by
Damien F. Mackey
To sum
up: Our
Simeonite family was from southern Judah,
but
once had to identify as Galilean (Book of Jonah), and, another time,
as
resident in the environs of Assyrian Nineveh (Book of Nahum).
Extent of Nahum’s
prophetic career
His alter
egos
Nahum we need to multi-identify, before we can provide
him with a full chronology and geography.
From these variations on Tobit 14:4:
‘Go to Media, my son, for I fully believe what Jonah the
prophet said about Nineveh, that it will be overthrown’ (RSV).
‘My son, take your children and hasten to Media, for I
believe the word of God that Nahum spoke about Nineveh. It will all take
place’ (NCB),
we learn that Nahum was Jonah.
Now, according to pseudo-Epiphanius (De Vitis
Proph. in Opp. 2:247), Nahum was of the tribe of Simeon.
Whereas the Book of Nahum does not provide a
patronymic - does not name his father, or ancestor - the Book of Jonah does.
The prophet was a “son of Amittai” (Jonah
1:1; cf. 2 Kings 14:25).
The great prophet, Amoz (Amos), father of Isaiah,
immediately suggests himself for the Simeonite “Amittai”. For one, Amoz was the
patriarch of an enormously influential Simeonite prophetic family:
God can raise up prophets at will - even from
a shepherd of Simeon
(3) God can raise
up prophets at will - even from a shepherd of Simeon
And, secondly, Amoz, or Amaziah, is a name compatible
with the unusual “Amittai”.
Amoz I also believe to have been the prophet Micah, his very
mirror-image, in fact, known to biblical commentators as “Amos redivivus”.
We find Isaiah and his father, Amos-Micah, in the
Simeonite coupling, in Judith 6:15, of “Uzziah son of Micah, of the tribe of
Simeon”.
There may be just one more addition to make to our
composite Simeonite prophet.
If he is also Isaiah, then our prophet may connect with
Hosea - Isaiah’s son Immanuel being, according to what I have written, the same
boy as Hosea’s son, Lo-ammi:
Was Hosea’s boy-child, Lo-Ammi, Isaiah’s
famous son, Immanuel?
(3) Was Hosea's
boy-child, Lo-Ammi, Isaiah's famous son, Immanuel?
To sum
up: Amoz
(Amittai)/Micah was the Simeonite father of Isaiah (Hosea, Uzziah)/Nahum-Jonah.
His geography
This takes us far and wide, because our prophet, as
Uzziah of the Book of Judith, was, according to Judith 8:34; 13:23 (Douay): “… the
prince of Juda[h]” and “the prince of the people of Israel”.
Added to
that, he, as Jonah-Nahum, would travel to Assyrian Nineveh.
The Simeonite family was apparently from Moresheth
(Mareshah) in southern Judah (Micah 1:1).
Awkward complications arise, however, when we learn that
Nahum was an “Elkoshite” (Nahum 1:1), and that Jonah was “the prophet from
Gath-hepher” (2 Kings 14:25; cf. Joshua 19:13), a location presumed to be
firmly fixed in the land of Galilee.
In my recent article:
Were any Old Testament prophets from Galilee?
(5) Were any Old
Testament prophets from Galilee?
I concluded (on the side of the Pharisees, John 7:52)
that no Old Testament prophet arose from Galilee. My story was, based on
Charles Boutflower, that Isaiah, having to flee the wrath of King Ahaz of
Judah, went northwards for a time to Galilee, to what would come to be known as
Capernaum, Kfar
Naḥum (כְּפַר נַחוּם), literally, ‘Nahum’s village’, due to his presence there, as Nahum:
Isaiah took his family north to escape the
wrath of king Ahaz
(5) Isaiah took
his family north to escape the wrath of king Ahaz
The ancient name of the place, though, was Gath-hepher.
Indeed, it was situated in Galilee, but our Simeonite prophetic family
did not originally hail from there.
No Old Testament prophet arose from Galilee!
The other complication is with Nahum’s Elkosh (or Ali
Qosh, or AlQush), thought by some to have been a Simeonite town (of uncertain
location) in southern Judah, but, by others, to have been the well-known Alqosh
(Al Qūsh, near Nineveh).
Now, it would make perfect sense for the prophet,
Nahum-Jonah, to have - during his Assyrian mission - spent some time amongst
the exiled Israelites in Nineveh, such as Tobit (who references him as we have
read), and his family.
There, he may have taken notes for his graphic (“eye-witness”,
as some have described it) account of the city and the Assyrians in the Book of
Nahum.
To sum
up: Our
Simeonite family was from southern Judah, but once had to identify as Galilean
(Book of Jonah), and, another time, as resident in the environs of Assyrian
Nineveh (Book of Nahum).
That, at last, brings us to
the main focus of this article, the chronology, and how this affects what our
prophet could have lived to see regarding the fall of Memphis, and that of
Thebes, and of Nineveh.
The long-lived Tobias (= Job), son of Tobit - who most likely
met Nahum-Jonah during the latter’s mission to Nineveh - would live to see and
hear of the Fall of Nineveh (Tobit 14:15):
“But before he died, [Tobias] saw and heard
of the destruction of Nineveh.
