Original Meaning
Warning and Promise (2:1–2)
THIS CHAPTER BEGINS with a warning to prepare for the coming battle. The imperative warnings are for Nineveh to “guard … watch … brace … [and] marshal.” As they are called to prepare, the modern reader is also prepared for the present tense description of Nineveh’s hurried mustering (2:3–5). By listening in on Yahweh’s word to Nineveh, third parties are drawn into the action of the story.
Who is the “attacker” in verse 1?1 Nahum is silent about who in fact will be God’s agent in the destruction of Nineveh (Babylon). Yahweh is the only one mentioned as the opponent (1:12–13; 2:2, 13), for he is the One who guarantees Nineveh’s fall from power.2
The Babylonian conquerors record that Nineveh was besieged unsuccessfully by the Medes in 614 B.C. They joined efforts in 612 with King Nabopolassar of Babylon and breached the walls after ten weeks. A Greek legend, written by the historian Diodorus in the first century B.C. (possibly influenced by Nahum’s descriptions in 2:6, 8), claims that heavy rains swelled the river (he thought it was the Euphrates instead of the Tigris, which ran along the west side of the city). The Husur River, a tributary of the Tigris, ran through the city. The swelling river may have undermined thousands of yards of its eight-mile wall. It may have swelled even more because the attackers opened the floodgates of Sennacherib’s freshwater reservoir above the city.3 The Husur may also have been diverted to undermine the northern wall. Whatever the case, Nineveh’s preparation (2:1) involved guarding the ramparts, watching the road, strengthening their loins (“bracing”), and marshaling their strength—all in vain.
Verse 2 is an aside directed to the people in Jerusalem and its countryside. Assyrian troops had “laid … waste” and “ruined vines” (lit., “the emptiers emptied” the land and “their pruning disfigured” the vines), not only taking the produce of the land but also destroying Judah’s vineyards and olive groves (cf. Deut. 20:19). Judah’s potential for return to prosperity had been stripped. Nonetheless, Yahweh promises to return their former splendor. He is the Creator (Nah. 1:3b–6), and the destroyers of his creation will be destroyed (1:15; 2:2).
Futile Preparations (2:3–5)
Bridging Contexts
WHY IS THERE such a graphic and extended narrative concerning the assault, siege, breach, and deportation of Nineveh? It is said that God is in the details. That is also the claim of the text (2:2, 13). Although the Medes and the Babylonians are the ones who attack, Yahweh says that he is doing the work.
The details of this record of Nineveh’s fall to the Babylonian empire in 612 B.C. are important to Scripture for at least two reasons. (1) Recitation of how God delivers the oppressed is a longstanding and valuable tradition for inducing hope in oppressed and abused peoples. In hearing the story of deliverance, the abused may be carried to the first step of deliverance through hope that God fights for them. (2) The detailed description also stands in the biblical tradition as a warning to the arrogant that God is against anyone who is an oppressor.
Inducing hope. Hope is created in hopeless communities in Scripture in at least two fundamental ways. (1) The first is by remembering, accomplished through the recitation of stories of deliverance that God fought for his people through mighty acts in the past. The centrality of the Exodus story and the Passover cannot be overestimated. It was told at least once a year in the Jewish community, and its themes stand behind the Easter celebration. The precedent for this retelling is found in Scripture itself. In addition to the command to remember (Ex. 12:25–27), the psalmists found great hope in retelling the story in the midst of the congregation (Ps. 78; 105; 106).
These detailed remembrances of Yahweh’s acts of deliverance helped later oppressed communities of faith to maintain hope. Nahum stands in this tradition of celebrating the defeat of a heinous enemy, for Israel and the Jews have faced many enemies in the years after Nineveh’s demise (the Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, pogroms, Stalin, Hitler, etc.). Remembering God’s past salvation endures in Christian communities in personal witness and through pastors preaching texts of deliverance, including the cross of Christ.
Nahum takes the reader through the details of any enemy’s defeat by Yahweh: a warning to the enemy (Nah. 2:1) and a promise of deliverance to the oppressed (2:2), an agent of salvation approaching in order (2:3), the enemy dashing about but stumbling (2:4, 5a), the agent attacking (2:5b) and capturing the enemy’s stronghold (2:6a), the enemy moaning (2:7b) but realizing defeat and yelling “stop” (2:8), the agent plundering the wealth (2:9), the enemy being sapped of all strength (2:10), the power of the enemy’s terror being recalled (2:11–12), and Yahweh declaring his opposition to the enemy and its power (2:13). Other detailed battle scenes are the one against Tyre (Ezek. 26) and the one against the Persians as God’s agent against Babylon (Isa. 21:1–10; Jer. 50–51).
