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Introduction
to Nahum
This summary of the book of Nahum provides information about the
title, author(s), date of writing, chronology, theme, theology, outline, a
brief overview, and the chapters of the Book of Nahum.
The book contains the "vision of Nahum" (1:1),
whose name means "comfort" and is related to the name Nehemiah,
meaning "The Lord comforts" or "comfort of the Lord."
(Nineveh's fall, which is Nahum's theme, would bring comfort to Judah.) Nothing
is known about him except his hometown (Elkosh), and even its general location
is uncertain.
In 3:8-10 the author speaks of the fall of Thebes,
which happened in 663 b.c., as already past. In all three chapters Nahum
prophesied Nineveh's fall, which was fulfilled in 612. Nahum therefore uttered
this oracle between 663 and 612, perhaps near the end of this period since he
represents the fall of Nineveh as imminent (2:1;
3:14,19). This would place him during the reign
of Josiah and make him a contemporary of Zephaniah and the young Jeremiah.
Assyria (represented by Nineveh, 1:1)
had already destroyed Samaria (722-721 b.c.), resulting in the captivity of the
northern kingdom of Israel, and posed a present threat to Judah. The Assyrians
were brutally cruel, their kings often being depicted as gloating over the
gruesome punishments inflicted on conquered peoples. They conducted their wars
with shocking ferocity, uprooted whole populations as state policy and deported
them to other parts of their empire. The leaders of conquered cities were
tortured and horribly mutilated before being executed (see note on 3:3).
No wonder the dread of Assyria fell on all her neighbors!
About 700 b.c. King Sennacherib made Nineveh the capital of the
Assyrian empire, and it remained the capital until it was destroyed in 612.
Jonah had announced its destruction earlier (Jnh
3:4), but the people put on at least a show of repentance and the
destruction was temporarily averted (see Jnh
3:10 and note). Not long after that, however, Nineveh reverted to
its extreme wickedness, cruelty and pride. The brutality reached its peak under
Ashurbanipal (669-627), the last great ruler of the Assyrian empire. After his
death, Assyria's influence and power waned rapidly until 612, when Nineveh was
overthrown (see notes on 1:14;
2:1). (Further historical information is given in notes
throughout the book.)
Some words are addressed to Judah (see 1:12-13,15), but most are addressed to Nineveh
(see 1:11,14; 2:1,13; 3:5-17,19) or its king (3:18).
The book, however, was meant for Israelite readers living in Judah.
The contents are primarily made up of judgment oracles, with
appropriate descriptions and vocabulary, expressing intense moods, sights and
sounds. The language is poetic, with frequent use of metaphors and similes,
vivid word pictures, repetition and many short -- often staccato -- phrases
(see, e.g., 3:1-3). Rhetorical questions punctuate the flow
of thought, which has a marked stress on moral indignation toward injustice.
The focal point of the entire book is the Lord's judgment on
Nineveh for her oppression, cruelty, idolatry and wickedness. The book ends
with the destruction of the city.
According to Ro 11:22, God is not only kind but also stern. In Nahum, God
is not only "slow to anger" (1:3)
and "a refuge . . . for those who trust in him" (1:7),
but also one who "will not leave the guilty unpunished" (1:3).
God's righteous and just kingdom will ultimately triumph, for kingdoms built on
wickedness and tyranny must eventually fall, as Assyria did.
In addition, Nahum declares the universal sovereignty of God. God
is Lord of history and of all nations; as such, he controls their destinies.
I.
Title (1:1)
A.
The Lord's Kindness and Sternness (1:2-8)
III.
Nineveh's Judgment (ch. 2)
IV.
Nineveh's Total Destruction (ch.
3)
──《New
International Version》
Introduction to Nahum
This prophet denounces the certain and
approaching destruction of the Assyrian empire, particularly of Nineveh, which
is described very minutely. Together with this is consolation for his
countrymen, encouraging them to trust in God.
