NAHUM
NAHUM 1:1-6
1 The burden against Nineveh. The book of the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite.
2 God is jealous, and the Lord avenges; the Lord avenges and is furious. The Lord will take vengeance on His adversaries, and He reserves wrath for His enemies;
3 The Lord is slow to anger and great in power, and will not at all acquit the wicked. The Lord has His way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of His feet.
4 He rebukes the sea and makes it dry, and dries up all the rivers. Bashan and Carmel wither, and the flower of Lebanon wilts.
5 The mountains quake before Him, the hills melt, and the earth heaves at His presence, yes, the world and all who dwell in it.
6 Who can stand before His indignation? And who can endure the fierceness of His anger? His fury is poured out like fire, and the rocks are thrown down by Him.
Nineveh was the capital city of the dreaded, brutal Assyrians to the north of Babylon. Ruthless conquerors, they were hated and feared all through Mesopotamia and as far south as Egypt and laid waste to everything everywhere they went. Cruel beyond belief, they seemed to enjoy torturing their captives by impaling them on tall, sharpened wooden stakes while they were still alive and letting the captives’ weight drive the stake through their bodies.
The book of Jonah tells of God ordering the prophet to go to Nineveh and preach that they repent or be overthrown. Jonah refuses as he feels that the Assyrians are long overdue for divine punishment for their barbarity and wickedness. He tries to run away by sea, but is swallowed by a great fish and goes to Nineveh anyway - the hard way.
Three days later the fish vomits Jonah onto shore just outside of Nineveh (probably frightening surf fishermen no end!) and he warns the people to repent or be destroyed. They listen and repent and Jonah learns a strong lesson concerning God’s forgiveness and mercy. (Note: Jesus referred to this story as a real event, not a tale or allegory.)
NAHUM 1:7-13
7 The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; and He knows those who trust in Him.
8 But with an overflowing flood He will make an utter end of its place, and darkness will pursue His enemies.
9 What do you conspire against the Lord? He will make an utter end of it. Affliction will not rise up a second time.
10 For while tangled like thorns, and while drunken like drunkards, they shall be devoured like stubble fully dried.
11 From you comes forth one who plots evil against the Lord, a wicked counselor.
12 Thus says the Lord: “Though they are safe, and likewise many, yet in this manner they will be cut down when He passes through. Though I have afflicted you, I will afflict you no more;
13 For now I will break off his yoke from you, and burst your bonds apart.”
God could be referring in verses 7-11 to a conspiracy between the idolatrous Northern Kingdom of Israel and Syria to conquer king Ahaz of Judah and set up a puppet king there in 732 B.C. They conquered all of idolatrous Judah but could not take Jerusalem.
King Ahaz had appealed to Assyria for help, and Tiglath-Pilezer III of Assyria had swept down, conquered Israel and Syria and made Judah a vassal state, forcing them to pay tribute to Assyria. Ten years later in 722 B.C. Assyrian king Sargon II totally destroyed the idolatrous Northen kingdom of Israel and deported the survivors to lands east of Assyria, as prophesied in Isaiah chapter 8.
Verse 8 is interesting as history seems to indicate that the Tigris river had flooded the area or had been diverted by the Assyrians’ enemies and was directed against the mud-brick walls, melting the bricks and opening the city to attack.
Verses 11 and 12 refer to God’s near-future punishment of Judah at the hands of the Assyrians for their idolatry and wickedness, saying that Judah would be afflicted in measure, but not destroyed.
NAHUM 1:14-15
14 The Lord has given a command concerning you: “Your name shall be perpetuated no longer. Out of the house of your gods, I will cut off the carved image and the molded image.
I will dig your grave, for you are vile.”
15 Behold, on the mountains the feet of him who brings good tidings, who proclaims peace! O Judah, keep your appointed feasts, perform your vows. For the wicked one shall no more pass through you; he is utterly cut off.
Apparently the warning of Jonah didn’t last very long, Assyria had gone back to their wicked ways and God would use them to punish the nations of the Middle East;
ISAIAH 10:5-11
5 “Woe to Assyria, the rod of My anger and the staff in whose hand is My indignation.
6 I will send him against an ungodly nation, and against the people of My wrath. I will give him charge, to seize the spoil, to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.
