The Nahum Commentary or Pesher Nahum, labelled 4QpNah (Cave 4, Qumran, pesher, Nahum) or 4Q169, was among the
Dead Sea Scrolls in
cave 4 of
Qumran that was discovered in August 1952. The editio princeps of the text is to be found in
DJD V., edited by
John Allegro. The text is described thus: 'one of the "continuous
pesharim" from Qumran, successive verses from the biblical
Book of Nahum are interpreted as reflecting historical realities of the 1st century BCE."[1]
Text
The most clearly historical references in the text can be found in Fragments 3-4 Column 1, which cites Nahum 2:11b, "Where the lion goes to enter, there also goes the whelp..." and provides the commentary,
"[This refers to Deme]trius, king of Greece, who sought to enter Jerusalem through the counsel of the Flattery-Seekers; [but it never fell into the] power of the kings of Greece from Antiochus until the appearance of the rulers of the
kittim...."[2]
According to Larry R. Helyer (as well as to many other scholars), Demetrius in this text is
Demetrius III Eucaerus (95-88 BCE), the
Seleucid king who defeated
Alexander Jannaeus in battle, but was forced to withdraw back to Syria. Accordingly, by "the Flattery-Seekers", the
Pharisees were probably meant.[3]
The text refers to the biblical passages from Nahum 1:3-6; 2:12-14; 3:1-5, 6-9, 10-12, 14.[4]
Allegro, John M., Qumran Cave 4, I (4Q158-4Q186)DJD V. (Oxford, 1968) editio princeps, pp. 37–42.
Berrin, Shani L., The Pesher Nahum Scroll from Qumran: An Exegetical Study of 4Q169. (Leiden: Brill, 2004)
ISBN978-9004124844
Berrin, Shani L., "Pesher Nahum" in Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls, eds Lawrence H. Schiffman and James C. VanderKam, Volume 2. (Oxford, 2000)
ISBN0-19-513797-3, pp. 653–655.
Charlesworth, James H., Henry W. L. Rietz, Casey D. Elledge, and Lidija Novakovic. Pesharim, Other Commentaries, and Related Documents. The Dead Sea Scrolls: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek Texts with English Translations 6b. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002. (More recent publication of the Hebrew text and English translation on facing pages)
Cross, Frank Moore. The Ancient Library of Qumran. 3d ed. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995. (General reading on the Dead Sea Scrolls in general, their discovery, and contents)