(2) The second fundamental way hope is created in hopeless communities is by release from bondage to anger. The recitation of the violence found in Nahum has a purifying effect when it is voiced and when God remains the subject of the sentence of vengeance. It functions in communities that seek to deal in healthy ways with the anger that comes from deep injury. Nahum stands in the tradition of the imprecatory psalms, which invoke God’s vengeance on one’s enemies (Ps. 35; 58; 69; 83; 109; 137). These psalms have been piously avoided in churchly practice because they are difficult to use properly. They are for communities who suffer deeply at the hand of the powerful and violent, and they are cries for God to act.
After struggling with the value of these psalms, C. S. Lewis concluded: “If we look at their railings we find they are angry not simply because these things have been done to them but because these things are manifestly wrong, are hateful to God as well as to the victim.”11 When used in this context, they release the anger that is unavoidably present and keep it from exploding in self-destructive ways. The common pattern without this voiced release of hurt and anger to God is that the oppressed become violent themselves, and the cycle of violence persists.
A warning to the arrogant. Anyone who stands against Yahweh’s peace and justice is subject to Yahweh’s words, “I am against you.”12 It is an error to read Nahum nationalistically, as if anyone who stands against God’s nation will be opposed by God. God himself declared war on his own people because of their injustice and violence against the powerless. At the time of Nahum’s prophecy (615 B.C.), three years before Nineveh’s fall (612 B.C.), Jerusalem was only eighteen years from being captured and twenty-nine years (586 B.C.) from being demolished by the same Babylonians who plundered the fortress at Nineveh (2 Kings 24:10–25:21).
The arrogant of Jerusalem heard the details of Nineveh’s destruction at the same time they were hearing Jeremiah’s preaching, warning them of their own destruction. The description would have given them food for thought and made them feel their vulnerability. Was Jerusalem more fortified against attack than Thebes and Nineveh (Nah. 3:3)? Did they trust in their defenses, or did they trust in Yahweh? If they continued flouting God’s law, would God let the fortress given to them through David and miraculously preserved in the Assyrian assault (2 Kings 18:13–19:35) continue to protect them? Would God send another angel of death into the enemy camp to slay its warriors by plague or sword in their sleep (Isa. 37:36–37)? Any reflective person would have felt his or her own vulnerability before Yahweh in hearing Nahum’s description.
Nahum was read in the centuries that followed the catastrophic falls of Nineveh and Jerusalem to the Babylonian empire. The prophets remembered and described the arrogance of both. The detailed description of Jerusalem’s fall in Lamentations reminds the attentive reader of Nahum that defeat is real and may come even to God’s people when his law and protection are no longer kept. That lament is gruesome but necessary for understanding Nahum’s message in context.
The people were stunned by the fall of Jerusalem (Lam. 2:13). During the siege, infants and babes died of starvation at their mother’s breasts (Nah. 2:11–12). Children, young people, and the elderly starved in the street, and women cannibalized their children (2:20–22). When the wall was breached, people were hunted in the streets of the ghettos and in the caves of the Judean desert (4:18–19). Those who survived were reduced to abject poverty, made to pay for water and wood (5:3–4). Virgins were raped in Zion and young men and boys were enslaved (5:11–13). Jeremiah wondered if Yahweh had rejected the people completely (5:20–22).
In the case of Lamentations, the only words of hope come in the physical center of book. Jeremiah declares his faith through clenched teeth of anguish:
Yet this I call to mind
and therefore I have hope:
Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, “The LORD is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him.” (Lam. 3:21–24)
Israel’s witness (the biblical witness) to the destruction of the wicked has integrity only because they also tell the truth about the judgment of God against themselves. The difference is that the remnant turns to Yahweh in repentance and faith.
