[234] The phrase which is so often appealed to by both sides, i. 9, _Jehovah maketh a complete end, not twice shall trouble arise_, is really inconclusive. Hitzig maintains that if Nahum had written this after the first and before the second siege of Niniveh he would have had to say, “not thrice _shall trouble arise_.” This is not conclusive: the prophet is looking only at the future and thinking of it—_not twice_ again _shall trouble arise_; and if there were really two sieges of Niniveh, would the words _not twice_ have been suffered to remain, if they had been a confident prediction _before_ the first siege? Besides, the meaning of the phrase is not certain; it may be only a general statement corresponding to what seems a general statement in the first clause of the verse. Kuenen and others refer the _trouble_ not to that which is about to afflict Assyria, but to the long slavery and slaughter which Judah has suffered at Assyria’s hands. Davidson leaves it ambiguous. [235] Technical military terms: ii. 2, מצורה;‎ 4, פלדת (?);‎ 4, הרעלו; 6‎‎, הסכך; iii. 3, מעלה (?). Probably foreign terms: ii. 8,‎ הצב; iii. 17, מנזריך. Certainly foreign: iii. 17, טפסריך. CHAPTER VII _THE VENGEANCE OF THE LORD_ NAHUM i The prophet Nahum, as we have seen,[236] arose probably in Judah, if not about the same time as Zephaniah and Jeremiah, then a few years later. Whether he prophesied before or after the great Reform of 621 we have no means of deciding. His book does not reflect the inner history, character or merits of his generation. His sole interest is the fate of Niniveh. Zephaniah had also doomed the Assyrian capital, yet he was much more concerned with Israel’s unworthiness of the opportunity presented to them. The yoke of Asshur, he saw, was to be broken, but the same cloud which was bursting from the north upon Niniveh must overwhelm the incorrigible people of Jehovah. For this Nahum has no thought. His heart, for all its bigness, holds room only for the bitter memories, the baffled hopes, the unappeased hatreds of a hundred years. And that is why we need not be anxious to fix his date upon one or other of the shifting phases of Israel’s history during that last quarter of the seventh century. For he represents no single movement of his fickle people’s progress, but the passion of the whole epoch then drawing to a close. Nahum’s book is one great At Last!