He saw the inhabitants of the city being led
captive into Media by Cyaxares,
the king of Media. Tobias blessed God for all
that he had done against the Ninevites and Assyrians. Before dying he rejoiced
over Nineveh,
and he blessed the Lord God forever and ever”.
His chronology
We can know, from a comparison of Isaiah and Hosea, that
our Simeonite prophet likewise lived a very long life, his prophetic floruit
extending from King Jeroboam II of Israel (Hosea 1:1) all the way down to King
Hezekiah of Judah.
However, the necessary (my view) recognition of the
reforming king Hezekiah as being the same as the reforming king Josiah, and
Hezekiah’s wicked son, Manasseh, as Josiah’s wicked son, Jehoiakim (see e.g.):
Damien F. Mackey’s A Tale of Two Theses
(6) Damien F.
Mackey's A Tale of Two Theses
takes our prophet, now as “Asaiah” (2 Kings 22:12), into
the reign of king Josiah, and beyond that, to be martyred, as Uriah (Urijah) in
the reign of the wicked son-successor, Jehoiakim (Jeremiah 26:20-23).
But thanks to this, our folding of the era of King Josiah
into the era of King Hezekiah, we can now identify this incident as being the
very martyrdom of the prophet Isaiah traditionally occurring at the hands of King
Manasseh – an incident that so far (I think) has been unidentifiable in
biblical texts.
Of course, with our folding, into one, of supposedly two
Judean eras, there must come a corresponding folding of the Assyro-Babylonian
history that accompanies this Hezekian-Josian period. What this entails,
relevant to the destruction of Egypt’s old capital city of Memphis, is that
great Assyro-Babylonian conquerors (supposedly) of this city must now all be
fused into the one mighty king. I speak of:
Esarhaddon
Ashurbanipal
Nebuchednezzar
Cambyses
On this, see e.g. my articles:
Esarhaddon, Cambyses, and the Fall of Egypt’s
Memphis capital
(7) Esarhaddon,
Cambyses, and the Fall of Egypt’s Memphis capital
Chaldean armies come to Egypt
(7) Chaldean
armies come to Egypt
What all of this boils down to is that, if our Simeonite
prophet lived only into the reign of King Jehoiakim of Judah, very early in the
reign of King Nebuchednezzar ‘the Great’ (cf. Jeremiah 25:1) – when I
believe that Jonah came to Nineveh:
The ‘Jonah incident’ historically identified
(18) The ‘Jonah
incident’ historically identified
then he did not live long enough to hear of the Fall of
Thebes at the hands of Ashurbanipal-Nebuchedezzar, nor, a fortiori, of
the Fall of Nineveh some years after the passing of that mighty Assyro-Chaldean
king.
So Nahum, when he tells of the Fall of No (Noth), as a
preview of what will later befall Nineveh (Nahum 3:8):
“Art thou better than populous No [Noth],
that was situated among the rivers,
that had the waters round about it, whose
rampart was the sea,
and her wall was from the sea?”
cannot be referring to Thebes, whose demise was yet in
the future, but must have been referring to Memphis, Hebrew Moph (מֹף), which Esarhaddon took
early in his reign – possibly while Nahum was yet residing in Assyrian Alqosh.
Biblical commentators, who generally have taken Nahum 3:8
to be referring to Thebes, not Memphis, have trouble fitting the prophet’s
description to ancient Thebes.
John R. Huddlestun, for instance, though aware of the
difficulties, will nevertheless argue for Nahum 3:8 intending Thebes:
“Nahum, Nineveh, and the Nile: The Description of Thebes
in Nahum 3:8–9”, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 62, No. 2 (April
2003), pp. 97-110:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/376364
He tells of the difficulties associated with this in his Introduction:
I.
INTRODUCTION
WELL before the advent of modern biblical criticism, translators and
interpreters of the Hebrew text puzzled over the identification of nōɔ-ɔāmōn in Nahum 3:8–9. In the Septuagint, confusion over how to translate the
opening words of verse 8 (hatēt´tbī minnōɔ-ɔāmōn) is evident in what appear to be multiple renderings, some of which may
have originated as glosses. …. In rabbinic tradition, No-Amon is interpreted as
the Delta city Alexandria, a rendering adopted and defended by Jerome in the
Vulgate. …. With one or two exceptions, modern scholarship has associated the
toponym, and the event referred to in 3:8–9, with the Egyptian Thebes of Upper
or southern Egypt and its sack by the Assyrians in ca. 663 B.C.E. …. Yet, as
many have noted, this identification is not entirely consistent with the
biblical text’s portrait of that city as one encircled by water and protected
by the sea. Thebes is far removed from the Mediterranean Sea, and, although
situated on the banks of the Nile, one could hardly characterize the city as
surrounded by water. The problematic description has occupied both
Egyptologists and biblical scholars, who have offered various
solutions—geographical, grammatical, and mythological—to reconcile the biblical
portrait with the layout of the city.
[End of quote]
I suggest that the prophet Nahum was referring to
Memphis, instead.
Though it, too, may not have seemed to fit Nahum’s
description of being surrounded by water, new evidence has come to light that might
suggest otherwise:
Dried-up branch of the Nile ran alongside
ancient pyramids and capital of Memphis
(20) Dried-up
branch of the Nile ran alongside ancient pyramids and capital of Memphis
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