The enduring message of Nahum in the context of Scripture’s full counsel is that God is against anyone and will destroy anyone who is rebelliously arrogant. Amos (who prophesied before Assyria enslaved and destroyed the northern ten tribes) made this abundantly clear by drawing the circling net of God’s judgment against the lawlessness and arrogance closer and closer to home. He began with distant Damascus (Amos 1:3–5), Gaza (1:6–8), and Tyre (1:9–10). He moved closer with words against the sins of Edom (1:11–12), Ammon (1:13–15), and Moab (2:1–3). Then Yahweh spoke through Amos against Judah (2:4–5) and at length against the northern kingdom of Israel for their violence against the poor, for economic corruption, for sexual corruption, and for oppressing true faith (2:6–16). Nationalism and nationalistic interests even among God’s chosen people do not protect them from the wrath and judgment of God.
Coming just before Nahum in the canon are Jonah and Micah. In Jonah, forgiveness is extended to the Ninevites when they repent. In Micah, the destruction of Jerusalem is declared for its corrupt government, people, priests, and prophets. Yahweh is against evil, no matter who is involved: Ninevite, Phoenician, pagan, Moslem, Jew, or Christian.
Contemporary Significance
Contemporary Significance
ALTHOUGH FINDING A modern Christian application for the battle scene in Nahum 2 is challenging, there are several possibilities. The first is the relationship between warfare and the good news of the gospel. The second is to see how the Ninevites, once chosen by God to do his work and once forgiven of their sin through repentance, came to be enemies of God. Finally, an examination of the Ninevites’ use of wealth may teach us a lesson about controlling our assets in ways that are pleasing to God.
Good news and warfare. In the preface to the battle scene in Nahum 2 (1:15 is 2:1 in the Heb. text), Nahum writes:
Look, there on the mountains,
the feet of one who brings good news,
who proclaims peace!
Celebrate your festivals, O Judah,
and fulfill your vows.
No more will the wicked invade you;
they will be completely destroyed.
In certain times in the life of the church, images of warfare were used in thinking about the advance of the gospel. The Gospel of Mark in particular presents Jesus’ confrontations with the spiritual enemy in his healing ministry. Paul describes how warfare against enemies is to be engaged in by heaping fiery coals of kindness on their heads (Rom. 12:14–21). The early church took hope in this verse as a promise of the resurrection of the martyrs in the last day—that they would experience victory over the enemies of death and the opponent of life, Satan.13
In spite of the misapplied historical burden of actual war-making in the Crusades, God’s battle against the principalities and powers that enslave lives remains a reality of the Christian life. Paul writes that the war has already been won by the cross, resurrection, and ascension of Christ. The powers of darkness are in submission to him. He has disarmed, made a spectacle of, and triumphed over them by his death on the cross (Col. 2:13–15; cf. 1 Peter 3:22).
As a result, Christians are under attack and need the armor of God. “Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Eph. 6:11–12). God’s armor, given as a gift, includes truth, righteousness, the gospel of peace, faith, salvation, and the word of the Spirit. In suffering for the gospel of peace, Christians live in confidence that nothing “in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:36–39). Like Nahum, we may live in the confidence that God has already determined the outcome of the battle. It was with this conviction that baptismal candidates were asked in the historic catechism, “Do you renounce sin, death, and the devil?” (M. Luther).
It would be a mistake to apply this battle imagery narrowly to the interior life of individual Christians. The purpose of Christ’s victory and the Christian’s confidence is that the gospel of peace may be proclaimed to those still living in bondage. Many people live under the authority of the same powers of evil that ruled in Nineveh. Many unbelievers are still enslaved by sin, death, and the enticements of evil. Paul uses Nahum’s declaration of the battle for the “gospel of peace” to call for public witnesses:
How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” (Rom. 10:14–15; Isa. 52:7; cf. Nah. 1:15)
The battle also calls for discipleship through teaching and explaining the gospel to those whose minds are held captive (2 Cor. 10:3–5). In all these things, the battle and the victory belong not to God’s people but to God. Judah did not defeat Nineveh by itself, the Babylonians did. Whether Judah fights and wins (2 Kings 19) or someone else engages the battle against God’s enemy, Yahweh is victorious and praised. The point is that God’s beloved creation is set free to serve and praise him.
