Nahum Week 1
We’re going to be studying the book of Nahum next.
But before we begin, I think it’s probably helpful to update ourselves on a few of the historical things that have been happening. Turn in your Bibles to 2 Kings 17.
Read vs 1-6
The northern kingdom of Israel has reached its last king, Hoshea. Assyria knocks on Israel’s door and says basically pay us tribute or die. You see that in verse 3. Israel then becomes what is called a “vassal” to Assyria. They get to keep their own government doing their own things, but they have to send lots of money and goods to Assyria every year to prevent destruction. Hoshea eventually becomes tired of this agreement, stops paying tribune, and sends messengers to Egypt to see if Egypt would help him fight off Assyria. Assyria hears about it and comes down and destroys Israel completely, besieging their capital city of Samaria, sending their people into exile spread 800 miles across the Assyrian empire and even beyond into Persia. Why does this happen?
Read vs 7-8, He lists a bunch of their specific sins.
Read vs 13-14.
They sinned against God and what does God do? Punish them? No. Not at first. First he sends his prophets to call them to repentance. That’s been a big theme for us in the prophets. They’re not here simply to predict the future and call down judgment. They are always urging the people to repent. Which prophets did God send? We specifically know of several: Hosea, maybe Joel, Amos, Jonah, and Micah. Then there were other prophets who God sent that didn’t write any books like Elijah and Elisha and others. They were all calling Israel to repent, but Israel did not repent.
Read vs 21-23
It says Israel was torn from the house of David. That’s because God made all of his promises to David and to David’s descendants. But when the nation split into a northern and southern kingdom, David’s kids and grandkids, etc. were part of the southern kingdom, Judah. The northern kingdom, Israel, left the house of David to make their own kingdom. Jeroboam was the first king of northern Israel. And he set a wicked pattern that every king after him followed.
What happens to the land that was just emptied of all of its people?
Read vs 24-28
This is an interesting little story. They have taken all of the Israelites out of Israel and they brought in people from other nations which were scattered across 800 miles of the Assyrian empire. They come into the land which is referred to as Samaria. Samaria was the capital city of northern Israel and now the land is simply called Samaria. But when the foreigners are brought in they are attacked by lions. They correctly assume that God sent lions because they aren’t worshipping him in his own land. So they sent a priest who teaches them how to worship God. But they do a bad job of it.
Read vs. 29, 41.
Samaria has been filled with foreigners and they are attempting to worship both God and idols at the same time. These foreigners are acting precisely like the Israelites who lived in the land before them. If you want to know why in the times of Jesus the Jews hate Samaritans, this is why. They were foreigners that became intermingled with Jewish people. They mixed the worship of God with the worship of pagan gods. The Jews considered them to be wicked half-breeds. The Assyria/Samaria thing happened over 700 years before Jesus but the history was never forgotten. What happens in the south?
Read 19:10-11
About 8 years after Assyria destroys Israel and Samaria, they come after Judah and Jerusalem. Hezekiah is the king. They surround Jerusalem and put it under siege threatening to destroy it as well. The Assyrian commander says that no nation’s god has ever been able to stop Assyria and Judah’s God will be no different.
Read 19:14-19, and what happens as a result of Hezekiah’s prayer?
Read 19:35-37
God miraculously saves Jerusalem from the attacks of Assyria and that particular Assyrian king is destroyed.
So this is what has taken place between Micah and Nahum and brings us up to where we are today. Assyria is still a threat to Judah, but Nahum is going to prophesy directly against them and against Nineveh, their capital city.
Here is the outline of the book of Nahum
Description of God as he arrives (1:2-8)
Declaration of God as he destroys and saves (1:9-15)
Destruction of Nineveh as a city (2:1-13)
Downfall of Assyria as an empire (3:1-19)
We’re going to cover the first two sections today. And we’ll cover the second two sections next time.
1:1
As always, the book starts by identifying the author and usually where he is from. Nahum is the author of this book and his name means “comfort”. As we’ll see this book does not offer one ounce of comfort to Nineveh, but it would be comfort to the people of Judah.
Nahum is said to be from Elkosh which could be the same as a place called Al’ Kush which was not far from Nineveh. If that’s true it would mean that Nahum was descended from the exiles taken from Israel, but we’re not certain. Elkosh could also have been former name of Capernaum. Capernaum is the town in northern Israel that we’re very familiar with from Jesus work there in the gospels. Capernaum is a combination of two words in Hebrew. Caper means village. Naum means Nahum or comfort. So Capernaum could be the village of Nahum. Again, we’re not sure.
The book of Nahum is concerning Nineveh, now it’s certainly ABOUT Nineveh, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that Nahum actually delivered this message TO Nineveh. Jonah went all the way to Nineveh to deliver his message, but we don’t know if Nahum did the same. Prophets would often give oracles concerning other cities or nations without going there. For instance, Isaiah contains oracles concerning Philistia, Moab, Syria, Babylon, and Egypt, but we don’t have any evidence that Isaiah ever traveled to any of these places. So it’s possible that this book is a message of “comfort” for Judah that was delivered to Judah though it was about Nineveh and Assyria.
1:2-8
You see immediately it says The LORD, five times in a row in verses 2-3. Underline “The LORD” all five times. This first part of our outline is describing what the LORD is like.
VS 2 Now look at those first three “the LORD” in verse 2. The same word is connected to each one of those. The first two say avenging and the third say vengeance but it’s the same Hebrew word all three times. And all three times it comes right next to God’s name. Yahweh avenging, Yahweh avenging, Yahweh avenging. Three times in one verse. Draw a line from The LORD to avenging in each line.