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on Nahum》
00 Overview
NAHUM
INTRODUCTION
There are two sides to the character of God
two sides which yet are perfectly consistent and harmonious. At
times He shows Himself most gentle and compassionate, ready to pardon wrong
doing, willing to admit the wrong-doer to His own fellowship and favour. At
other times He is stern in His justice, inflicting punishment upon evil,
visiting the crimes of men with the tribulation and anguish which are their
due. There is no contradiction, as I have said, between these perfections of
God. He is stable, consistent, immutable, although now He speaks in the thunder
and the mighty rushing wind, and now in the still, small voice. For, first of
all, Be cannot but set differently toward different classes of men--different
moods and conditions of soul To the penitent heart that weeps bitterly over its
sin, to the faithful servant who keeps well his Master’s trust, He must of
necessity reveal His mercy and love; it is not in His nature to shut such as
these out from His favour. But to souls that are proud and wilful and wedded to
their iniquity, what can God be but just and severe and terrible, a consuming
fire, a hammer to break the flinty rook in pieces! He would forfeit His
uprightness were He to deal leniently with these. And then, also, so far from
mercy and judgment being irreconcilable the one with the other, there are
seasons when the infliction of judgment is indeed the truest mercy. His own
children will breathe more freely once their oppressor and antagonist is away;
weak and yielding souls will be prevented from surrendering themselves to His
will; and the world will be lifted up to a higher level. Very frequently mercy
and justice are in reality synonymous terms. Such thoughts as these are
awakened within us when we open this Book of Nahum. It is not a book which
deals either with Israel or with Judah. It has no direct reference to the
chosen people. It is concerned from first to last with the fate of Nineveh, the
proud capital of Assyria. Jonah, the son of Amittai, had been sent thither by
God about two hundred years before Nahum’s time. And the Assyrian monarch and
people of Jonah’s day had opened their hearts to hear God’s Word and to
acknowledge His presence and authority. Seeing their sorrow and rejoicing at its
manifestation, He had passed from the fierceness of His anger. But their
penitence was of short duration. Soon they had grown haughty and sin-loving and
cruel again. And God could bear with their tyranny and evil no longer. He bade
His servant Nahum prophesy their speedy destruction. Jonah had been His
messenger of grace to Assyria; Nahum is His messenger of judgment.
I. It is
exceedingly little that we know of the personal history of this prophet. To
most of us he is simply a voice crying in the desert; we remember him by his
words alone. But I think it is possible for us to fashion for ourselves some
authentic picture of the man and his surroundings. There has long been debate
as to the locality of his birth. “Nahum the Elkoshite,” he is described in the
opening of the book; but it is hard to decide what meaning should be attached
to the epithet. The Christian father Jerome speaks of a village called Elkesai
which lay in Galilee, and tells us that a few relics of it were pointed out to
him by a dweller in the district. Such a testimony is undoubtedly possessed of
considerable value, for Jerome had his home for a great part of his life in
Palestine, and was well acquainted with its villages and towns. And some
expositors have found a confirmation of the theory that Nahum was a Galilean,
born and brought up in the northern parts of the Holy Land, in another name
which is familiar to us in connection with the history of One greater than the
prophet--the name Capernaum. For Capernaum means “the village or hamlet of
Nahum”; and who more likely to give it its distinctive title, it has been
asked, than the ancient servant of God who proclaimed the downfall of his
people’s enemies? It would be pleasant, indeed, to imagine the prophet moving
about the very scenes which were afterwards to be hallowed by the presence of
Christ; walking in prayer and meditation by the shore of the lake which the
Saviour knew so well; spending the most of his days in those holy fields which
six hundred years later were trodden by the Son of God. But however attractive
such a theory may be, I cannot but incline to the other solution which has been
suggested for the phrase, “The Elkoshite.” Travellers in the East tell us of a
village called Alkush (Sir A. H. Layard describes this village and the supposed
tomb of Nahum, in his Nineveh and Babylon) not far from Mosul,
away in what was ancient Assyria, where the tomb of Nahum is pointed out at
this day. The tomb is no doubt an erection comparatively modern; but at least
it bears witness to the existence of an older belief that here, in the land of
the alien and the oppressor, God’s prophet had lived and died. And there is
that in the character of the prophecy which strengthens our conviction that
Nahum was himself an exile in Assyria. Its descriptions are so graphic and
vivid, so apparently painted from the life, that we can scarcely escape the
conclusion that the writer is recounting what his own eyes have seen and his
own ears have heard. He seems to have dwelt in the very heart of the country
against which he proclaimed God’s judgment. It is true that this clear and
definite knowledge of Nineveh and its inhabitants may have been supernaturally
imparted to the prophet. But that is far from likely. For the most part, the
prophets of the Lord deal with those sights and sounds, those persons and
events, by which they are themselves surrounded. They read to men the lessons
