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most of the passages the renderings to which Lawrence takes exception are simply retained from the Great Bible and other early versions. Lawrence's criticisms are very interesting, and in most points unquestionably just. We owe to him several readings in our present Bibles-for example, armies in Matt. xxii. 7; besides (instead of with) in Matt. xxv. 20; seize upon in Matt. xxi. 38 (Lawrence's suggestion was, "take possession or seisin upon his inheritance"); bramble bush (instead of bush or bushes) in Luke vi. 44. The last words of Mark xv. 3, "but he answered nothing," were introduced at his suggestion from the Greek text of Stephens (1546); this clause, however, is probably not genuine. In judging of the merits of the translation of the New Testament, we must take the version in its corrected form, as it appeared in 1572. The verdict of the student will vary according to the portion which he is examining. Again and again he will wonder at the retention of an early rendering which had been corrected by a later translator, or the preference shown for a roundabout phrase (such renderings as when he had gone a little further he," &c., instead of "he went a little further, and," &c., are especially common in the Bishops' Bible); but he will meet with many proofs of close study of the original text, and an earnest desire to represent it with all faithfulness to the English reader. Dr. Westcott's comment on the translation of Eph. iv. 7-16 (a very difficult section) will show how much merit is possessed by some portions, at least, of the Bishops' Bible. Having pointed out that in this section the Great Bible and the Bishops' differ in twenty-six places, he adds: "Of these twenty-six variations no less than sixteen are new, while only ten are due to the Genevan version, and the character of the original corrections marks a very close and thoughtful revision, based faithfully upon the Greek. The anxiously literal rendering of the particles and prepositions is specially worthy of notice; so too the observance of the order and of the original form of the sentences, even where some obscurity follows from it. In four places the Authorised Version follows the Bishops' renderings; and only one change appears to be certainly for the worse, in which the rendering of the Genevan Testament has been followed. The singular independence of the revision, as compared with those which have been noticed before, is shown by the fact that only four of the new changes agree with Beza, and at least nine are definitely against him." The same writer compares the two chief editions of the Bishops' Bible throughout the Epistle to the Ephesians. The changes amount to nearly fifty, and among the new readings are some phrases most

familiar to us all, as less than the last of all saints," "middle wall of partition," "fellow-citizens with the saints."

The marginal notes in the Bishops' Bible consist of alternative renderings, references to similar passages, and comments explanatory of the text. The comments are much less numerous here than in the Genevan Bible. They are very unevenly distributed. On the first five chapters of Job, for example, there are (in the edition of 1575) more than fifty notes, a larger number than we find on the whole book of Isaiah, with its sixtysix chapters. The Epistle to the Romans contains nearly seventy explanatory notes, in the place of the 250 of the Genevan Bible: a few, perhaps a dozen, of the Genevan annotations are retained in the Bishops' Bible. It is curious to notice the difference in the passages chosen for explanation in the two versions. Sometimes it is a rendering of the Genevan Bible that calls forth the remark in this. Thus in Rom. viii. 6 the Genevan translators read "the wisdom of the flesh.” The note in the Bishops' Bible is as follows: "Opovovaɩ and opórnua, Greek words, do not so much signify wisdom and prudence as affection, carefulness, and minding of anything." A little lower down there is a curious note on another Greek word. In verse 18, where we now read "I reckon," the Bishops' Bible has "I am certainly persuaded." The note runs thus: "Aoyisopa signifieth to weigh or to consider; but because the matter was certain, and St. Paul nothing doubted thereof, it is thus made: I am persuaded." Where an uncommon word is used in the text, the translator sometimes adds a short note on its meaning. Thus in Rom. xi. 8, where we now read "the spirit of slumber," this version has "the spirit of remorse," the last word being explained as "pricking and unquietness of conscience." In Isa. lxvi. 3 we read, "he that killeth a sheep for me knetcheth a dog," with a note which certainly cannot be considered superfluous: That is, cutteth off a dog's neck."

The general tendency and character of the Bishops' Bible are perhaps shown most clearly in the Apocryphal books. Strange to say, the Great Bible is followed here also, though representing the Latin and not the Greek text. The precedent of the Genevan Bible, therefore, is entirely neglected, as a glance at the beginning of Tobit or Esther, or at the fourth chapter of Judith, is sufficient to prove. As in the Genevan version, however, the comments on the Apocrypha are very scanty. The Prayer of Manasses is restored to its former position between the additions to Daniel and the First Book of Maccabees.

BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.

THE MINOR PROPHETS:-NAHUM.

BY THE VERY REVEREND R. PAYNE SMITH, D.D., DEAN OF CANTERBURY.

