Nahum Week 2
Review of Nahum
Nahum is a prophet with a message for Nineveh, but we don’t know if he actually ever went there like Jonah did.
His ministry takes place sometime between 660 and 630 BC. After Assyria destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel, but before Assyria itself was destroyed.
Nahum’s name means comfort, but this is not a comforting message for Nineveh.
And this is an important thing to understand about the prophets. It has often been said that their responsibility is to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. That is that for those who are being crushed by sin and its effects, who are “afflicted”, the prophets will offer a word of comfort to them. There is hope. God saves. Or as God said to his people last week in Nahum 1:12 - “Though I have afflicted you, I will afflict you no more”. So the prophets comfort the afflicted, but at the same time they afflict the comfortable. If you are an enemy of God’s people or you are living in sin or you are abandoning God’s laws but life seems to be going pretty well for you, the prophets show up to tell you that terrible things are in your future unless you repent. You might be comfortable now, but you will be facing all kinds of afflictions in the days ahead. Or as God says about Assyria in that same verse, 1:12, - “Though they are at full strength and many, they will be cut down and pass away.” So what we see happening in the book of Nahum is very much of this “afflict the comfortable” language directed at Assyria. But in doing so, he is offering much “comfort for the afflicted” who have been crushed underneath Assyria’s power.
In our outline of the book of Nahum, we saw this
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)
So we’re going to read through chapter 2 recognizing that this is the destruction of the city of Nineveh, which at this point had become the capital of Assyria.
2:1-5
Vs. 1 - In the first chapter God threatens the arrival of the enemy to destroy Nineveh and now they have actually arrived. The “scatterer” is here. Who is the scatterer? Well, that’s not easy to answer. Historically, it’s Babylon that shows up in 612 BC knocking on Nineveh’s door and destroys them. So the scatterer could be Babylon who will scatter them across the world. But I think it’s also appropriate to view the scatterer as God who is using Babylon to destroy Assyria. They are told to prepare for battle, but it’s already clear they will lose this battle.
Vs. 2 - This verse answers why God is destroying Nineveh. He’s going to battle against them because he’s restoring his own people, the full nation of Israel. There was a time in which he was using Assyria as a means of disciplining Israel and Judah. But that time has ended. Assyria has done enough plundering. They are no longer useful for God’s purposes so he is going to avenge their wickedness. Is God using evil people to accomplish his ends? That’s a good question and we’ll revisit it a little later. Underline the words plunderers and plundered here.
Vs 3-5 - The army of the scatterer is quickly approaching, racing through the streets outside the city walls and closing in very fast. And in verse 5, we see them reach the city wall itself. They begin to set up their siege towers to destroy this city.
2:6
I isolated this verse because it describes the moment that the city of Nineveh was breached and overthrown. I tried very hard to research and discover specifically how Nineveh was destroyed. Unfortunately, as much as we would prefer to live in an age when absolutely everything can be known and scientists have figured out everything and archaeologists have uncovered everything, we just don’t. We don’t know everything. And we aren’t entirely sure how Nineveh was overthrown. However there are some interesting potential accounts. A few of the ancient sources conflict with one another, but here is one potential description.
Nineveh was a walled city. The walls were said to stretch about 8 miles in circumference. Within the walls were both pasturelands and then what we would call the downtown or metropolis area. Nineveh was also built alongside the Khoser river. In fact they diverted some of the river to create a 150 ft wide moat that surrounded the entire city’s walls. The remaining river flowed through the walls and passed the center of the city.
The walls of the city were extremely impressive, not just because of how long they were but because they were about 50 feet tall and 50 feet thick. Very difficult to get past.
Now here’s where accounts start to get fishy. The claim is that there was an ancient prophecy from hundreds of years prior to Nineveh’s destruction that the city would never be destroyed unless the river turned against it. And it’s possible that this is precisely what happened. Babylon placed Nineveh under siege for a brief 3 months before taking the city. Sieges would usually last multiple years. The reason it was so brief is that a large portion of the city wall was destroyed by a flood that allowed them to enter and capture the city. How did it flood? Some say that perhaps the Babylonians built a dam upstream to block up the river and then destroyed the dam to unleash the water. Or others say that there was unprecedented rain which caused the river to rise and destroy the walls. Another claim I read was that once the walls were destroyed the king of Nineveh shut himself up in his palace and burned it to the ground.