of warning or of comfort which the Holy Ghost enables them to gather in that
world in which they live and move and have their being. Let us think of Nahum,
therefore, as the son of a Hebrew family that had been carried captive to
Assyria when the kingdom of the ten tribes was broken and destroyed. He was
born among strangers who were harsh and cruel; but at home he breathed an atmosphere
of love. For his name means “consolation”; and probably it describes the
comfort which the child brought with him to the hearts of his parents. Outside,
in the alien territory where they were forced to stay, they saw only
high-handed wrong-doing and daily sin; but within the walls of their dwelling
they had what compensated them for the oppressor’s wrong and the proud man’s
contumely; they were cheered and strengthened as they looked on the boy whom
God had sent them, and offered up their prayers for him, and hoped that he
might yet do great things for his injured and afflicted people. When Nahum grew
up to manhood he showed that he had the heart of a patriot throbbing within
him. He loved and remembered the land of his ancestors. Bashan and Carmel and
Lebanon were familiar names to him (Nahum 1:4), even although he had never
looked on them with the bodily eye. And, in proportion as he took delight in
that sweet and pleasant soil from which he and his had been banished, he
loathed the tyranny and the manifold evil of the heathen who had triumphed over
God’s heritage. He saw before him the splendour of Nineveh, and its ferocity
and its luxury and its sensuality, and he hated it with a righteous hatred. The
Latin satirist says that it is indignation which makes a man a poet; and
Nahum’s exultant and pitiless words were prompted by his indignation against
the empire which had robbed his fatherland of peace and prosperity and life
itself. But if these were dark and awful words for the Assyrian, they were
bright and soothing for the Israelite. They assured him of the opening of the
prison-house and the dawning of a better day. He was indeed a poet--this old
Hebrew. Many have remarked how terse and vigorous, how forcible and vivid and
fervent, his phrases are. Very bitter and relentless he is towards his enemies;
but we must remember that they were the enemies of God as well as his own, and
that his was a religious enthusiasm. There is music of an inspiring and
triumphant sort in all that he utters--music like that of the trumpet which
calls to battle and victory. He depicts the fall of Nineveh as though he
actually beheld it. He rejoices in its desolation as though it were present to
his eyes. There is energy in every verse.
II. Let us look a
little more particularly at the work which was given him to do: The Assyria
which, he knew was powerful in the extreme. The empire had attained the very
summit of its splendour and prosperity. It had “multiplied its merchants as the
stars of heaven. Its crowned ones, its princes and nobles, were as the locusts”
for number--as the locusts, also, in their destructiveness and their love of
spoil. It seemed as if Nineveh had never been seated on a throne more secure
and stable. We can fix pretty accurately the date of Nahum’s prophecy from a
historical reference which he makes in the course of it. Addressing the haughty
city, which had no disquieting dreams of coming evil, he asks, “Art thou better
than No-Amon that was situate among the rivers, that had the waters round about
her, whose rampart was the sea, and her wall was of the sea?” Yet what a
destruction, entire and irrevocable, had befallen her, as the prophet goes on
to point out! “She was carried away, she went into captivity; her young
children also were dashed in pieces at the top of all the streets; and they
cast lots for her honourable men, and all her great men were bound in chains” (Nahum 3:8; Nahum 3:10, R.V.). Now, this triumph over
No-Amon, which we are better acquainted with under the name of Thebes, was
gained by Assyria itself. It was one of the achievements of King Assur-bani-pal
that he crushed a dangerous revolt which had broken out in Egypt, and drove the
leader of it from the country, and plundered Thebes and laid it waste. Its
temples were hewed in pieces, and two of its obelisks were carried as trophies
to Nineveh. Its people, as Nahum declares, were treated with the terrible
barbarities of heathen war. And this victory over the city of Amon was won
about the year 665 b.c.; so that the prophet, who is familiar with it, must
have preached and laboured at a somewhat later period, perhaps about the middle
of the seventh century before the coming of our Lord.£ It was only the
inspiration of God’s Spirit which could lead any one to foretell, at an era
when the Assyrian empire had reached its widest limits, that its overthrow was
close at hand. To ordinary onlookers everything seemed to presage for it a long
and a successful future; no ominous cloud had as yet appeared in the sky; no
enemy too formidable to be met and overcome had shown himself. Assur-bani-pal£
was not personally, indeed, a brave and fearless ruler, such as his
predecessors Esar-haddon and Sargon had been. He was liker the haughty and
luxurious and boastful Sennacherib, who had led his armies against Hezekiah
half a century before, only to see them “melted like snow in the glance of the
Lord.” But yet he had gained for Nineveh a glory which the city had never
possessed formerly. It needed a Divine enlightenment to predict an issue so
utterly improbable and so far beyond the ken of human foresight. And very
speedily and very terribly the ruin came. Before Assur-bani-pal had been forty
years dead his empire had ceased to be, and his rich and glorious capital had
been blotted out from the face of the earth. Perhaps no part of Old Testament
Scripture has had greater light thrown upon it by those excavations which have