T was the great lesson of the Book of Jonah | the ten tribes, should have removed from their desolate that the righteous government of God extends also to heathen nations. During one of the most eventful periods of Jewish history we find Assyria constantly appearing as the great world-power whose rapidly extending empire was destined finally to crush one part of the chosen nation, while the other was to have as remarkable a deliverance. Thus intimately connected with Israel, Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, became also herself the proper object of prophecy; and while Jonah teaches us that there is mercy even for those not in covenant with God, if they repent, Nahum completes the representation of the Divine justice by showing that if they relapse into sin punishment will as inevitably overtake them.

Of Nahum we know personally but little. He was a Galilæan, born, as St. Jerome tells us, at Elkosh, a small uninhabited village in his days, but of which the insignificant ruins were pointed out to him by his guide. Towards the end, however, of the sixteenth century the idea arose that Nahum was born at Alkosh, a town near Mosul, where also a modern tomb is pointed out as the place of his burial. His parents in this case would have been exiles carried away with the ten tribes, and Nahum would have been born and brought up within sight of the town whose utter ruin he was to prophesy. But the tradition is of too recent date to be trustworthy; and Nahum speaks of places in North Palestine as if they were those with which he was most familiar:-"Bashan languisheth, and Carmel, and the flower of Lebanon languisheth." With all these mountains he would have been well acquainted if really he was a Galikan. Moreover, the name Capernaum means "the village of Nahum ; "Nahum itself signifying "consolation." There is indeed no tradition to explain why this Galilæan town bore this name, but it suggests a possible connection with the prophet. Much, too, in the phraseology of the book shows that Nahum came from the north. Of this I will mention but one instance. In chap. iii. 2, he speaks of the "pransing horses "-the word being a very poetical term referring to the circling motion of horses' feet as they gallop. Now this word occurs in only one other place of Scripture-namely, in Judg. v. 22, where Deborah speaks of "the pransings of the chargers ;" and she also belonged to North Palestine, where, apparently, the word remained in ordinary use.

But if the "dasher in pieces," in chap. ii. 1, be Sennacherib, Nahum must have prophesied in Judæa, for he speaks of his coming up before the face of Jerusalem; and Bleek draws the same conclusion from the manner in which the deliverance of Judah is referred to in chap. i. 12, 13. Nor can we imagine anything more natural than that pious Israelites, after the deportation of

country to enjoy both the religious privileges and also the greater earthly prosperity of Judæa. The beginning of Hezekiah's reign had been a time of happiness; and we find the king inviting the Israelites to unite with his own people for the celebration of the Passover; and the invitation was joyfully accepted. For long years there had been no such time of joy throughout the land; but troubles soon began to appear from Nineveh. Sennacherib, one of the most warlike of its kings, in his third campaign, as we learn from the cuneiform inscriptions, after conquering the Philistines, marched on Jerusalem, and though he could not capture it, he nevertheless inflicted terrible misfortunes upon the whole country. His own account is that he captured forty-six of Hezekiah's strong towns, besides castles and smaller towns without number; that he carried away 200,150 people into captivity; that the spoil consisted of horses, asses, camels, oxen, and sheep, in countless droves, besides thirty talents of gold, eight hundred of silver, precious stones, thrones and couches of ivory, woven cloths, furs, scented woods, and even male and female slaves, together with the king's daughters and other inmates of his palace. He also boasts that he shut up Hezekiah inside Jerusalem like a bird in a cage; and if we accept his statements as true in the main, however much exaggerated in detail, we must conclude that Hezekiah purchased with many costly treasures the withdrawal of Sennacherib from the siege. The expedition itself is that referred to in 2 Chron. xxxii. 1-8, and in Isa. i. 5—8.

In the history of the subsequent campaigns we find Sennacherib carrying on constant war with the representatives of Merodach-baladan, who, in alliance with the kings of Elam, maintained the struggle begun by their fathers to set Babylon free. But Judæa seems to have remained unmolested until Hezekiah's fourteenth year, when the Assyrian, having established his supremacy far and wide in the east and north, turned his arms once again westward, and made the attack upon Judæa and Egypt which ended in his overthrow. While, however, Rawlinson (Ancient Monarchies, ii. 158, 168), considers that Sennacherib twice attacked Hezekiah, Lenormant and others argue that his disas trous expedition in that king's fourteenth year was the sole war between the two powers (see his Premieres Civilisations, ii. 270–289). This latter view is cer tainly more in accordance with the data given in the Bible.

It was apparently in this interval that Nahum published his prophecy, in which he begins, as Dr. Pusey has pointed out (Minor Prophets, p. 356), by setting forth in stately rhythm not unlike that of the Psalms of Degrees the awful side of God's attributes:

of the palace itself, built of unburnt brick; for such is the meaning of the words "the palace shall be dissolved" (chap. ii. 6).

themselves.

