Nahum 3

CHAPTER 3THEME: Avenging action of God justifiedIn chapter 3 Nahum gives the cause for and justifies God’s destruction of the city of Nineveh. Nineveh’s destruction is an example of the fact that “…whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Gal_6:7). This is also true of a nation. You will find that in many ways God deals with individuals and nations in a very similar manner. Many literary critics have found in this third chapter one of the most vivid descriptions of the destruction of a city that is imaginable. You will not find anything in any language more descriptive than this.

Nahum 3:1

We are given here a picture of the internal condition of the city of Nineveh. “Woe to the bloody city!” Nineveh, as the capital of Assyria, was known in the ancient world to be very brutal, very bloody. They were feared and dreaded by other nations. The army of the Assyrians, although it actually moved rather slowly, was just like a hurricane which devours everything in its pathway. As I mentioned before, at times an entire community would commit suicide rather than suffer the brutal attack of Assyria. “It is all full of lies.” Assyria was a nation which could never be depended upon. She was not faithful to fulfill the promises which she made to other nations to help them and protect them. What better description could you have even of our own country right now? I feel that we are given very few facts but a great deal of propaganda today. This is true not only of Washington, D.C., and the news media but of all areas of our society. This is true of our government regardless of which party the information comes from. My opinion of our two-party system is that what we have is Tweedledum and Tweedledeeyou can pick either one of them. At one point in my life I thought I needed to change from one party to the other, and I did change. But now I need another change, not back to where I came from but to be free of this whole thing in which I am fed nothing in the world but propaganda and never given the truth. The one thing that is needed today is the truth. One of the reasons God judged the city of Nineveh was that it was “all full of lies and robbery.” These things characterized the life of the city. Likewise, our homes today are not safe. I was recently in the home of friends in Louisville, Kentucky. They are lovely folk, and they have a very lovely southern home in which they have some beautiful antiques. Do you know that they have had to put bars on their windows and double and triple locks on their doors! Where do you think we live today?

We say that we live in a nation of law and orderbut it hasn’t been that. What an apt description this verse is of the United States! When I first began to study this, I felt like asking Nahum, “Are you talking about us? You’re giving a vivid description of Nineveh, but it is also a picture of my own nation.” The Books of Jonah and Nahum reveal that God deals with gentile nations and that He did so back in the days of the Old Testament. They also show that the government of God moves in the governments of men. God today will overrule the sin of man. He will overrule a nation. As you come down through history, you see great civilizations, one after another, crumbling in the dust and the debris of the ages. Why? Because God judged them, friendthat is the reason why. The United States is no pet of God. We’re not something special. We think we are. We can boast of the fact that right now we are the strongest nation in the world, but even that might be questionable today. We live in a security that may be a false security, because God brings great nations down, and He makes that very clear here.

Nahum 3:2

Nahum gives a graphic description of these chariots. They are like armored tanksthey were the tanks of the ancient world. As they came inside the city, you could hear the noise of the whip as the driver whipped up his horse. You could hear the rattling of the wheels and the noise “of the prancing horses, and of the jumping [bounding] chariots.” The chariots were leaping over everything, especially dead bodies. The first two verses of this chapter describe the internal condition of Ninevah. Lies and robbery marked the culture and the climate of the city. This is the reason they acted as they did on the outside toward their enemiestheir brutality, their total unconcern for other nations, their lording it over others. The very cause for their methods is that internally they were wrong. You see, man does not become a sinner because he sins. He sins because he is a sinner.

Fundamentally, on the inside, man is a sinner, and that accounts for his actions. I am sure that many people in that day said of the Assyrians, “These people are uncivilized!” Inside the city, it was full of lies and robbery. That which did not characterize our nation years ago (there was a great deal of it, but it wasn’t the predominant thing)lies and robberyjust happens to characterize the internal condition of our nation today. Why? Because we are highly civilized? No.

It is because we are sinners. My friend, we are sinners.

Nahum 3:3

The number of the dead was unbelievable. I tell you, if a well-placed bomb were dropped somewhere in this country, we would probably see the same sort of thing. There are nations who may pretend to be friendly but who would not hesitate for five seconds to drop that bomb on this country if they thought they could get by with it. And I’m beginning to think that they believe they can get by with it. We have in verses Nah_3:3-4 that which characterized the external conditions of Nineveh. They had been a brutal and cruel enemy, and they were now reaping what they had sown.

