Nahum 1

Improbable as it seemed to earthly reason in the height of Assyria’s prosperity, that the great empire should within half a century crumble to pieces, and that the splendid capital with its titanic military strength and its vast commerce, standing as it did on the great highway between east and west, should be not merely deprived of its supremacy, but captured and destroyed and obliterated by fire and water and time, till the very place of it was forgotten, this has in the complete fulness of its terror come true, and may be read not only in the pages of history, but still more graphically in the calcined, weather-worn relics of Nineveh’s long-vanished greatness, that have been laid bare in the recently discovered and partially disinterred ruins of the ancient Assyrian capital. Elmslie.

Chap. 1. After the briefest possible introduction, the prophet breaks into the midst of his theme, his starting-point being most fitly those great qualities of the Divine character which both the recent events of history and the burden of his prophecy conspire to illustrate—especially His retributive vengeance upon His enemies, coupled with His merciful protection and deliverance of His people. Hence we have mainly God’s judgments on His foes (verses 2-6); God a refuge for His people (verse 7); the overthrow of Sennacherib’s army before Jerusalem (verses 8-14); and the ensuing peace and joy (verse 15).

1. A “burden” in prophecy, here as elsewhere, is a message of calamity, predicting judgment and desolation. H. C.—It is a vision of that which, as a mere man, he could not see. He speaks of that which had been shown to him by the Lord. He describes that which had been revealed to him. B. C.

2. It should be borne in mind that these attributes of Jehovah are suggested by His retributive justice on Assyria, first, in destroying her great army when it came proudly and defiantly to lay waste the holy city; and next, in the future desolations of Nineveh, their great and proud capital. These historic facts may serve as illustrations of the sense in which He “taketh vengeance.”

3. The first clause continues the glowing description of Jehovah’s attributes, most of the expressions being taken from the classic passage (Ex. 34 : 6, 7) where the Lord proclaimed His name to Moses as one slow to anger, yet who will not at all acquit the guilty. The last clause opens one of the grandest portrayings of the majesty of Jehovah ever drawn by human pen: “Jehovah—His way is in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust about His feet.” Across the deserts of the East a moving caravan is seen farthest by the dust they raise. So the clouds are the dust, marking the pathway of His glorious presence. H. C.

Against His own people, who repent and humble themselves before Him, He keeps not His anger forever, but against His enemies He will forever let out His anger. He will not at all acquit the wicked that sin, and stand to it, and do not repent. Those wickedly depart from their God that depart and never return, and these He will not acquit. Humble supplicants will find Him gracious, but scornful beggars will not find Him easy, or that the door of mercy will be opened to a loud but late “Lord, Lord.” H.

Yes, we will magnify the grace of our God; we will preach its largeness and fulness; we will repeat the angel songs of Bethlehem; we will tell of Christ lifted up to draw all men unto Him; we will rehearse His world-wide promises of forgiveness; we will point to Him in the attitude of stretching out His arms to welcome the weary and heavily laden; we will take the word which last fell from His lips, and Spirit and Bride will herald it everywhere: “Come, whosoever will.” This we will do, in solemn faith that there is no number or aggravation of sins which outreach His power to save, if they are repented of and forsaken. But if there are any who, under Sabbath skies, and angel voices, and Gospel songs, and pleadings of mercy, and welcomings of love, and promises of help, and visions of heaven, will not repent, and will not believe—presuming, neglecting, trifling, delaying—then must we warn them that, according to the unrepealed and steadfast ordinance of retribution, the time will come—and it shall be when their need is greatest, even when they are made to look down into the grave and the terrific mysteries which lie beyond—when they shall be so beset and depressed by the very difficulties of former habit, that the very hardest thing to be conceived of is for those to pray who never prayed before—for those to repent who never repented before; so that the mistaken man who counted on repenting in the sudden emergency of fear, and necessity, and death, discovers when too late that all his life long he has been treasuring up wrath against himself—hardening his heart, so that, though he smites upon it, the rock will yield no tenderness. W. Adams.