been carried on during recent years in Assyria than this short prophecy. As we
read the records of the investigators, and thread our way in thought among the
remains of Nineveh, and trace the after history of the deserted and forgotten
site, we see everywhere the fulfilment of Nahum’s righteous denunciations. Of
the words which he uttered against the doomed city, there is none which has not
come to pass. The Medes and the Babylonians were the chief assailants of the
great empire, although its antagonists seemed to rise up from every quarter. So
mighty a nation died hard. When its armies were routed in the open field the
king£ made a final stand in the capital, and closed the city gates. The siege,
as we learn from some tablets which survive from these days of mortal struggle,
lasted over two years; for the walls were one hundred feet high and fifty feet
thick, and had been impregnable hitherto. But at length the end came--came not
in the way of ordinary warfare. A great rise of the Tigris brought about the
fall of Nineveh, the flood undermining the fortifications. It was exactly as
Nahum had foretold, “the gates of the rivers had been opened, and the palaces
had been dissolved. Entering the city through the breach which the torrent had
caused, the besiegers soon made it void and waste.” Built only of sun-dried
clay, its houses and temples quickly crumbled into dust.£ We can well believe
that, to many of the poor afflicted Israelites who heard them, Nahum’s words
seemed too good to be true; yet God has carried them out literally and in every
detail What a blessed deliverance this was which the seer beheld! Nineveh was
as cruel as it was great. It was in reality what the prophet of Elkosh pictured
it, a lion which did tear in pieces enough for his whelps, and strangled for
his lionesses, and filled his holes with prey, and his dens with ravin “The
Assyrian annals,” says Professor Sayce, who has made them his daily study,
“glory in the record of a ferocity at which we stand aghast.” And, no doubt,
the captive Hebrews had felt in many ways the brutality of their conqueror; the
godly among them, too, shuddered when they saw his molten images, his
drunkenness, his lust, his exalting of himself against Jehovah. It was no mere
vindictiveness which led them to wish and pray that the earth might be freed
from a monster such as this--a monster which, like the Grendel that Beowulf
slew, made the hearts of men everywhere sad and weary and hopeless. Rather it
was the truest piety and the most genuine religion. How these sorrowful and
yearning souls would welcome Nahum’s prophecy!
III. Can we gather
any lessons for ourselves from Nahum and his prophecy?
1. One of them will be a lesson of the vanity and hopelessness of
resisting God. Very impressively that truth is taught us by the words of the
prophet, if they be read in the light of their fulfilment. The Nineveh of
Nahum’s day looked fair and strong, as though no evil were ever likely to
befall it and no plague to come nigh it. But it had taken up arms against God.
Its idol worship, its licentiousness, its pride, its cruelty towards His
people, whom He had given into its hands to be chastened and not to be
destroyed,--all these things made Him its enemy. And in conflict with such an
Adversary even Nineveh could avail nothing; it dashed itself in vain against
the bosses of Jehovah’s buckler. Nay, He has utterly vanquished it; He has
ground it to powder. What a tragedy there is in the history of every nation, and
of every individual heart, that is opposed to God! Sooner or later the history
closes in darkness and misery and ruin.
2. Again, we gather from Nahum’s prophecy a lesson with regard to the
motives which guide and animate God’s government of the world. He rules it in
the interests of His own people. There is something grand and sublime in the
spectacle of the lonely Hebrew captive who stands up to face the great Assyrian
tyranny, and to tell it that the destined hour for its fall is almost come.
What was it that wrought within him such faith as this--a faith which “laughs
at impossibilities, and says, ‘It shall be done’“? It was the conviction that
his Lord remembered still His own chosen generation, the seed of Abraham His
friend, But such a confidence all God’s sons and daughters should seek after
and should cherish. Let them believe that He governs the world and controls its
affairs on their behalf; that He has thought of their necessities in planning
all the events which take place among men; that He cares more for the souls of
His little ones than for the principalities, and powers, the thrones and
dominions, of the earth. They dwell secure who find their home in Him.
3. Once more, we may learn from some of Nahum’s words the supreme
blessedness of leaning upon God. Now and then there is a lull in the thunder of
his sentences, and his speech drops as the rain and distils as the dew--as the
small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass. He forgets
Nineveh for a little, and turns in pity and love to Israel. This is his
language at one moment. “The Lord hath His way in the whirlwind and in the
storm, and the clouds are the dust of His feet who can stand before His
indignation? and who can abide the fierceness of His anger? His fury is poured
out like fire, and the rocks are thrown down by Him. But, the next moment, how
soft and sweet are the tones of his voice! “The Lord is good, a stronghold in
the day of trouble, and He knoweth them that trust in Him.” There is no more
beautiful verse in all the Bible. And it is as true as it is beautiful. We
should have no doubt of its truth--we who live after Bethlehem and Calvary and
the grave in Joseph’s garden, and who are familiar with the exceeding grace of
our Lord Jesus Christ. (Orginal Secession Magazine.)