If these claims are true it would coordinate well with what we just read was prophesied in verse 6. It also would explain how in the next verse the queen is mentioned but there’s no talk of the king.
Now all of this is interesting speculation, and it’s somewhat fun, but I would caution us from holding onto these types of conjectures too tightly. What sometimes happens among Christians is that we really like a story like this and we really want it to be true because it would align well with the Bible and help us understand the Bible better, but then later it’s proven to not be true and Christians look silly. So I state again that these are potential ways Nineveh could have been destroyed, but the evidence is pretty sparse.
2:7-9
The inhabitants of Nineveh flee and run away. “Like a pool whose waters run away” is this evidence again of a flood? I don’t know.
But you see again in verse 9, God’s knack for justice. Assyria had plundered Israel in verse 2 and now they are the ones being plundered. A theme throughout the prophets has been how God inflicts the same evil on people that they had inflicted on others. Underline the words plunder again. And draw an arrow pointing up to the plunder from earlier. God has repaid them in kind.
2:10-13
You hear a lot of lion talk going on here. Lions were always a symbol of power back in the Ancient Near East. And Assyria was no different. They covered their city with images of lions as a show of their power and strength and referred to themselves as the lions. They were strong with none to fear. Underline the words prey here in verse 12.
But Nahum says that the sword will devour the lions, why? Because the Lord himself is against you.
This final section of Nahum concludes the book and we’ve labeled it the downfall of Assyria as an empire, but it could more broadly be understood as the downfall of any evil empire. I’ll show you why in a minute, but we’ll see that this is what God does to all evil empires that are filled with violence and immorality.
Also this last chapter contains some pretty graphic details that are difficult to read.
3:1-7
That’s what I mean by graphic.
In the first 3 verses you can see that the city is filled with dead bodies and corpses. You can see the reversal God gives Nineveh. In 2:12, they were eating the other nations as prey and now in this verse they have become the prey. Underline prey and draw an arrow pointing back to the prey in verse 12. The Lord has repaid them in kind.
Now here’s where it gets quite provocative. He describes Assyria as a prostitute that has attracted people with her whoring and her charms. I want you to underline the word prostitute here because it’s significant to the next verse.
The Lord goes on to say that he is against Assyria and will lift her skirts over her face to reveal her nakedness. Now this seems rather hideous of a punishment, but I want you to remember what God has been doing. He has been repaying Nineveh in kind. So underline the word nakedness and point it back to the word prostitute earlier. Nineveh has been shaming other people sexually and now they are sinned against in the same way they have sinned.
Is there any comfort for them? Comfort again sounds very much like the name Nahum which means comfort. No, they received no comfort.
I mentioned that this chapter could describe the way that God treats all wicked nations and let me show you why. If you have your Bible, turn to Revelation 17. In Revelation 17 the city of Babylon is representative of all the evil nations of the world. And she is referred to as a prostitute. Look at verses 1-2
READ REV 17:1-2. Then it describes the beast she is riding on, but the beast will turn on her. Look at verses 15-18.
READ REV 17:15-18.
Both Assyria and Babylon are referred to as prostitutes. In the same way that Assyria’s nakedness is exposed and she is destroyed, so will Babylon’s nakedness be exposed and destroyed. Chapter 18 then consists of the other nations lamenting the loss of Babylon, but jump to chapter 19 and look at verses 1-2.
READ REV 19:1-2
The God who always avenges avenges his people by destroying Babylon. That’s exactly what we read God is doing by destroying Assyria. He is avenging his people. All wicked nations will suffer the same fate.
3:8-13
Here he mentions Thebes, an Egyptian city that had recently been destroyed. He says they were big and powerful and went down and so will you. It was Assyria actually who had destroyed the city of Thebes. Again, they destroyed others, now they will be destroyed too.
3:14-19
I don’t have much to add here at the conclusion, other than that there seems to be some mockery going on here towards Assyria. He compares their people and their princes to locusts. When the big fire starts, locusts will do one of two things. Either they stay and are devoured by the fire or they fly away and no one has any clue where they are. That’s what the rulers of Assyria are like. They should have been watchful shepherds, but they were asleep.