Can we actually bring together or hold in union any such incongruous ideas as those of a system of law and retribution, on the one hand, and the practice of universal pardon, dealt out to offenders by the ultimate and Supreme Power? If all are punished, and punished equitably, none indeed can complain; and no confusion is brought in. But if all are pardoned, and pardoned as a mere act of clemency, the very substance of government is made nugatory. If pardon is the rule, punishment the exception, then law is blamed, or administration proved imbecile. In good and firm governments punishment will be the rule, and pardon the exception; and yet even this exceptive pardon sullies the brilliancy of power and wisdom, unless clearly it is seen to spring from some law higher or more comprehensive than the law which has been violated. I. Taylor.

6. With the terrible agencies of the volcano and the earthquake still in mind, the prophet fitly asks: “Who can stand before Jehovah’s indignation?” “Who can rise up against His burning wrath?” “Rise up,” and not “abide,” is the sense of the Hebrew. His fury is poured forth like rivers of lava from the craters of Vesuvius. How, then, can the wicked endure before Him when once He ariseth in His wrath? H. C.

7. In the midst of this description of the terrible majesty of God, here is an assurance of His goodness to His people. He is a stronghold to them (cf. Prov. 18: 10). He knoweth, in the fulness of meaning that the word bears in Scripture, them that trust, literally, take shelter, or refuge, in Him (cf. Ps. 2: 12). Knoweth and trust are participles in Hebrew, and so express what is habitual and permanent. The day of trouble is the time when Nineveh invaded or oppressed Judah. B. C.

The Lord is good to those that are good, and to them He will be a stronghold in the day of trouble. The same almighty power that is exexerted for the terror and destruction of the wicked is engaged and shall be employed for the protection and satisfaction of His own people; He is able both to save and to destroy. In the day of public trouble, when God’s judgments are in the earth, laying all waste, He will be a place of defence to those that by faith put themselves under His protection, those that trust in Him in the way of their duty, that live a life of dependence upon Him and devotedness to Him; He knows them, He owns them for His, He takes cognizance of their case, knows what is best for them, and what course to take most effectually for their relief. They are perhaps obscure and little regarded in the world, but the Lord knows them. H.

8. There is a sudden transition from verse 7, where God is a refuge to His people, to verse 8, where He is a sweeping flood, overwhelming Nineveh and obliterating even its ancient foundations. The ideas, however, are kindred, for God is such a refuge to His people because He is such a power of destruction upon her enemies. By a fit and most palpable retribution, armies, vast and desolating, shall yet come down on Nineveh, and shall make an utter end of even the site where she stood so long in her glory. The darkness of oblivion shall chase down these enemies of God, and they shall sink from the knowledge of coming generations. H. C.

9. Nineveh’s place should know her no more. The populous imperial city should become a perpetual desolation, according to the vivid prediction of another prophet (Zeph. 2: 13, 14, 15). There should be an utter end. This is represented by one word in Hebrew. The same is often rendered in Jeremiah, a full end. Its meaning is complete destruction. B. C.

“Jehovah will make an utter end.” In sharp contrast with God’s covenant people, the great empire of Nineveh was to perish forever. Of Judah God says, “I will not make a full end” (Jer. 4: 27); and so the Jew exists even to this day, though scattered over the whole earth. But the kingdom of Assyria perished almost suddenly, after having held the sovereignty of Upper Asia for more than five hundred years. Its soldiers were disciplined warriors at a time when the Medes fought in a confused mass, horse and foot, spearmen and archers all mingled in one disorderly crowd; for such, Herodotus tells us, was the Asiatic and Median mode of fighting till Cyaxares, the conqueror of Nineveh, first separated into divisions and ranks these motley hordes. Now Phraortes, the father of Cyaxares, had lost life and empire in battle with the Assyrians, and yet in the very height of their power they fell so utterly that from the day of its capture Nineveh entirely passed away. In one day it changed from being empress of the world to absolute powerlessness. R. P. S.

10. These thorns, especially that kind called bellan, which covers the whole country, and is that which is thus burned (i.e., to clear the ground), are so folded together as to be utterly inseparable, and being united by thousands of small intertwining branches, when the torch is applied they flash and flame instantly like stubble fully dry. Thomson.