Nahum’s range as an inspired teacher
As to this prophet’s rank in the series of inspired teachers, it
is suggested that his message is meagre and his conceptions are narrow. He has
nothing to say about Israel’s Messianic character and future. He has no rebuke
for her sinfulness and unworthiness. His soul is consumed with unreasoning
indignation against Assyria, and he is devoid of that lofty conception of the
world’s government which enabled earlier prophets to recognise in Assyria
Jehovah’s scourge for His people’s stubbornness and the chastening rod of His
gracious discipline. In contrast to that large and religious interpretation of
Providence, Nahum appears as the representative of a retrogression into narrow,
national particularism. Now it is to be admitted that the form of Nahum’s
oracle lends itself to this misreading, but the spirit and aim of the prophet
ought to have prevented it. Besides the wrong of Israel, more than once in his
short utterance he presents Assyria as the oppressor of mankind, whose avenger
Jehovah is (Nahum 3:4; Nahum 3:7; Nahum 3:19). Nor even in the
contemplation of his own people’s injuries is the prophet’s zeal vindictive and
national. It is not revenge, but
righteousness that demands the transgressor’s downfall. It is not
Israel’s pride that is at stake, but God’s honour; not the redemption of his
people, but the vindication of his God, that is in question. With Nahum
Nineveh’s punishment is the guarantee of the world’s Divine government, and his
impassioned declaration of its downfall is the measure, not of his hostility to
it, but of the struggle and triumph of his faith in God, and in God’s kingdom.
That being the single and simple issue present to his mind, he naturally does
not even touch that aspect of the Assyrian enigma which explains its evil power
over God’s people and the world by their sinful failure to be what God would
have had them be for their own happiness and humanity’s good. (W. G.
Elmslie, D. D.)
NAHUM
INTRODUCTION
There are two sides to the character of God
two sides which yet are perfectly consistent and harmonious. At
times He shows Himself most gentle and compassionate, ready to pardon wrong
doing, willing to admit the wrong-doer to His own fellowship and favour. At
other times He is stern in His justice, inflicting punishment upon evil,
visiting the crimes of men with the tribulation and anguish which are their
due. There is no contradiction, as I have said, between these perfections of
God. He is stable, consistent, immutable, although now He speaks in the thunder
and the mighty rushing wind, and now in the still, small voice. For, first of
all, Be cannot but set differently toward different classes of men--different
moods and conditions of soul To the penitent heart that weeps bitterly over its
sin, to the faithful servant who keeps well his Master’s trust, He must of
necessity reveal His mercy and love; it is not in His nature to shut such as
these out from His favour. But to souls that are proud and wilful and wedded to
their iniquity, what can God be but just and severe and terrible, a consuming
fire, a hammer to break the flinty rook in pieces! He would forfeit His
uprightness were He to deal leniently with these. And then, also, so far from
mercy and judgment being irreconcilable the one with the other, there are
seasons when the infliction of judgment is indeed the truest mercy. His own
children will breathe more freely once their oppressor and antagonist is away;
weak and yielding souls will be prevented from surrendering themselves to His
will; and the world will be lifted up to a higher level. Very frequently mercy
and justice are in reality synonymous terms. Such thoughts as these are
awakened within us when we open this Book of Nahum. It is not a book which
deals either with Israel or with Judah. It has no direct reference to the
chosen people. It is concerned from first to last with the fate of Nineveh, the
proud capital of Assyria. Jonah, the son of Amittai, had been sent thither by
God about two hundred years before Nahum’s time. And the Assyrian monarch and
people of Jonah’s day had opened their hearts to hear God’s Word and to
acknowledge His presence and authority. Seeing their sorrow and rejoicing at
its manifestation, He had passed from the fierceness of His anger. But their
penitence was of short duration. Soon they had grown haughty and sin-loving and
cruel again. And God could bear with their tyranny and evil no longer. He bade
His servant Nahum prophesy their speedy destruction. Jonah had been His
messenger of grace to Assyria; Nahum is His messenger of judgment.