7 Yet he does not mean so, nor does his heart think so; but it is in his heart to destroy, and cut off not a few nations.
8 For he says, ‘Are not my princes altogether kings?
9 Is not Calno like Carchemish? Is not Hamath like Arpad? Is not Samaria like Damascus?
10 As my hand has found the kingdoms of the idols, whose carved images excelled those of Jerusalem and Samaria,
11 As I have done to Samaria and her idols, shall I not do also to Jerusalem and her idols?’ ”
God several times brought brutal conquerors against Judah to punish them. In this case He would use Assyria and later He would use the Babylonians and Romans as the iron rod of His punishment. But with Assyria, as later with Babylon and Rome, He would later destroy the invading nations.
Sennacherib had already destroyed the idolatrous Northern Kingdom of Israel and thought to expand his empire and make a name for himself. Yet God was going to use him to punish Judah for its idolatry as well.
ISAIAH 8:5-8
5 The Lord also spoke to me again, saying:
6 “Inasmuch as these people refused the waters of Shiloah that flow softly, and rejoice in Rezin and in Remaliah’s son;
7 Now therefore, behold, the Lord brings up over them the waters of the River, strong and mighty— the king of Assyria and all his glory; he will go up over all his channels and go over all his banks.
8 He will pass through Judah, he will overflow and pass over, he will reach up to the neck;
and the stretching out of his wings will fill the breadth of Your land, O Immanuel.
During the time of king Hezekiah of Judah, the Northern Kingdom of Israel had conspired with the Syrians to conquer Judah and set up a puppet government. God had told the prophet Isaiah that seeing as the northern kingdom Israel wasn’t satisfied with their territory but had conspired with Rezin, king of Damascus to conquer Judah, God would bring the king of Assyria upon them and warned Judah that he would invade them also.
Verse 8 warns that Jerusalem would be besieged, (“up to the neck”) but not conquered. The reference to wings is because the symbol of the Assyrians was a winged bull, the wings signifying speed and the bull signifying enormous strength. History shows that the king of Assyria, Sennacherib, conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel in 721 B.C. and deported the Jews to Media, Parthia and Elam.
In 701 B.C. he besieged Jerusalem after destroying the rest of the fortified cities of Judah (his account lists 46 cities and over 200,000 prisoners) he was unable to take it, according to God’s promise to Judean king Hezekiah;
2 KINGS 19:32-34
32 “Therefore thus says the Lord concerning the king of Assyria: ‘He shall not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come before it with shield, nor build a siege mound against it.
33 By the way that he came, by the same shall he return; and he shall not come into this city,’ says the Lord.
34 ‘For I will defend this city, to save it for My own sake and for My servant David’s sake.’ ”
On the “prism of Sennachrib”, a 6-sided clay pillar covered with cunieform writing that records his exploits, Sennacherib lists the cities he conquered and brags that he has king Hezekiah of Judah “trapped in Jerusalem like a bird in a cage”. Yet the prism says nothing about conquering Jerusalem and history shows he never did.
Why? The book of 2 Kings, chapter 19 describes that the Lord killed 185,000 Assyrian troops overnight and that Sennacherib retreated back to Nineveh. Naturally you wouldn’t see THAT on the prism, but the fact that he never conquered Jerusalem agrees with the Scriptures.
NAHUM 2:1-5
1 He who scatters has come up before your face. Man the fort! Watch the road! Strengthen your flanks! Fortify your power mightily.
2 For the Lord will restore the excellence of Jacob like the excellence of Israel, for the emptiers have emptied them out and ruined their vine branches.
3 The shields of his mighty men are made red, the valiant men are in scarlet. The chariots come with flaming torches in the day of his preparation, and the spears are brandished.
4 The chariots rage in the streets, they jostle one another in the broad roads; they seem like torches, they run like lightning.
5 He remembers his nobles; they stumble in their walk; they make haste to her walls, and the defense is prepared.
In 612 B.C. Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar’s father Nabopolassar along with a coalition of Persians, Medes, Scythians and Cimmerians attacked Nineveh, determined to be rid of Assyrian cruelty once and for all.
NAHUM 2:6-10
6 The gates of the rivers are opened, and the palace is dissolved.
7 It is decreed: she shall be led away captive, she shall be brought up; and her maidservants shall lead her as with the voice of doves, beating their breasts.