Friend or foe of God? “‘I am against you,’ declares the LORD Almighty” (Nah. 2:13). When Abraham Lincoln came into office, he is reported to have said, “I am going to get rid of all my enemies. I will turn them into friends.” Reconciliation is what God attempted with Nineveh in the days of Jonah, but in Nahum the time had come to “make an end” (1:8). Jacob struggled against a stranger and enemy at the River Jabbok in his struggle to return to his home and to Esau. God had attempted to befriend him years earlier when he ran (at Bethel), but Jacob was noncommittal (Gen. 28:13–22). At the river, God assaulted Jacob and turned him into a friend, giving him the name “Israel,” which means “he strives with God and prevails” (Gen. 32:24–32). God also assaulted Moses after his call because of his failure to circumcise (Ex. 4:24–26).
In each case God was “against” people in order to turn them into friends. Even in the defeat of Nineveh, the possibility remained that Ninevite believers (from the time of Jonah) could rely on the friendship of God (see the introduction to Jonah). Jeremiah could profess his faith even in the horrific ruin that Yahweh brought on Jerusalem (Lam. 3, see above).
The opposition between Yahweh and people may be applied to our own situation from two perspectives. (1) God is against us, for our sake. It is not enough to ask, “Is God for us or against us?” The answer is “both.” The scriptural witness is that because God is “for us,” he stands against our daily tendency to rebel against him. Because of the constant temptation to live self-sufficiently, without reference to God, God confronts us and our communities with our need to confess our sin, accept his friendship, and offer praise to our Maker. God’s consistent attitude toward us is friendship, even when he stands against us, until, as in Nahum, time runs out.
(2) The second application of God as foe in Nahum is in a person’s or a community’s opposition to Yahweh. Over a long period of time, Israel, Assyria, and finally Jerusalem itself demonstrated their opposition to God. They were not interested in the conditions of friendship with the Almighty. They simply wanted a rubber stamp blessing. God is against those who continually demonstrate their opposition to him. He still desires their friendship but pursues it through opposition, not through invitation. Many believe, however, that their opposition to God is to their own advantage. This is the heart of the lie that Yahweh attacks. The creature cannot truly prosper by standing against the Creator. Even in standing as a foe to those who stand against him, God is for his beloved creation. Achtemeier says, “How we as nations or individuals stand in the eyes of God finally determines our death or life.”14 Only when one has known Yahweh’s opposition, confessed one’s sin (Matt. 12:41), and been reconciled can Paul’s words have meaning for us: “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Rom. 8:31b).
Excesses and the moderation of wealth. Nahum 2 focuses a theme that reverberates more subtly through the entire book. Nineveh is drowning in the irresponsible use of its excessive wealth. This word is not simply for the wealthy but for all who use money without reference to God.
Nineveh is like a pool,
and its water is draining away.
“Stop! Stop!” they cry,
but no one turns back.
Plunder the silver!
Plunder the gold!
The supply is endless,
the wealth from all its treasures! (2:8–9)
Other symptoms of their overconfident comfort and consuming lifestyle are found throughout the book. They are drunk from their wine, like dry stubble for burning (1:10). They are numerous and have many allies (1:12). They are full of lies and plunder (3:1), boundless in strength (3:9), and they have fortresses like a full ripe fig tree (3:12); merchants are as numerous as the stars (3:16), guards and officials are like swarms of locusts (3:17), and shepherds and nobles lie down to rest in the midst of a battle (3:18). Nineveh is full of ripe excesses.
The warning of the text to those who have wealth or who use money without moderation is that God takes that wealth away.15 Like a pool being emptied, its water is draining away. The main image that endures for the contemporary world is the control of the flow of the water. The people yell, “Stop! Stop!” but it is too late. The floodgates (levies) are no longer in their control.
Sennacherib had built a big reservoir to collect fresh water from the mountains. Levies controlled the water flow from this reservoir into the Husur River and into the city. The levies let the water into the city moats and canals or kept it out, thus controlling levels.16 The outflow levies controlled the water flowing out of the city. As long as Nineveh controlled the levies, it did what it pleased. When God’s agent Babylon took control, however, the draining of the reservoir into the city became a symbol for what Nineveh had been doing with its wealth and power: extravagantly gathering and flaunting at the expense of all other cultures. It was chastised because it did not control its wealth and power as it controlled its water levies. Because it did not, its water and wealth were both spilled out in unwanted ways.