I. It is
exceedingly little that we know of the personal history of this prophet. To
most of us he is simply a voice crying in the desert; we remember him by his
words alone. But I think it is possible for us to fashion for ourselves some
authentic picture of the man and his surroundings. There has long been debate
as to the locality of his birth. “Nahum the Elkoshite,” he is described in the
opening of the book; but it is hard to decide what meaning should be attached
to the epithet. The Christian father Jerome speaks of a village called Elkesai
which lay in Galilee, and tells us that a few relics of it were pointed out to
him by a dweller in the district. Such a testimony is undoubtedly possessed of
considerable value, for Jerome had his home for a great part of his life in
Palestine, and was well acquainted with its villages and towns. And some
expositors have found a confirmation of the theory that Nahum was a Galilean,
born and brought up in the northern parts of the Holy Land, in another name
which is familiar to us in connection with the history of One greater than the
prophet--the name Capernaum. For Capernaum means “the village or hamlet of
Nahum”; and who more likely to give it its distinctive title, it has been
asked, than the ancient servant of God who proclaimed the downfall of his
people’s enemies? It would be pleasant, indeed, to imagine the prophet moving
about the very scenes which were afterwards to be hallowed by the presence of
Christ; walking in prayer and meditation by the shore of the lake which the
Saviour knew so well; spending the most of his days in those holy fields which
six hundred years later were trodden by the Son of God. But however attractive
such a theory may be, I cannot but incline to the other solution which has been
suggested for the phrase, “The Elkoshite.” Travellers in the East tell us of a
village called Alkush (Sir A. H. Layard describes this village and the supposed
tomb of Nahum, in his Nineveh and Babylon) not far from Mosul,
away in what was ancient Assyria, where the tomb of Nahum is pointed out at
this day. The tomb is no doubt an erection comparatively modern; but at least
it bears witness to the existence of an older belief that here, in the land of
the alien and the oppressor, God’s prophet had lived and died. And there is
that in the character of the prophecy which strengthens our conviction that
Nahum was himself an exile in Assyria. Its descriptions are so graphic and
vivid, so apparently painted from the life, that we can scarcely escape the
conclusion that the writer is recounting what his own eyes have seen and his
own ears have heard. He seems to have dwelt in the very heart of the country
against which he proclaimed God’s judgment. It is true that this clear and
definite knowledge of Nineveh and its inhabitants may have been supernaturally
imparted to the prophet. But that is far from likely. For the most part, the
prophets of the Lord deal with those sights and sounds, those persons and
events, by which they are themselves surrounded. They read to men the lessons
of warning or of comfort which the Holy Ghost enables them to gather in that
world in which they live and move and have their being. Let us think of Nahum,
therefore, as the son of a Hebrew family that had been carried captive to
Assyria when the kingdom of the ten tribes was broken and destroyed. He was
born among strangers who were harsh and cruel; but at home he breathed an
atmosphere of love. For his name means “consolation”; and probably it describes
the comfort which the child brought with him to the hearts of his parents.
Outside, in the alien territory where they were forced to stay, they saw only
high-handed wrong-doing and daily sin; but within the walls of their dwelling
they had what compensated them for the oppressor’s wrong and the proud man’s
contumely; they were cheered and strengthened as they looked on the boy whom
God had sent them, and offered up their prayers for him, and hoped that he
might yet do great things for his injured and afflicted people. When Nahum grew
up to manhood he showed that he had the heart of a patriot throbbing within
him. He loved and remembered the land of his ancestors. Bashan and Carmel and
Lebanon were familiar names to him (Nahum 1:4), even although he had never
looked on them with the bodily eye. And, in proportion as he took delight in
that sweet and pleasant soil from which he and his had been banished, he
loathed the tyranny and the manifold evil of the heathen who had triumphed over
God’s heritage. He saw before him the splendour of Nineveh, and its ferocity
and its luxury and its sensuality, and he hated it with a righteous hatred. The
Latin satirist says that it is indignation which makes a man a poet; and
Nahum’s exultant and pitiless words were prompted by his indignation against
the empire which had robbed his fatherland of peace and prosperity and life
itself. But if these were dark and awful words for the Assyrian, they were
bright and soothing for the Israelite. They assured him of the opening of the
prison-house and the dawning of a better day. He was indeed a poet--this old
Hebrew. Many have remarked how terse and vigorous, how forcible and vivid and
fervent, his phrases are. Very bitter and relentless he is towards his enemies;
but we must remember that they were the enemies of God as well as his own, and
that his was a religious enthusiasm. There is music of an inspiring and
triumphant sort in all that he utters--music like that of the trumpet which
calls to battle and victory. He depicts the fall of Nineveh as though he
actually beheld it. He rejoices in its desolation as though it were present to
his eyes. There is energy in every verse.
