ALPHABETIC POEM IN NAHUM 245
is clearly due to textual corruption. As a
generally recognised instance of this, the absence
of a word beginning with v in Psalm xxxvii. 27 c
may be instanced. Whether the absence of the
verse in Psalm xxv., of the D verse in Psalm
cxlv., or the fact that in Psalm xxv. only a single
line is devoted to R be original or the result
of transcriptional error cannot be said with
certainty. But even if the originality of the
irregularities in question be admitted, the few
exceptions simply serve to prove the two general
laws already stated.l [More difficult and com-
plicated questions of text in relation to a
partially obvious alphabetic scheme arise in
connexion with Psalms ix. and x., which are
made the subject of special study in the next
chapter.]
It is a matter of more recent observation, and
at least in England [it was down to 1898 2 a
1 [A special study of alphabetic poems—" Alphabetische and alpha-
betisierende Lieder im Alten Testaments," by Max Lbhr—will be found
in the Zeitschr. fur die AT. Wissenschaft, 1905, pp. 173-198.]
2 [But since 1898 the situation has entirely changed. Dr. Driver
subsequently admitted more decisively than he had done previously
that Nahum i. rested in part on an alphabetic poem (see below, p. 247 n.).
And several scholars who have written since, both in England and
America, have recognised parts of an acrostich in this chapter: see e.g.
A. R. S. Kennedy, "Nahum" in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, iii.
475 ; Karl Budde, "Nahum" in Encyc. Biblica, 3261 ; Paul Haupt,
" The Book of Nahum " in The Journal of Biblical Literature, xxvi.
(1907), 1-53 ; w. R. Arnold, "The Composition of Nahum i. 1-ii. 3"
in the Zeitschr. fur die AT. Wissenschaft, xxi. 225-265 ; C. F. Kent, The
Sermons, Epistles, and Apocalypses of Israel's Prophets (1910), 155-157;
J. M. Powis Smith, "International Critical Commentary," 287-297. The
sceptical judgment of A. B. Davidson referred to in the text has found
no recent support.]