Like Nineveh, too, it was a great mart of trade, and drew its wealth as much from commerce as from war. Yet gradually its power declined, and finally it was captured by the Assyrians, as it seems, whom in old time it had so often defeated. Its siege, and the terrible scenes which took place when the invaders gained an entrance to it, were probably fresh in men's minds when Nahum wrote, and he draws from it the warning that, as No-Amon, the mightiest capital of the grandest empire of old, had fallen, so too would Nineveh fall, and even more completely pass away.

But the contrast which the prophet draws between Nineveh fallen and Nineveh in its pride shows that he wrote when the empire was in its strength, Where," he asks, "is the dwelling of the lions, and the feeding. place of the young lions, where the lion, even the old lion, walked, the lion's whelp, and none to frighten him? The lion teareth in pieces enough for his whelps, and strangleth for his lioness, and filleth his holes with prey, and his dens with ravin "(chap. ii. 11, 12). Now Ezarhaddon, who succeeded Sennacherib, did not dwell Such, then, are the historical data of Nahum's proat Nineveh, but at Babylon, in order to be able the more phecy. It only remains to say that he has but one easily to control its turbulence; and though no mean subject-the fall of Nineveh; and that he describes this warrior, yet his chief occupation was architecture. The with wonderful energy, grandeur, and power. His prophet's words are a picture rather of Sennacherib in phraseology, however, is peculiar, being full of forms his might, when he came home from campaign after which seem strange to us who have so little to enable campaign loaded with booty, and walked up and down us to judge what richness of idioms the Hebrew lanin his palace, to which he gave the name Zakdi-nu-isha guage possessed. He has many words also not found i.e., it hath not its equal "-secure in his power and elsewhere in the Scriptures, and others which are rare. fearless of danger. Lastly, he has much in common with Isaiah, who at the time he prophesied must have arrived at old age. And we can well understand that even one so original and strong as Nahum would nevertheless have been deeply impressed by the commanding genius and noble enthusiasm of a prophet like Isaiah, who held then, as he has held ever since, the foremost place among the inspired men whom God raised up to make known to mankind | His will.

In chap. iii. 8 there is an allusion to the capture of No-Amon, better known to us as the sacred Thebes, the capital of Upper Egypt, which for a like period with Nineveh had been the centre of a mighty empire. For six centuries, from B.C. 1706 to 1110, its Pharaohs, one of whom was Sesostris, had been the great conquerors who had marched far and wide without knowing defeat, and had exacted tribute from the Assyrians

THE PLANTS OF THE BIBLE.

THE ORDERS OF APETALOUS PLANTS-CHENOPODIACEE TO EUPHORBIACEE. BY W. CARRUTHERS, F.R. S., KEEPER OF THE BOTANICAL DEPARTMENT, BRITISH MUSEUM.

HE Chenopod order is represented in Palestine by species prevailing as weeds in cultivated grounds, as well as by forms that grow only on saline localities. Species of Salicornia, Anabasis, Atriplex, and Chenopodium are found on the shores of the Dead Sea, as well as of the Levant. These plants abound in the vegetable alkali which is so important an ingredient in the manufacture of soap. Indeed, the word alkali, which was originally applied to the ashes of these plants, is derived from kal, or el-kali, the Arabic name for the glass-wort (Salsola Kali, Linn.), a prickly bushy herb, common on our sandy shores, and found also in Palestine. The Arabs have long manufactured soap from olive-oil and the alkaline ashes of this plant, and it is probable that it is to this material that reference is twice made in the Bible under the name "soap" (Jer. ii. 22; Mal. iii. 2). Several species of nettles occur in Palestine; that most frequently met with is the Roman nettle (Urtica pilulifera, Linn.). This plant is found in the neighbourhood of villages in the south of England, and is easily distinguished from the common nettle by the

little balls of green female flowers. In Palestine it grows to a height of six feet, among ruins, where it specially flourishes. This is probably the kimmosh (p) of the Hebrews, rendered, in the two passages in which it occurs, "nettle." It deserves notice that in both passages it is associated with its favourite habitat. Of Edom it is prophesied that "thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in the fortresses thereof" (Isa. xxxiv. 13); while of backsliding Israel it is said, "the pleasant places for their silver, nettles shall possess them, thorns shall be in their tabernacles" (Hos. ix. 6). The plural, kimmeshonim, of a scarcely altered form of this word, is employed by Solomon in describing the vineyard of the sluggard; it is rendered "thorns" in our version. "It was all grown over with thorns, nettles had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof was broken down" (Prov. xxiv. 31). The charulim, translated "nettles" in this passage, are no doubt altogether different plants from the kimmeshonim, but it is extremely doubtful what they were. Various plants have been suggested, but it seems more probable that the term was a general one for wild shrubs. In