _Z.A.T.W._, Vols. I., III., IV. [779] See also Cornill, _Einleitung_, 183 f. Stade takes iv. 1-4, iv. 11-v. 3, v. 6-14, as originally one prophecy (distinguished by certain catchwords and an outlook similar to that of Ezekiel and the great Prophet of the Exile), in which the two pieces iv. 5-10 and v. 4, 5, were afterwards inserted by the author of ii. 12, 13. [780] _Einleitung in das A.T._, pp. 690 ff. [781] _Einleitung._ [782] _Untersuchungen über dis Textgestalt u. die Echtheit des Buches Micha_, 1887. [783] _De Profetie van Micha_, 1891, which I have not seen. It is summarised in Wildeboer's _Litteratur des A.T._, 1895. [784] _Introduction_, 1892. [785] _Litteratur des A.T._, pp. 148 ff. [786] Wildeboer (_De Profet Micha_), Von Ryssel and Elhorst. [787] Cheyne, therefore, is not correct when he says ("Introduction" to second edition of Robertson Smith's _Prophets_, p. xxiii.) that it is "becoming more and more doubtful whether more than two or three fragments of the heterogeneous collection of fragments in chaps. iv.-vii. can have come from that prophet." [788] See above, p. 311. [789] Wildeboer seems to me to have good grounds for his reply to Stade's assertion that the occurrence of promises after the threats only blunts and nullifies the latter. "These objections," says Wildeboer, "raise themselves only against _the spoken_, but not against the written word." See, too, the admirable remarks he quotes from De Goeje. [790] See below, pp. 383 ff. [791] x. 18. [792] Smend assigns the prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem in iii. 14, along with Isaiah xxviii.-xxxii., to 704-701, and suggests that the end of chap. i. refers to Sennacherib's campaign in Philistia in 701 (_A. T. Religionsgeschichte_, p. 225, _n._). The former is possible, but the latter passage, following so closely on i. 6, which implies the fall of Samaria to be still recent, if not in actual course, is more suitably placed in the time of the campaign of Sargon over pretty much the same ground. [793] See above, p. 363, _n._ 2.