Nahum 3:4

“Because of the multitude of the whoredoms of the wellfavoured harlot.” The city of Nineveh is here likened unto a harlot. She was the one whom all the nations played up to. Note the shame of this city. God likens her to a harlot, a “wellfavoured harlot,” suggesting that all the world courted her. “The mistress of witchcrafts, that selleth nations through her whoredoms, and families through her witchcrafts.” Witchcraft is mentioned twice here. This is a reference to the occult. Don’t for one moment think that the idolatry of the ancient world was meaningless. The apostle Paul called an idol “…nothing in the world …” (1Co_8:4), but back of the idol is Satan, and back of idolatry is that which is satanic. I do not need to labor this point today. If you are not acquainted with what is happening today in the world of the occult, then you have not been to Southern California.

It is not happening just among a bunch of down-and-outers or a bunch of criminals or in the underworld. The occult is active on our college campuses today and in the best sections of our cities. People are given over to witchcraft today. It is amazing how many people will buy their horoscope, which they will then follow. Many folk carry amulets, good luck pieces, charms, little dolls, and all that sort of thing. This is growing by leaps and bounds in a materialistic age and culture, which thought it had graduated from such things, but now we find there has been a return to it.

This is exactly what the great city of Nineveh had turned to, and God says that He is justified in judging the city because of its harlotry and witchcraft. The Book of Revelation tells us that when we come to the end of this age, the organized church will become a harlot, engaging in this type of thing. I am of the opinion that we can see a movement in that direction even now. All of this is very dangerous today. I know a very fine Pentecostal preacher who preaches the Word of God and believes in speaking in tongues and in healing. He expressed to me that there is a real danger in the tongues movement. He said, “Not only does our group speak in tongues, there are those today in the occult who are also doing it.

In my own church, we are being very careful about this sort of thing.” This man is a spiritually enlightened man, and he is rather reluctant to engage in “tongues” speaking. I would put up a warning to you today, friend: just because a thing seems to have a mark of the supernatural on it does not mean it is scriptural. You had better examine it very carefully to see whether it is scriptural. If it is supernatural and not scriptural, it is not of God. And there is only one other fellow who is in the business of the supernatural other than God, and that is Satan. Satan will ape God and imitate Him in every way that he possibly can. God is giving to us the reason He judged Nineveh. He is justifying His actions in destroying this city. Now He makes this very remarkable statement

Nahum 3:5

“Behold, I am against thee, saith the LORD of hosts.” This is the second time that God says this to Nineveh. He also says this to Gog and Magog in Ezekiel 38-39. We believe that definitely refers to Russia. When I graduated from seminary, I would not accept that Ezekiel 38-39 referred to Russia. So I decided to make a study of it on my own, and I now have several reasons why I am confident that it is Russia which is mentioned there. Russia is a nation which wasn’t even in existence in Ezekiel’s day, but God said to them, “I am against you.” Well, we now know why He said thatthey are an atheistic nation. Assyria was a nation to whom God said, “I am against you,” not because they were atheistic but because they were polytheistic. Assyria was given over to idolatryback of the idol was the occult, back of the idol was witchcraft. Witchcraft has become a reality to many today. Men are finding that there is a reality to it. And it is those in the upper echelon who are making this discovery. I have been told on rather good authority, from those who are in our capital of Washington, that it is amazing and alarming to see the number of people there who appeal to fortune-tellers and to horoscopes in an attempt to interpret the future. Men want to know the future. But God said to Nineveh, a city greatly involved in the occult, “I am against thee.” “I will discover thy skirts upon thy face.” In other words, “I am going to uncover thy skirts from thy face.” We live in a day of a great deal of nudity. With their tongues in their cheeks, men try to call it art to present that which is salacious and sinful and suggestive. There is a great display of the nude by both men and women today. The Assyrian civilization had sunk pretty low but not as low as we have. They did not display the human bodythey were not given over to that. It was a disgrace for a woman to be displayed nude.

God speaks here of the shame that He is going to bring upon Nineveh. He says, “I will uncover thy skirts from thy face. I am going to pull your skirts up over your face. You have been a harlot, and I’m going to reveal you and all of the lurid details.” Believe me, that was a real disgrace for them. “I will shew the nations thy nakedness, and the kingdoms thy shame.” That is what God said He would do to this nation. Assyria went down, my friend. A great nation, a great civilization, with all its riches and power, went down into the dust never to rise again. God said that is what He would do to them.

