Nahum

• A village in Galilee. Held by Jerome, as Matthew Henry reports him in Commentary on the Whole Bible, on 1:1: the town called Elkes or Elcos, which Jerome says was in Galilee.
• A village in the land of the Jews. Held by Cyril of Alexandria in his Commentary on Nahum, on 1:1, who takes of Elkosh as from a place and not from a father, and calls it a village somewhere in the land of the Jews.

What the evidence does not settle: The book names Elkosh once (1:1) and no other verse of Scripture names it. The Lives of the Prophets, a Jewish work usually dated to the first century AD, places Nahum in the territory of Simeon; Calvin reports that the Jewish interpreters of his day took Elkosh as the name of Nahum's father. Al-Qush north of Mosul, where a tomb of Nahum is shown, and Capernaum, whose name means the village of Nahum, are also proposed, and the store names no holder with a work for either.

• A partial alphabetic hymn stands in the received text. Held by Hermann Gunkel, 'Nahum 1', Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 13 (1893).
• One description of the LORD's coming, read without the letters. Held by Adam Clarke on 1:4, who reads the third to the sixth verse as one description of the coming of the LORD.

What the evidence does not settle: Read from the store's Hebrew, the run holds aleph to kaph with one letter missing: at 1:4, where dalet is expected, the word begins with aleph, and the zayin and the kaph stand as the second and third words of their lines. The text does not say why the run stops at kaph, the eleventh letter of twenty-two.

• In the days of Hezekiah, near Sennacherib's invasion. Held by Matthew Henry on 1:1, who dates the book about 710 BC and reads the plotter of 1:11 as Sennacherib and the yoke of 1:13 as the tribute laid on Hezekiah.
• After Assyria took Thebes, and before Nineveh fell. Held by Albert Barnes on 3:10, who names Assyria as the author of Thebes' captivity. The years come from Ashurbanipal's annals for Thebes, 663 BC, and from the Babylonian Chronicle, BM 21901, for Nineveh, 612 BC.
• Thebes fell earlier, to Sargon. Held by Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset and David Brown on 3:8, who say the blow on No-amon was probably by the Assyrian Sargon.

What the evidence does not settle: The text gives no year. It sets Thebes' fall in the past (3:8 to 10) and Nineveh's in the future, which fixes the order and not the distance between them.

• The river rose and broke the wall. Held by Adam Clarke on 1:8 and 2:6, following Bishop Newcome and Diodorus Siculus, and by John Wesley on 2:6, who writes that a mighty deluge overthrew part of the wall during the siege.
• The gates on the Tigris were forced. Held by Matthew Henry on 2:6, who reads the gates of Nineveh that open on the Tigris as forced by, or betrayed to, the enemy.
• The sluices of the city's water barrier. Held by Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset and David Brown on 2:6, who read the gates as dams for regulating the water that surrounded the city.

What the evidence does not settle: The Babylonian Chronicle, BM 21901, as C. J. Gadd published it, records the siege and the fall in the fourteenth year of Nabopolassar and reports no flood. At the Halzi Gate, excavated in 1989 and 1990 by David Stronach's expedition, human remains and arrowheads lay in the gate passage, the picture of a gate fought over (3:13).

• The same creed, the other side of it. Held by Albert Barnes on 1:3, who says Nahum takes up the words of Jonah 4:2 about God's attributes toward Nineveh to show the other side of them.
• A later Nineveh went back to what an earlier one left. Held by Barnes on 1:1, who writes that Nineveh, after repenting at the preaching of Jonah, fell back into its sins, and by Jamieson, Fausset and Brown on 1:1, who place Nahum a hundred and fifty years after Jonah.
• The joy of every people the oppressor hurt. Held by Adam Clarke on 3:19, who reads the clapping of hands as all nations rejoicing at the fall of a universal oppressor.

What the evidence does not settle: The book records no word to Nineveh's people and no call to repent, so whether mercy was still open to them the text does not say. The charge that the book is narrow nationalism stands in early twentieth century critical commentary; the store names no holder with a work for it.