The other two chapters have within recent years been almost wholly denied to Zephaniah. Kuenen doubted chap. iii. 9-20. Stade makes all chap. iii. post-exilic, and suspects ii. 1-3, 11. A very thorough examination of them has led Schwally[90] to assign to exilic or post-exilic times the whole of the little sections comprising them, with the possible exception of chap. iii. 1-7, which “may be” Zephaniah’s. His essay has been subjected to a searching and generally hostile criticism by a number of leading scholars;[91] and he has admitted the inconclusiveness of some of his reasons.[92] Chap. ii. 1-4 is assigned by Schwally to a date later than Zephaniah’s, principally because of the term _meekness_ (ver. 3), which is a favourite one with post-exilic writers. He has been sufficiently answered;[93] and the close connection of vv. 1-3 with chap. i. has been clearly proved.[94] Chap. ii. 4-15 is the passage in elegiac measure but broken, an argument for the theory that insertions have been made in it. The subject is a series of foreign nations—Philistia (5-7), Moab and Ammon (8-10), Egypt (11) and Assyria (13-15). The passage has given rise to many doubts; every one must admit the difficulty of coming to a conclusion as to its authenticity. On the one hand, the destruction just predicted is so universal that, as Professor Davidson says, we should expect Zephaniah to mention other nations than Judah.[95] The concluding oracle on Niniveh must have been published before 608, and even Schwally admits that it may be Zephaniah’s own. But if this be so, then we may infer that the first of the oracles on Philistia is also Zephaniah’s, for both it and the oracle on Assyria are in the elegiac measure, a fact which makes it probable that the whole passage, however broken and intruded upon, was originally a unity. Nor is there anything in the oracle on Philistia incompatible with Zephaniah’s date. Philistia lay on the path of the Scythian invasion; the phrase in ver. 7, _shall turn their captivity_, is not necessarily exilic. As Cornill, too, points out, the expression in ver. 13, _He will stretch out His hand to the north_, implies that the prophecy has already looked in other directions. There remains the passage between the oracles on Philistia and Assyria. This is not in the elegiac measure. Its subject is Moab and Ammon, who were not on the line of the Scythian invasion, and Wellhausen further objects to it, because the attitude to Israel of the two peoples whom it describes is that which is attributed to them only just before the Exile and surprises us in Josiah’s reign. Dr. Davidson meets this objection by pointing out that, just as in Deuteronomy, so here, Moab and Ammon are denounced, while Edom, which in Deuteronomy is spoken of with kindness, is here not denounced at all. A stronger objection to the passage is that ver. 11 predicts the conversion of the nations, while ver. 12 makes them the prey of Jehovah’s sword, and in this ver. 12 follows