Nahum 3:6

God says to Ninevah through Nahum, “I am going to bring you down. I’m opposed to you. I will expose you to the world for what you are.” The excavations which have brought to light this great civilization reveal that all of this is quite accurate. And the Book of Nahum just happens to be a vivid prophecy which was given long before this actually took place. This is something quite amazing, is it not? All of this description which is given here is something I do not want to pass over lightly because it has such a tremendous application for us today and is such an apt picture of the present day. The Book of Nahum reveals God’s method in dealing with the nations of the world. I do not think He has changed His method, and if He hasn’t, we are in trouble, and I mean deep trouble, my friend. We ought to be praying for our nation. God calls this city a harlot, saying that He is absolutely going to display all of the shame and filth and vileness of this great civilization and make it a gazingstock, a spectacle, to the world. Such was the end of the great Assyrian Empire.

Nahum 3:7

In other words, God says, “Where in the world will I get people to come and mourn over this city? Nobody will mourn over it. Nobody will weep over it. There will be no mourners there.” That is a very sad situation, a very sad one indeed. Several funeral home directors here in Pasadena became my personal friends over the years and would sometimes call me to conduct a funeral. One of the saddest experiences that I ever had was the funeral I conducted for a dear old man.

He was a Christian who had come out here from the east with his wife for the sake of her health. She had died, and then he became bedridden, and people forgot about him. When he died, I guess many didn’t even recognize his name. When I went down to conduct the funeral, there wasn’t anybody there. Nobody cameto me it was the saddest thing. I knew the funeral director pretty well, and I went to him and said, “Get all your office workers and come on in there.

We’re going to have a funeral service.” He rounded up everyone that he could and brought them in. We had about a dozen folk. So I brought a gospel message, a message of hope for the Christian. It was wonderful to be able to say, “Jesus died for our sins, and He rose again for our justification.” But it was sad to have a funeral service like that, where no friends attended. God said that there were not going to be any mourners at the funeral of Nineveh. Nahum prophesied that the whole world would rejoice in that day, and they did.

When God said this through Nahum, no one would have believed it unless he had believed God and accepted it by faith, but it came to pass just as God said it would.

Nahum 3:8

“Art thou better than populous No?“No-Amon was what we know as Thebes, the great capital of upper Egypt. Dr. Charles Feinberg’s books on the minor prophets are very excellentI know of none better. I would like to quote from his book, Jonah, Micah and Nahum (p. 147), in which he describes the city of No-Amon: It was the capital city of the Pharaohs of the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Dynasties, and boasted such architecture as the Greeks and Romans admired. The Greeks called it Diospolis, because the Egyptian counterpart of Jupiter was worshipped there. It was located on both banks of the river Nile. On the eastern bank were the famous temples at Karnak and Luxor. Homer, the first Greek poet, spoke of it as having 100 gates. Its ruins cover an area of some 27 miles.

Amon, the chief god of the Egyptians, was shown on Egyptian relics as a figure with a human body and a ram’s head. The judgment of this godless and idolatrous city was foretold by Jeremiah (Jer_46:25) and Ezekiel (Eze_30:14-16). No-Amon was situated favorably among the canals of the Nile with the Nile itself as a protection. The Nile appears as a sea when it overflows its banks annually. Nineveh can read her fate in that of No-Amon, for she is no better than the mighty Egyptian capital. God is saying to Nineveh that the city of Thebes should have been an example to the Assyrian Empire. The Assyrians were the ones who had destroyed Thebes, a great city which had seemed impregnable. It seemed that no one could take it, but the Assyrians did take it and destroy it. This should have been an example to the Assyrians. God had judged Thebes, and He is here justifying the fact that He will also judge Nineveh. The government of God moves in the governments of men in this world today. “Art thou better than populous No, that was situate among the rivers….” “Rivers” is used in the plural to mean a great deal of water. When the Nile River would overflow at the flood season, it looked like the ocean. “…That had the waters round about it, whose rampart was the sea, and her wall was from the sea?” Thebes was built so that at the flood season it would not be flooded at all. Rather, the water provided a natural protection for the city.

Nahum 3:9

These were the allies of Thebes which were located around her. The city of Thebes, at one time the capital of the Egyptian Empire, felt that it could never fall because there was a big desert on both sides, the Nile River was a protection, and they had allies to the north and to the south. How could anybody get to them? But the Assyrians did. The Assyrians, in turn, felt that they were impregnable in their day. And today we feel that we have enough atomic weapons and other sophisticated hardware to defend ourselves.