No one social group within Nineveh is singled out in the book. Nahum uses the collective “you” to speak of the overripe excesses of a society. Nineveh’s life of collective excess ran its course to destruction like an overflowing pool. The warning against excess is not that wealth is necessarily bad. The levy symbolizes the moderate use of wealth and a generous hand to the poor of the world. Without these, a society or a person may drown in their own wealth.
God’s word on giving has many facets. God said at Sinai that a tenth of all income belonged to him for his work in the community, including sustenance for those who did not have an inheritance of land (Lev. 27:33). God also advised that when you give, it should be done freely and ungrudgingly, by opening your hand to the needy and poor (Deut. 15:10–11). Jesus raised the bar by telling the rich young ruler to give everything away before following him (Mark 10:21). In that light, a tithe seems like a bargain. Jesus advised us not to lay up treasures on earth, thereby neglecting heaven and our hearts (Matt. 6:19–21). The psalmist echoed the law that the offering was an integral part of worship when he said, “Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name; bring an offering and come into his courts” (Ps. 96:8).
Jesus chastised the Pharisees for neglecting the important matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faithfulness, telling them that they should attend to them as well as to their tithe (Matt. 23:23). He advised the multitudes to “give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you” (Luke 6:38). Using the floodgate image, God said through Malachi, “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this … and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it” (Mal. 3:10). Great generosity, Paul told the Corinthians, makes us rich in every way (2 Cor. 9:10–11).
By contrast, John warns that anyone who has the world’s goods and closes his or her heart also closes out God’s love altogether (1 John 3:17–18). Paul echoes this belief when he says that those who sow sparingly will reap sparingly (2 Cor. 9:6). He also said that we should give to support the weak, remembering the words of Jesus that “it is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). Those who have the ability to give much should consider it a spiritual gift and give with liberality (Rom. 12:6–8). Finally, Paul echoes the Lord’s word at Sinai about giving freely when he says that God loves a cheerful giver (2 Cor. 9:7).
The total witness of Scripture on the use of wealth is more positive than Nahum’s. Clearly God calls all his people to compassionate and generous giving, with at the very least the first tenth literally belonging to him. The message of Nahum on wealth and the levy is more severe: You have been given the power to control the flow of your money in moderation. If you don’t, God will take control of it for redistribution.
Original Meaning
Futile Preparations (2:3–5)
THIS SECTION ABRUPTLY presents a picture of the Babylonian advance (2:3, 5b) and of the Ninevites’ frenzied preparations (2:4–5a). It begins with a staccato description: red shields, scarlet soldiers, and flashing metal chariots. Inside the city of Nineveh Nahum foresees the events. Chariots storm (lit., “boast”) through city squares like flaming torches and darts of lightning. Crack troops are on city wall ramparts.
An unnamed individual directs the energy (2:3a, “his soldiers”; 2:5a, “he summons”). He has been mentioned once before (1:11) as the one who plots evil against Yahweh. The “king of Assyria” is named finally in 3:18 as one who has lost all means of support. Although he is referred to these four times, the focus is on Nineveh’s general policies of cruel rule.
The first indication of Nineveh’s weakness is in the midst of their preparation for battle. “He summons his picked troops, yet they stumble on the way.” The word for “picked troops” (ʾaddiyr) is repeated in 3:18 (“nobles”), where they “lie down to rest.” Here they simply stumble as they dash to the city wall to protect the city.4 Their fall is foreshadowed, even as they run in strength. The description of their hurried preparations (“storm,” “rush,” “dart,” “dash”) shows that they are surprised by the warning but remain confident of their strength.
The descriptions are in vivid color (Nah. 2:3), and the confusion of the battle preparations is brought into the rhetoric of the text.5 Red shields and scarlet clothing and flashing metal chariots probably belong to the ordered advancing Babylonian warriors (Babylonian chariot officers wore red [Ezek. 23:14–15]; Assyrians wore blue or purple [Ezek. 23:6]). The “spears of pine” are the lances of the charioteers. The scene abruptly shifts to inside Nineveh’s walls (Nah. 2:4–5a). Ninevite chariots rush around crazily and summoned troops stumble. Again, in 2:5b, a shift is made to the scene outside the wall, where the Babylonians rush the wall and set up the siege mantel, a protective shield against falling objects or arrows shot from the ramparts. Now the end is near.