Lastly, no one is even disappointed at Assyria’s destruction. No one liked them. Everyone is glad that they are gone.
So let’s take a minute here to step back and think about what we’ve read and consider, what is the point of all of this? It’s important to remember that the author of the book, Nahum, his name means comfort. This text should give comfort. As I mentioned earlier, it’s not comfort to the wicked people being destroyed, but it is comfort to the people of God who are being afflicted. And here is why the message is so comforting, because it tells us that God is not only sovereign over the wicked people being destroyed, but he is also sovereign over the wicked people doing the destroying. He isn’t just in charge of the righteous army who fight against the evil army, but it describes to us how God is in charge of all of the armies. Nothing is not under his command. We often have this mindset as if God is the commander of the good guys and Satan is the commander of the bad guys. And the two are doing battle with one another, but God has a bigger stronger army so he wins in the end. That is not the case. That gives Satan too much credit. God is in control of all of the armies. He moves everybody precisely where he wants them and uses them precisely how he means to.
Where do we see this? Do you remember that verse from chapter 1 I quoted a moment ago? In 1:12, God speaking to his own people, the nation of Israel, he says to them, “Though I have afflicted you, I will afflict you no more.” God clearly claims that he was the one in heaven afflicting them. But who was he using on earth to do it? He was using Nineveh and the Assyrians. So God was using the bad guy army to accomplish his purposes. He moved them up to the gates of Samaria and had them destroy the northern kingdom. Then he moved them down to Jerusalem and had an angel destroy their army. Now he is moving the army of Babylon, who we will very soon discover is also a super bad and evil army, he’s moving them to the gate of Nineveh to destroy Nineveh.
So if God is moving sinful armies around and is putting them right where he wants them to be and those armies are doing terrible wicked things to the people they attack and those armies even have terrible wicked motives and hearts as they attack, is God responsible for wickedness? Is he the cause of evil? No. He is not. And this is one of those confusing things that the Bible tells us is true and we simply struggle to figure out how it is true.
You’ll see I added a few verses onto your sheet after Nahum chapter 3. These verses are concerning an episode in David’s life when he did something sinful. One of the things God commanded David not to do was to number the people of Israel so that he could have a specific count for the size of his army. The reason God doesn’t want David to do this is because he doesn’t want David to trust in the size of his army, but rather to trust in God. But what do we see happens in 2 Samuel 24:1?
READ
God places it in David’s heart to go and do this thing that David is not supposed to do. But if we read the same exact story in the book of 1 Chronicles it says this instead in 21:1
READ
Now the Bible tells us that Satan incited David to count Israel. So who was it? God or Satan? The answer is that God incited David through the temptation of Satan. Satan was the means. God is in charge of Satan and can direct him to do anything he wishes. So where does the blame lie? Should we blame God or Satan for David’s actions? Look at what David says about it 2 Samuel 24:10
READ
David says that he himself is the one responsible for the sin. He doesn’t blame Satan and he doesn’t blame God. He blames himself for choosing to sin. And I think this is also where we want to land when we think about who is in control of the universe and who is responsible for sin. God clearly is in charge of all things. He is in charge of Satan. He is in charge of David. He is in charge of Assyria. And he is in charge of Babylon. But who is responsible for sin? The responsibility for sin always falls on the humans who willingly make the sinful choices. We cannot blame Satan and we cannot blame God. And because this is true, David was punished by God for his actions. Assyria is punished by God for their actions. Later, Babylon will be punished by God for its actions.
How does all of this make sense? How is it all possible? That’s a much more difficult and complicated conversation that people spend much time debating over. But we want to be consistent with the way the Bible describes things. God is in charge of all things and yet man alone is responsible for his sin.
So in this way, Nahum is a book that offers comfort to its readers. Assyria seems too powerful to be stopped, but God reminds the readers that he is in control of Assyria and that he has always been in control of Assyria. He will always punish all sin. No one gets away with it. Assyria will be no different. There are evil forces like Assyria at work in our world today. They are killing people. They are persecuting Christians. They are creating hateful laws and hateful nations. Yet, God is in complete control of them. They will be used by God to perfectly accomplish his purposes and in every instance in which they sin, God will bring about appropriate and corresponding punishment at the right time. Evil will always lose and evil never goes beyond where God determines. That’s a comforting message.