What does it mean that God is avenging? Maybe you remember the verse from Romans, Romans 12:19 that says “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”
God declares that when something wicked happens, he is the one who repays the evildoer for their deed so that we don’t have to. He’s not vengeful in the sense that if someone’s mean to him then he wants to be mean back. Rather, he is the one responsible for enacting justice in the entire universe. So when a wrong deed is done, he delivers the just punishment for it. He avenges all wrong deeds.
This is great news because as it says in Romans 12, it means we don’t have to. We don’t have to pay people back who have done wrong to us, because God will take care of it at the right time.
So what exactly is God taking vengeance on Nineveh for? He’s avenging all of the things that they did to the northern kingdom of Israel. They destroyed Israel and now God is making it right. You see how this could be a message of comfort to God’s people? They were beaten down by an enemy who seemed like they got away with it, but God says,
“They will not. I will repay. No one gets away with sin ever.”VS 3a Now look at verse 3a. We have two more “the LORD”s, but these two are interesting because they are quoting something. There’s a significant passage in Exodus 34 where Moses asks God to reveal his glory to him. God hides Moses in a rock and covers it then he passes by Moses. Exodus 34:6-7 is the declaration that God makes about himself and who he is. We’ve already seen this passage referred to in two of our minor prophets. One was Joel and the other was Jonah. Jonah was also a prophet to where? To Nineveh. This is what Jonah says in Jonah 4:2 - “And he prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.”
Here’s what Jonah highlights from Exodus 34:6-7 - “relents from disaster” or “forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin”
Here’s what Nahum highlights in vs 3 - “but who will by no means clear the guilty”. Nineveh received God’s mercy and grace earlier and now they will receive God’s justice. Both are aspects of God’s character. And he never offers one without the other.
So write Exodus 34:6-7 next to vs 3 for reference.
VS 3b-5 Have some very classic imagery that shows up throughout the prophets regularly. As we go through the prophets maybe you’ve noticed some of this imagery that shows up repeatedly. We’ve learned that when the sun is darkened and the moon turns to blood that kind of cosmic language is related to the Day of the Lord and occurs frequently. Now we should notice that when the earth shakes and the mountains melt, that’s the language of God arriving personally. We saw this especially at the beginning of Micah and we saw it somewhat in Amos and Joel.
Vs 6 we see that the point of such language is to demonstrate that no one can contend with God. Who could stand before this God? Not even the rocks and mountains can survive.
Vs 7 is the only verse in all of Nahum that you could put on your coffee mug. Underline the words “The LORD” again. This verse reminds us of the counter fact from God’s vengeance. He is also good. He doesn’t just destroy, but for every single person that runs to him he will save and care for them. I wonder if this message being spoken towards Nineveh is a reminder that even if they would still turn and repent he would save them.
Vs 8 the concluding verse reminds us that God’s justice cannot be stopped.
So that was a section on God describing to Nineveh who he is and at the same time showing that he is arriving to punish them.
The next section is God declaring that he destroys the nations, but saves his own people.
1:9-15
The word “you” shows up a whole lot in this section. Now to us each of these looks the same. You, you, you, you. We only have one word for it. But in Hebrew they use gender and number with their “you” So if you’re speaking to one woman you have a word that means “you singular woman” and if you’re speaking to several women you have a word that means “you plural women” and the same for “you singular man” and “you plural men”. So it you can track the you’s in Hebrew you would notice some things happen here and I’ll try to highlight it as we go.
Vs 9-11 opens with asking why they are plotting against the Lord. And we see it again in vs 11, they plotted against the Lord. Circle the words Plot and plotted and underline The LORD in both spots. The first you is plural men. “You group of guys” the second is singular woman “you one woman”. Commentators think this is suggesting that the first one is referring to the entire nation of Assyria and the second one is referring to the city of Nineveh. So write Assyria next to 9-11.
You might ask, when did Nineveh or Assyria plot against the Lord and how would you even plot against the Lord? Could you make plans to attack heaven? No. Rather Assyria plotted against the Lord’s people and God sees attacking his people as an attack on him. God does not endure enemies. He destroys them. Assyria will be burned up like thorns and there will be no second attack.
Vs 12-13 Now the you’s in this section are all feminine singular. It appears that God is talking directly to Judah and offering them comfort. So write Judah next to 12-13. He’s telling them that they’ve gone through a time of affliction, but that God’s ridding them of Assyria as an afflicter. Even when Assyria is at the peak of its power, God is stronger than them.
Vs 14 In verse 14 all of the you’s change back to masculine. It seems God is speaking to Assyria again. So write Assyria next to 14. He’s telling them that their name will be cut off from the world. And it’s true. There is no Assyria today. I looked it up and there are some people who claim to be descendants of Assyrians, but they are without any nation to call home and are spread abroad.
Vs 15 Nahum is quoting from Isaiah 52:7 which says,
“How beautiful upon the mountains
are the feet of him who brings good news,
who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness,
who publishes salvation,
who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”
This is another instance we’ve seen of prophets quoting one another. Isaiah would have been between 50-100 years before Nahum, but Nahum was familiar with his work and quotes it here.
The word good news here is the same word translated elsewhere as the gospel. So part of the good news for Judah is the ultimate and final defeat of their enemies.
Now in closing, it’s significant to notice that Nineveh and Assyria aren’t mentioned even once by name in vs 2-15. I think that’s intentional. I think it gives a template for how God always works against his enemies. He works that way against Assyria then against Babylon then against Persia then against Greece and Rome. He always defeats enemies. We can say along with Judah that anyone who is an enemy of God’s people is an enemy of God himself. God will never be overcome by his enemies. And he will always avenge his people. We may suffer now, but the good news is he will afflict us now, but he will afflict us no more in the future. Even at the height of their power. God’s enemies will be cut off. Read Revelation. It’s a book of celebration telling us how God continues to defeat his enemies.