My friend, when God’s time comes, we will go down. Our best defense today simply does not happen to be in the area of military weapons. Our best defense would be a return to God and to a recognition of Him in our government. I am not impressed by what I see in Washington. They have a little prayer breakfast and then, I’m told, some of them step outside and cuss up a storm! Some men make a profession of being Christians, and yet their language is so vile you cannot even listen to it.

What hypocrisy there is today! Is God going to let us off? Are we something special? I think not. Our best defense today would be once again to have men of character in governmenteven if they were not Christians, if they would at least espouse the great morality set forth in the Word of God. That is the thing that built our nation.

I am not greatly impressed with some of our founding fathers. I do not think, for example, that Thomas Jefferson was a Christian, but I will say that he had a respect for the Word of God. He believed in the morality of the Word of God. When we despise and contradict that morality as we do today, God cannot bless us as a nation, and I do not think He will.

Nahum 3:10

This is what Assyria had done to Thebes, and now chickens are coming home to roost. “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Gal_6:7).

Nahum 3:11

The Assyrians will try to fortify their courage by getting drunk, but that is not going to help them a bit.

Nahum 3:12

I used to have a fig tree in my yard. When the figs were ripe, all you had to do was just touch a branch, and they all would come tumbling down. This is what Nahum says to Nineveh here: “All your defenses are like that. The minute the enemy comes, he is going to break right through them.”

Nahum 3:13

I believe that the thought here is that the men were acting like women. The men were very womanly. Or this could mean that women were actually the ones in the positions of authority. Frankly, I do not think God is for the women’s liberation movement which we have today. I still believe that woman’s place is in the home. I feel very frankly that the church is at fault in using women in too many offices in the church.

A woman’s first place is not to teach a Sunday school class. She is to raise her own familythat is her place. Women are being taken away from their homes by church work and every other kind of work. Unless she is forced to work for a living because her husband has passed on or is unable to work, I do not believe a woman’s working is justified. I know that I will get reactions for saying this, but I am saying it because I think that htis is the mark of the disintegration and downfall of civilization.

Nahum 3:14

At the last minute, the Assyrians would get busy making bricks to fortify themselves. They would heat u water, which they would carry to the top of the city wall. They would then pour a bucket of the scalding water down upon the fellow who was scaling the wall. He was through scaling the wall, I can assure you of thathe would soon find himself back on the ground.

Nahum 3:15

Nahum prophesies that they will try to bring in reinforcements but that they will not help.

Nahum 3:16

Each year their national wealth increased, for they were great merchants, but all of that was going to come to an end.

Nahum 3:17

When the time came, the leaders would manage to escape, that is, for a little while anyway.

Nahum 3:18

The leadership of Assyria disintegrated to the place where they no longer attempted to lead the nation. I trust that I will not be misunderstood because I am not discussing politics, certainly not from any party viewpoint. (As far as I am concerned, I am disgusted with both of the major political parties in this nation of ours.) I believe that one of the great evidences of our disintegration and deterioration as a nation is the lack of leadership that exists on the national level, the state level, the county level, and even at the city and community levels. There is a lack of real leadership at all levels. It seems that the one with the big mouth and the big talk is the one who is elected. And it seems that the rich man is the one elected. Abraham Lincoln could not run for the office of president todayhe wouldn’t have enough money. God says that the lack of leadership, along with other things He has mentioned, is what brought Assyria down. What God has said in this chapter concerning Assyria fits our nation like a glove. One glove fits Assyriaand that’s been fulfilled. The other glove fits the United States. But are we listening to God today? No. No one to speak of is paying any attention. Certainly the leadership of our nation is not. The tragedy of the hour is our retreat from God and our rejection of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, the Savior of the world. Listen to God’s final words to Nineveh. He says this with a note of finality and of dogmatism. This makes your spine tingle. It is frightening indeed

Nahum 3:19

The Assyrian people had sinned and sinned and sinnedit was a way of life with them. When people want to point a finger and say that God is wrong, that God permits evil and does nothing about evil, God says to them, “I do do something about it.” My friend, you can look around today at the many injustices in our world, but God is doing something about them. God is just and righteous. He was a God of love even when he destroyed Nineveh and wiped it clean like a dish. It disappeared off the face of the map and off the face of the earthand God took full responsibility for its judgment.