Nineveh’s Fall (2:6–10)
Bridging Contexts
WHY IS THERE such a graphic and extended narrative concerning the assault, siege, breach, and deportation of Nineveh? It is said that God is in the details. That is also the claim of the text (2:2, 13). Although the Medes and the Babylonians are the ones who attack, Yahweh says that he is doing the work.
The details of this record of Nineveh’s fall to the Babylonian empire in 612 B.C. are important to Scripture for at least two reasons. (1) Recitation of how God delivers the oppressed is a longstanding and valuable tradition for inducing hope in oppressed and abused peoples. In hearing the story of deliverance, the abused may be carried to the first step of deliverance through hope that God fights for them. (2) The detailed description also stands in the biblical tradition as a warning to the arrogant that God is against anyone who is an oppressor.
Inducing hope. Hope is created in hopeless communities in Scripture in at least two fundamental ways. (1) The first is by remembering, accomplished through the recitation of stories of deliverance that God fought for his people through mighty acts in the past. The centrality of the Exodus story and the Passover cannot be overestimated. It was told at least once a year in the Jewish community, and its themes stand behind the Easter celebration. The precedent for this retelling is found in Scripture itself. In addition to the command to remember (Ex. 12:25–27), the psalmists found great hope in retelling the story in the midst of the congregation (Ps. 78; 105; 106).
These detailed remembrances of Yahweh’s acts of deliverance helped later oppressed communities of faith to maintain hope. Nahum stands in this tradition of celebrating the defeat of a heinous enemy, for Israel and the Jews have faced many enemies in the years after Nineveh’s demise (the Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, pogroms, Stalin, Hitler, etc.). Remembering God’s past salvation endures in Christian communities in personal witness and through pastors preaching texts of deliverance, including the cross of Christ.
Nahum takes the reader through the details of any enemy’s defeat by Yahweh: a warning to the enemy (Nah. 2:1) and a promise of deliverance to the oppressed (2:2), an agent of salvation approaching in order (2:3), the enemy dashing about but stumbling (2:4, 5a), the agent attacking (2:5b) and capturing the enemy’s stronghold (2:6a), the enemy moaning (2:7b) but realizing defeat and yelling “stop” (2:8), the agent plundering the wealth (2:9), the enemy being sapped of all strength (2:10), the power of the enemy’s terror being recalled (2:11–12), and Yahweh declaring his opposition to the enemy and its power (2:13). Other detailed battle scenes are the one against Tyre (Ezek. 26) and the one against the Persians as God’s agent against Babylon (Isa. 21:1–10; Jer. 50–51).
(2) The second fundamental way hope is created in hopeless communities is by release from bondage to anger. The recitation of the violence found in Nahum has a purifying effect when it is voiced and when God remains the subject of the sentence of vengeance. It functions in communities that seek to deal in healthy ways with the anger that comes from deep injury. Nahum stands in the tradition of the imprecatory psalms, which invoke God’s vengeance on one’s enemies (Ps. 35; 58; 69; 83; 109; 137). These psalms have been piously avoided in churchly practice because they are difficult to use properly. They are for communities who suffer deeply at the hand of the powerful and violent, and they are cries for God to act.
After struggling with the value of these psalms, C. S. Lewis concluded: “If we look at their railings we find they are angry not simply because these things have been done to them but because these things are manifestly wrong, are hateful to God as well as to the victim.”11 When used in this context, they release the anger that is unavoidably present and keep it from exploding in self-destructive ways. The common pattern without this voiced release of hurt and anger to God is that the oppressed become violent themselves, and the cycle of violence persists.
A warning to the arrogant. Anyone who stands against Yahweh’s peace and justice is subject to Yahweh’s words, “I am against you.”12 It is an error to read Nahum nationalistically, as if anyone who stands against God’s nation will be opposed by God. God himself declared war on his own people because of their injustice and violence against the powerless. At the time of Nahum’s prophecy (615 B.C.), three years before Nineveh’s fall (612 B.C.), Jerusalem was only eighteen years from being captured and twenty-nine years (586 B.C.) from being demolished by the same Babylonians who plundered the fortress at Nineveh (2 Kings 24:10–25:21).