For though your armies move in phalanx, closely interlaced as thorns in their wild growth, and though they reel under their intoxication, they shall be devoured as stubble burns when perfectly dry. That they are said to be drunken as with wine, and hence to reel in their intoxication, may allude to a striking fact in God’s agency over nations doomed to judgment, and also to a very striking figure to represent this fact—the fact being that God gives such nations over to infatuation; and the figure to express it being this (as appears in Jer. 25: 15-29). God sends round to the nations the wine-cup of His fury, and they drink till they are “moved” and “mad.” Hence they are easily destroyed. They more than half destroy themselves. H. C.

11. There is one come out of thee that imagines evil against the Lord—Sennacherib, and his spokesman, Rabshakeh; they framed an evil letter and an evil speech, not only against Hezekiah and his people, but against God Himself; reflecting upon Him as level with the gods of the heathen and unable to protect His worshippers, dissuading His people from putting confidence in Him, and urging them rather to put themselves under the protection of the great king, the king of Assyria. This one, this mighty one, so he thinks himself, that comes out of Nineveh, imagining evil against the Lord, brings upon Nineveh this burden; never was the glorious majesty of heaven and earth more daringly, more blasphemously affronted, than by Sennacherib at that time; he was a wicked counsellor, who counselled them to despair of God’s protection and surrender themselves to the king of Assyria, and endeavored to put them out of conceit with Hezekiah’s reformation. H.

12. The Lord sees this heathen king deliberately plotting the destruction of Judah, and therefore declares His purpose to destroy him and his army. Though they are fully equipped, and withal so very many, yet shall they be cut down (as the figure in verse 10 had expressed it) when He, the destroying angel, shall pass through their camp. H. C.

13. The prophet, addressing Judah, says: “Though I have afflicted thee, I will afflict thee no more. For now will I break his yoke from off thee, and will burst thy bonds in sunder.” And the affliction spoken of seems to be again alluded to shortly afterward (2: 2) in the figurative language, “the emptiers have emptied them out, and marred their vine branches.” Such an affliction is that recorded in the Book of Kings and in the prophet Isaiah, when Sennacherib came up against all the fenced cities of Judah, and took them, and Hezekiah gave him thirty talents of gold, and three hundred talents of silver, stripping the house of the Lord to meet the demand (2 K. 18: 15, 16). This was the yoke that Judah had felt. And Sennacherib in his second invasion threatened to make it still heavier by exacting more tribute, and transporting the people to his own land. Then it was that Isaiah was inspired to foretell the frustration of his plans, the overthrow of his army, his own retreat and tragical death (37: 7, 29). It is at least consistent with what Nahum has written, that he too was raised up at this crisis in his country’s history, to be what his name signifies, a comforter, to console his countrymen in the hour when they seemed within the grasp of a merciless enemy, with the assurance that Jehovah would protect and save them. “The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; and He knoweth them that trust in Him” (1: 7). B. C.

14. His name, in the sense of fame, reputation, should be diffused abroad—sown broadcast, no more. He should die in dishonor as a vile man, and his name go down to posterity only in disgrace. In this sense of the prophecy, its fulfilment presents no difficulty.

15. War telegrams were borne in those days by swift runners (see 2 Sam. 18: 19 ff.). When they brought tidings of victory and peace, their approach might well be hailed with joy. So now of these messengers with tidings of the utter ruin that befell Assyria’s proud hosts in that one fatal night. The prophet’s graphic touch of this scene is masterly. He gives no long and tedious details; his mind flashes over and past them all, to light on one or two most significant and expressive results. “Go, Judah, now, and keep thy solemn feasts: perform thy vows made in the hour of thy peril: this Belial shall pass through thy land no more: he is utterly cut off!” H. C.

These words are quoted by the apostle, both from Isaiah and Nahum, and applied to the great redemption wrought out for us by our Lord Jesus, and the publishing of it to the world by the everlasting Gospel (Rom. 10 : 15). Christ’s ministers are those messengers of good tidings that preach peace by Jesus Christ ; how beautiful are the feet of those messengers ! How welcome their message to those that see their misery and danger by reason of sin ! And observe, He that brings these good tidings brings with them a call to Judah to keep her solemn feasts, and perform her vows. H.