8 Though Nineveh of old was like a pool of water, now they flee away. “Halt! Halt!” they cry; but no one turns back.
9 Take spoil of silver! Take spoil of gold! There is no end of treasure, or wealth of every desirable prize.
10 She is empty, desolate, and waste! The heart melts, and the knees shake; much pain is in every side, and all their faces are drained of color.
Note that verse 6 speaks of the Tigris River being diverted, washing away the dried mud-brick of the walls and buildings. The Babylonians should have paid attention to this, as the Medes and Persians would later divert the Euphrates River allowing them to march under the walls of Babylon and destroy the city from inside.
Nineveh was an ancient city, a regional super-power, full of treasures plundered from the Middle East as far south as Egypt. Thousands of cuneiform tablets have been found in the ruins detailing trade and commerce transactions. (Cuneiform was an ancient form of writing, where the ends of reeds were pressed into wet clay and the tablets were dried in the sun. Cuneiform was standardized so that people of different languages and dialects could understand each other.)
Oddly enough, ancient cities were usually burned by conquerors which is helpful to archaeologists as the heat from the fires turned the clay tablets into the consistency of stone, preserving the cuneiform writing for thousands of years. The city walls usually burned quite hot as the mud-brick was stiffened by mixing the mud with straw and wooden timbers and beams were used as frames and bracing.
NAHUM 2:11-13
11 Where is the dwelling of the lions, and the feeding place of the young lions, where the lion walked, the lioness and lion’s cub, and no one made them afraid?
12 The lion tore in pieces enough for his cubs, killed for his lionesses, filled his caves with prey, and his dens with flesh.
13 “Behold, I am against you,” says the Lord of hosts, “I will burn your chariots in smoke, and the sword shall devour your young lions; I will cut off your prey from the earth, and the voice of your messengers shall be heard no more.”
God asks a rhetorical question, in which He wants to know what has become of the feared Assyrian soldiers who were once so mighty? He prophesies of the complete destruction of the Assyrian military in punishment for their monumental sins.
NAHUM 3:1-4
1 Woe to the bloody city! It is all full of lies and robbery. Its victim never departs.
2 The noise of a whip and the noise of rattling wheels, of galloping horses, of clattering chariots!
3 Horsemen charge with bright sword and glittering spear. There is a multitude of slain, a great number of bodies, countless corpses— They stumble over the corpses—
4 Because of the multitude of harlotries of the seductive harlot, the mistress of sorceries, who sells nations through her harlotries, and families through her sorceries.
In verse 1 God condemns Nineveh for not letting prisoners from captured nations go free, which would include the remnants of the 10 tribes of the destroyed Northern Kingdom of Israel who had been scattered among the Parthians, Elamites and Persians, east of Nineveh.
God describes the rampaging of enemy chariots through the streets of the city, and that the Assyrian dead will be so great that the attackers will trip over the bodies in the streets. And He condemns the practice of selling conquered lands to vassal kings - the “Sennacherib prism” speaks of Sennacherib selling conquered cities of Judah to the Philistine rulers of Gaza, Ekron and Ashdod.
NAHUM 3:5-11
5 “Behold, I am against you,” says the Lord of hosts, “I will lift your skirts over your face, I will show the nations your nakedness, and the kingdoms your shame.
6 I will cast abominable filth upon you, make you vile, and make you a spectacle.
7 It shall come to pass that all who look upon you will flee from you, and say, ‘Nineveh is laid waste! Who will bemoan her?’ where shall I seek comforters for you?”
8 Are you better than No Amon that was situated by the River, that had the waters around her, whose rampart was the sea, whose wall was the sea?
9 Ethiopia and Egypt were her strength, and it was boundless. Put and Lubim were your helpers.
10 Yet she was carried away, she went into captivity; her young children also were dashed to pieces at the head of every street; they cast lots for her honorable men, and all her great men were bound in chains.
11 You also will be drunk; you will be hidden; you also will seek refuge from the enemy.
There would be few who bemoaned the fall of Nineveh, as the Assyrians were universally loathed and hated throughout the Middle East for their cruelty to captured nations and people.
God mockingly compares No Amon (Thebes, Egypt) to Nineveh in power, the irony being that Assyrian king Ashurbanipal had conquered the city of Thebes 50 years earlier in 663 B.C. despite the Egyptians being helped by Ethiopia, Libya and surrounding areas. And now Nineveh was about to become like conquered and plundered Thebes.
