Nahum

Overview

Nahum is Jonah’s sequel, a century and a half later. Nineveh repented once; now it has gone back to what it was, and this time there is no call to repent — only the announcement that it is finished.

The poetry is vivid and fast: chariots raging in the streets, the river gates opened, Nineveh empty and void and waste. To Judah, living under that empire’s boot, it was not gloating but relief.

Background

Assyria had destroyed the northern kingdom, besieged Jerusalem, and made cruelty a stated policy — their own monuments boast of it. Nahum names the fall of Thebes in Egypt as a recent event, which dates his preaching after 663 BC.

Nineveh fell to the Medes and Babylonians in 612 BC, and so completely that within two centuries Greek writers were unsure the city had ever existed.

Key themes

• God is slow to anger and will not at all acquit the wicked — both are true at once.
• The LORD is a stronghold in the day of trouble, and knows those who trust Him.
• Empires answer to God for what they do to people.
• Judgment delayed is not judgment forgotten.
• Good news for the oppressed is the other side of judgment on the oppressor.

Outline

1. Who God isChapter 1

   Jealous and avenging, slow to anger, great in power — and good, a stronghold in trouble.

2. The siegeChapter 2

   Chariots in the streets, the palace dissolved, and the spoil carried off.

3. Woe to the bloody cityChapter 3

   The reason set out plainly, and the question no one can answer: who will bemoan her?

Key passages

• Nahum 1:3 The LORD is slow to anger, and great in power.
• Nahum 1:7 The LORD is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble.
• Nahum 1:15 Behold upon the mountains the feet of him that bringeth good tidings.
• Nahum 2:1 He that dasheth in pieces is come up before thy face.
• Nahum 3:1 Woe to the bloody city! it is all full of lies and robbery.
• Nahum 3:19 All that hear the bruit of thee shall clap the hands over thee.

Christ in Nahum

Nahum 1:15 — the feet of him that brings good tidings and publishes peace — is the same line Isaiah uses and Paul quotes of gospel preachers. The book’s hard half is the necessary background: a God who shrugs at cruelty would not be good, and the cross is where mercy and judgment meet.

Reading it

• Read Jonah first, then this; they are two visits to the same city.
• Chapter 1 is the theology; chapters 2–3 are the news report.
• Read it as a persecuted people would have — not as gloating, but as relief.