76 HAUPT— TOBIT'S BLINDNESS AND SARA'S HYSTERIA. 



The Syrian persecution was regarded as a chastisement for the 

 sins of the chosen people.^ Tobit says in 13, 9: O Jerusalem, thou 

 holy city, He will chastise thee for the work of thy hands, and will 

 again have mercy on the sons of the righteous ; and in v. 12 : Cursed 

 shall be all they that shall speak a hard word ; cursed shall be all 

 they that demolish thee, and throw down thy walls, and all they that 

 overthrow thy towers and set fire on thy habitations. This is di- 

 rected against the Syrians: in 168 b.c. Antiochus Epiphanes's chief 

 collector of tribute plundered Jerusalem, set it on fire, pulled down 

 the houses and the walls on every side. Tobit (13, 14) says: 

 Blessed shall be all the men that shall sorrow for thee for all thy 

 chastisements, because they shall rejoice in thee and shall see all thy 

 joy forever. Jerusalem shall be built again as His house unto all 

 the ages. In Tobit's last words to his son (14, 4) : I believe the 

 word of God upon Nineveh, which Nahum spake, that all those 

 things will be, and will befall Assyria and Nineveh, Assyria stands 

 for Syria, and NineveJi for Antioch. The Book of Nahum is a 

 liturgical compilation for the celebration of Judas Maccabseus's 

 glorious victory over Nicanor on the 13"^ of Adar, 161 B.C. The 

 first two poems are Maccabean, but the last two were written by an 

 Israelitish poet who saw the fall of Nineveh in 606 b.c. (Nah. i). 

 Grotius (1644) had correctly conjectured that Jonah had been in- 

 serted in place of NaJiuni in Tob. 14, 4 under the influence of Jon. 3, 

 4 (Simpson 239, 4). The Sinaiticus reads Nahum instead of Jonah. 



In the abstract of a paper. " The Site of Nineveh in the Book of 

 Tobit," which Professor Torrey, of Yale, intended to present at the 

 meeting of the American Oriental Society held at Cornell University 

 in 1920, it was pointed out that in the longer (and older) version of 

 Tobit, Tobias and the angel, as they come near to Nineveh on their 

 return from Ecbatana, passed through another city lying just across 

 the river ; several converging lines of evidence indicate that the 

 Nineveh of the story is Seleucia with its sister city Ctesiphon lying 

 opposite ; the actual site of Nineveh was not known at that time. 

 As stated above, Assyria is used in Maccabean texts for Syria, and 



2 Cf. Tob. 13, 5. 9 and 2 Mac. i, 27-29; 6, 12-16; also Tob. 13, 12 in Simp- 

 son's translation and I Mac. i, 31; finally Tob. i, 17-19; 2, 7; 12, 12, 13 and 

 2 Mac. 9, 15; I Mac. 7, 17. 



I 