II. Let us look a
little more particularly at the work which was given him to do: The Assyria
which, he knew was powerful in the extreme. The empire had attained the very
summit of its splendour and prosperity. It had “multiplied its merchants as the
stars of heaven. Its crowned ones, its princes and nobles, were as the locusts”
for number--as the locusts, also, in their destructiveness and their love of
spoil. It seemed as if Nineveh had never been seated on a throne more secure
and stable. We can fix pretty accurately the date of Nahum’s prophecy from a
historical reference which he makes in the course of it. Addressing the haughty
city, which had no disquieting dreams of coming evil, he asks, “Art thou better
than No-Amon that was situate among the rivers, that had the waters round about
her, whose rampart was the sea, and her wall was of the sea?” Yet what a
destruction, entire and irrevocable, had befallen her, as the prophet goes on
to point out! “She was carried away, she went into captivity; her young
children also were dashed in pieces at the top of all the streets; and they
cast lots for her honourable men, and all her great men were bound in chains” (Nahum 3:8; Nahum 3:10, R.V.). Now, this triumph over
No-Amon, which we are better acquainted with under the name of Thebes, was
gained by Assyria itself. It was one of the achievements of King Assur-bani-pal
that he crushed a dangerous revolt which had broken out in Egypt, and drove the
leader of it from the country, and plundered Thebes and laid it waste. Its
temples were hewed in pieces, and two of its obelisks were carried as trophies
to Nineveh. Its people, as Nahum declares, were treated with the terrible
barbarities of heathen war. And this victory over the city of Amon was won
about the year 665 b.c.; so that the prophet, who is familiar with it, must
have preached and laboured at a somewhat later period, perhaps about the middle
of the seventh century before the coming of our Lord.£ It was only the
inspiration of God’s Spirit which could lead any one to foretell, at an era
when the Assyrian empire had reached its widest limits, that its overthrow was
close at hand. To ordinary onlookers everything seemed to presage for it a long
and a successful future; no ominous cloud had as yet appeared in the sky; no
enemy too formidable to be met and overcome had shown himself. Assur-bani-pal£
was not personally, indeed, a brave and fearless ruler, such as his
predecessors Esar-haddon and Sargon had been. He was liker the haughty and
luxurious and boastful Sennacherib, who had led his armies against Hezekiah
half a century before, only to see them “melted like snow in the glance of the
Lord.” But yet he had gained for Nineveh a glory which the city had never possessed
formerly. It needed a Divine enlightenment to predict an issue so utterly
improbable and so far beyond the ken of human foresight. And very speedily and
very terribly the ruin came. Before Assur-bani-pal had been forty years dead
his empire had ceased to be, and his rich and glorious capital had been blotted
out from the face of the earth. Perhaps no part of Old Testament Scripture has
had greater light thrown upon it by those excavations which have been carried
on during recent years in Assyria than this short prophecy. As we read the
records of the investigators, and thread our way in thought among the remains
of Nineveh, and trace the after history of the deserted and forgotten site, we
see everywhere the fulfilment of Nahum’s righteous denunciations. Of the words
which he uttered against the doomed city, there is none which has not come to
pass. The Medes and the Babylonians were the chief assailants of the great
empire, although its antagonists seemed to rise up from every quarter. So
mighty a nation died hard. When its armies were routed in the open field the
king£ made a final stand in the capital, and closed the city gates. The siege,
as we learn from some tablets which survive from these days of mortal struggle,
lasted over two years; for the walls were one hundred feet high and fifty feet
thick, and had been impregnable hitherto. But at length the end came--came not
in the way of ordinary warfare. A great rise of the Tigris brought about the
fall of Nineveh, the flood undermining the fortifications. It was exactly as
Nahum had foretold, “the gates of the rivers had been opened, and the palaces
had been dissolved. Entering the city through the breach which the torrent had
caused, the besiegers soon made it void and waste.” Built only of sun-dried
clay, its houses and temples quickly crumbled into dust.£ We can well believe
that, to many of the poor afflicted Israelites who heard them, Nahum’s words
seemed too good to be true; yet God has carried them out literally and in every
detail What a blessed deliverance this was which the seer beheld! Nineveh was
as cruel as it was great. It was in reality what the prophet of Elkosh pictured
it, a lion which did tear in pieces enough for his whelps, and strangled for
his lionesses, and filled his holes with prey, and his dens with ravin “The
Assyrian annals,” says Professor Sayce, who has made them his daily study,
“glory in the record of a ferocity at which we stand aghast.” And, no doubt,
the captive Hebrews had felt in many ways the brutality of their conqueror; the
godly among them, too, shuddered when they saw his molten images, his
drunkenness, his lust, his exalting of himself against Jehovah. It was no mere
vindictiveness which led them to wish and pray that the earth might be freed
from a monster such as this--a monster which, like the Grendel that Beowulf
slew, made the hearts of men everywhere sad and weary and hopeless. Rather it
was the truest piety and the most genuine religion. How these sorrowful and
yearning souls would welcome Nahum’s prophecy!
