ALPHABETIC POEM IN NAHUM 247
i. 2-ii. 2... traces of an acrostich... seem
to be discernible." In a subsequent review of
Nowack's commentary he has expressed himself
somewhat more fully, but not more approvingly.
After admitting that "undoubtedly there are
traces of an alphabetic arrangement in the
successive half verses," he expresses great doubts
"whether this was ever intended to be carried
systematically through, or whether it is due to
anything more than the fact that the author
allowed himself here and there, perhaps half
accidentally, to follow the alphabetical order."^1
Dr. G. A. Smith,^2 while agreeing with the two
scholars whose views have been just cited that
much of the reconstruction of Bickell and Gunkel
is arbitrary, quite decisively admits that the
traces of an acrostich are real. To cite his own
words: "The text of chapters i.-ii. 4 has been
badly mauled, and is clamant for reconstruction
of some kind. As it lies, there are traces of an
alphabetical arrangement as far as the beginning
of ver. 9" (p. 82). At the same time Dr. Smith
minimises, as it appears to me, the force of the
1 Expository Times, Dec. 1897, p. 119. Compare also Introd.,^6 p. xxi.
[But in the Addenda (p. xxii f.) to the 7th ed. of the Introduction the
originally acrostich form of Nah. i. 2-9 is definitely admitted. In the
last edition of the Introduction (1913) the note (p. 337) runs : " In
Nah. i. 2-ii. 2 (Heb. 3) traces of an acrostich are discernible which,
though the restoration of the whole can be effected only with great
violence, can be recovered with probability for v. 2-9 " ; and reference
is made to the discussion which is now republished here, and to his
own further discussion of the subject in the Century Bible: Minor
Prophets, ii. (1906), pp. 25.28.]
2 Book of the Twelve Prophets, vol. ii. (1898), pp. 81-84.