When he conquered Thebes, victorious Assyrian king Ashurbanipal proudly related;
"This city, the whole of it, I conquered it with the help of Ashur and Ishtar. Silver, gold, precious stones, all the wealth of the palace, rich cloth, precious linen, great horses, supervising men and women, two obelisks of splendid electrum, weighing 2,500 talents, the doors of temples I tore from their bases and carried them off to Assyria. With this weighty booty I left Thebes. Against Egypt and Kush I have lifted my spear and shown my power. With full hands I have returned to Nineveh, in good health."
(Note: Electrum was an alloy of gold and silver, the weight of the described obelisks was about 150,000 pounds.)
Part of Assyrian cruelty would be to take small children while conquering a city, and swing them by their feet, smashing their heads against corners of buildings and walls as a weapon of terror.
NAHUM 3:12-17
12 All your strongholds are fig trees with ripened figs: if they are shaken, they fall into the mouth of the eater.
13 Surely, your people in your midst are women! The gates of your land are wide open for your enemies; fire shall devour the bars of your gates.
14 Draw your water for the siege! Fortify your strongholds! Go into the clay and tread the mortar! Make strong the brick kiln!
15 There the fire will devour you, the sword will cut you off; it will eat you up like a locust. Make yourself many—like the locust! Make yourself many—like the swarming locusts!
16 You have multiplied your merchants more than the stars of heaven. The locust plunders and flies away.
17 Your commanders are like swarming locusts, and your generals like great grasshoppers, which camp in the hedges on a cold day; when the sun rises they flee away, and the place where they are is not known.
God compares Nineveh to a ripe fig tree, ready to be harvested. Fear has plagued the Ninevites and history shows that the city was burned when it was destroyed.
When besieging a city the enemy immediately sought to cut off all water sources so as to shorten the siege time by depriving the city of drinking water. Water was also used in brick-making for walls and fortifications. Clay (mortar), water and straw were mixed in great beds and slaves would stomp through the mixture to break up the straw stalks and thoroughly mix the clay with the straw. The mixture would then be pressed into molds and dried, either in a kiln or in the sun.
During the time of King Hezekiah of Judah, Assyrian king Sennacherib was besieging Jerusalem as discussed earlier. There was a spring located just within the walls of the city, but Hezekiah wanted to be certain that the besiegers wouldn’t capture it, so Israeli engineers carved a tunnel 583 yards (533 meters) through solid limestone to bring water from the spring directly into the city.
What is so fascinating is that the workers started on opposite sides of the proposed tunnel and met in the middle. What is even more fascinating is that there is only a 12-inch (30 cm) elevation difference between the ends!! Engineers still aren’t sure how such accuracy could have happened, seeing as the workers would have been tunneling blindly toward each other.
NAHUM 3:18-19
18 Your shepherds slumber, O king of Assyria; your nobles rest in the dust. Your people are scattered on the mountains, and no one gathers them.
19 Your injury has no healing, your wound is severe. All who hear news of you will clap their hands over you, for upon whom has not your wickedness passed continually?
Like many strong city-states, Assyria had become arrogant and lax, confident in their superiority and had become weakened by internal politics.
God says that the surrounding nations will applaud Nineveh’s downfall, gleeful that the scourge of the Middle East has been removed.
God had prophesied through Ezekiel concerning Assyria, comparing it to a mighty tree. He also spoke of where its people went when it was destroyed as well as the fate of those who supported it when He said;
EZEKIEL 31:3; 15-17
3 Behold, the Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon with fair branches, and with a shadowing shroud, and of a high stature; and his top was among the thick boughs.
15 “Thus says the Lord God: ‘In the day when it went down to Hell, I caused mourning. I covered the deep because of it. I restrained its rivers, and the great waters were held back. I caused Lebanon to mourn for it, and all the trees of the field wilted because of it.
16 I made the nations shake at the sound of its fall, when I cast it down to Hell together with those who descend into the Pit; and all the trees of Eden, the choice and best of Lebanon, all that drink water, were comforted in the depths of the earth.
17 They also went down to Hell with it, with those slain by the sword; and those who were its strong arm dwelt in its shadows among the nations.
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