III. Can we gather
any lessons for ourselves from Nahum and his prophecy?
1. One of them will be a lesson of the vanity and hopelessness of
resisting God. Very impressively that truth is taught us by the words of the
prophet, if they be read in the light of their fulfilment. The Nineveh of
Nahum’s day looked fair and strong, as though no evil were ever likely to
befall it and no plague to come nigh it. But it had taken up arms against God.
Its idol worship, its licentiousness, its pride, its cruelty towards His
people, whom He had given into its hands to be chastened and not to be
destroyed,--all these things made Him its enemy. And in conflict with such an
Adversary even Nineveh could avail nothing; it dashed itself in vain against
the bosses of Jehovah’s buckler. Nay, He has utterly vanquished it; He has
ground it to powder. What a tragedy there is in the history of every nation,
and of every individual heart, that is opposed to God! Sooner or later the
history closes in darkness and misery and ruin.
2. Again, we gather from Nahum’s prophecy a lesson with regard to the
motives which guide and animate God’s government of the world. He rules it in
the interests of His own people. There is something grand and sublime in the
spectacle of the lonely Hebrew captive who stands up to face the great Assyrian
tyranny, and to tell it that the destined hour for its fall is almost come.
What was it that wrought within him such faith as this--a faith which “laughs
at impossibilities, and says, ‘It shall be done’“? It was the conviction that
his Lord remembered still His own chosen generation, the seed of Abraham His
friend, But such a confidence all God’s sons and daughters should seek after
and should cherish. Let them believe that He governs the world and controls its
affairs on their behalf; that He has thought of their necessities in planning
all the events which take place among men; that He cares more for the souls of
His little ones than for the principalities, and powers, the thrones and
dominions, of the earth. They dwell secure who find their home in Him.
3. Once more, we may learn from some of Nahum’s words the supreme
blessedness of leaning upon God. Now and then there is a lull in the thunder of
his sentences, and his speech drops as the rain and distils as the dew--as the
small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass. He forgets
Nineveh for a little, and turns in pity and love to Israel. This is his
language at one moment. “The Lord hath His way in the whirlwind and in the
storm, and the clouds are the dust of His feet who can stand before His
indignation? and who can abide the fierceness of His anger? His fury is poured
out like fire, and the rocks are thrown down by Him. But, the next moment, how
soft and sweet are the tones of his voice! “The Lord is good, a stronghold in
the day of trouble, and He knoweth them that trust in Him.” There is no more
beautiful verse in all the Bible. And it is as true as it is beautiful. We
should have no doubt of its truth--we who live after Bethlehem and Calvary and
the grave in Joseph’s garden, and who are familiar with the exceeding grace of
our Lord Jesus Christ. (Orginal Secession Magazine.)
Nahum’s range as an inspired teacher
As to this prophet’s rank in the series of inspired teachers, it
is suggested that his message is meagre and his conceptions are narrow. He has
nothing to say about Israel’s Messianic character and future. He has no rebuke
for her sinfulness and unworthiness. His soul is consumed with unreasoning
indignation against Assyria, and he is devoid of that lofty conception of the
world’s government which enabled earlier prophets to recognise in Assyria
Jehovah’s scourge for His people’s stubbornness and the chastening rod of His
gracious discipline. In contrast to that large and religious interpretation of
Providence, Nahum appears as the representative of a retrogression into narrow,
national particularism. Now it is to be admitted that the form of Nahum’s
oracle lends itself to this misreading, but the spirit and aim of the prophet
ought to have prevented it. Besides the wrong of Israel, more than once in his
short utterance he presents Assyria as the oppressor of mankind, whose avenger
Jehovah is (Nahum 3:4; Nahum 3:7; Nahum 3:19). Nor even in the
contemplation of his own people’s injuries is the prophet’s zeal vindictive and
national. It is not revenge, but
righteousness that demands the transgressor’s downfall. It is not
Israel’s pride that is at stake, but God’s honour; not the redemption of his
people, but the vindication of his God, that is in question. With Nahum
Nineveh’s punishment is the guarantee of the world’s Divine government, and his
impassioned declaration of its downfall is the measure, not of his hostility to
it, but of the struggle and triumph of his faith in God, and in God’s kingdom.
That being the single and simple issue present to his mind, he naturally does
not even touch that aspect of the Assyrian enigma which explains its evil power
over God’s people and the world by their sinful failure to be what God would
have had them be for their own happiness and humanity’s good. (W. G.
Elmslie, D. D.)
──《The Biblical Illustrator》