The arrogant of Jerusalem heard the details of Nineveh’s destruction at the same time they were hearing Jeremiah’s preaching, warning them of their own destruction. The description would have given them food for thought and made them feel their vulnerability. Was Jerusalem more fortified against attack than Thebes and Nineveh (Nah. 3:3)? Did they trust in their defenses, or did they trust in Yahweh? If they continued flouting God’s law, would God let the fortress given to them through David and miraculously preserved in the Assyrian assault (2 Kings 18:13–19:35) continue to protect them? Would God send another angel of death into the enemy camp to slay its warriors by plague or sword in their sleep (Isa. 37:36–37)? Any reflective person would have felt his or her own vulnerability before Yahweh in hearing Nahum’s description.
Nahum was read in the centuries that followed the catastrophic falls of Nineveh and Jerusalem to the Babylonian empire. The prophets remembered and described the arrogance of both. The detailed description of Jerusalem’s fall in Lamentations reminds the attentive reader of Nahum that defeat is real and may come even to God’s people when his law and protection are no longer kept. That lament is gruesome but necessary for understanding Nahum’s message in context.
The people were stunned by the fall of Jerusalem (Lam. 2:13). During the siege, infants and babes died of starvation at their mother’s breasts (Nah. 2:11–12). Children, young people, and the elderly starved in the street, and women cannibalized their children (2:20–22). When the wall was breached, people were hunted in the streets of the ghettos and in the caves of the Judean desert (4:18–19). Those who survived were reduced to abject poverty, made to pay for water and wood (5:3–4). Virgins were raped in Zion and young men and boys were enslaved (5:11–13). Jeremiah wondered if Yahweh had rejected the people completely (5:20–22).
In the case of Lamentations, the only words of hope come in the physical center of book. Jeremiah declares his faith through clenched teeth of anguish:
Yet this I call to mind
and therefore I have hope:
Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, “The LORD is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him.” (Lam. 3:21–24)
Israel’s witness (the biblical witness) to the destruction of the wicked has integrity only because they also tell the truth about the judgment of God against themselves. The difference is that the remnant turns to Yahweh in repentance and faith.
The enduring message of Nahum in the context of Scripture’s full counsel is that God is against anyone and will destroy anyone who is rebelliously arrogant. Amos (who prophesied before Assyria enslaved and destroyed the northern ten tribes) made this abundantly clear by drawing the circling net of God’s judgment against the lawlessness and arrogance closer and closer to home. He began with distant Damascus (Amos 1:3–5), Gaza (1:6–8), and Tyre (1:9–10). He moved closer with words against the sins of Edom (1:11–12), Ammon (1:13–15), and Moab (2:1–3). Then Yahweh spoke through Amos against Judah (2:4–5) and at length against the northern kingdom of Israel for their violence against the poor, for economic corruption, for sexual corruption, and for oppressing true faith (2:6–16). Nationalism and nationalistic interests even among God’s chosen people do not protect them from the wrath and judgment of God.
Coming just before Nahum in the canon are Jonah and Micah. In Jonah, forgiveness is extended to the Ninevites when they repent. In Micah, the destruction of Jerusalem is declared for its corrupt government, people, priests, and prophets. Yahweh is against evil, no matter who is involved: Ninevite, Phoenician, pagan, Moslem, Jew, or Christian.
Contemporary Significance
Contemporary Significance
ALTHOUGH FINDING A modern Christian application for the battle scene in Nahum 2 is challenging, there are several possibilities. The first is the relationship between warfare and the good news of the gospel. The second is to see how the Ninevites, once chosen by God to do his work and once forgiven of their sin through repentance, came to be enemies of God. Finally, an examination of the Ninevites’ use of wealth may teach us a lesson about controlling our assets in ways that are pleasing to God.
Good news and warfare. In the preface to the battle scene in Nahum 2 (1:15 is 2:1 in the Heb. text), Nahum writes:
Look, there on the mountains,
the feet of one who brings good news,
who proclaims peace!
Celebrate your festivals, O Judah,
and fulfill your vows.
No more will the wicked invade you;
they will be completely destroyed.
In certain times in the life of the church, images of warfare were used in thinking about the advance of the gospel. The Gospel of Mark in particular presents Jesus’ confrontations with the spiritual enemy in his healing ministry. Paul describes how warfare against enemies is to be engaged in by heaping fiery coals of kindness on their heads (Rom. 12:14–21). The early church took hope in this verse as a promise of the resurrection of the martyrs in the last day—that they would experience victory over the enemies of death and the opponent of life, Satan.13
In spite of the misapplied historical burden of actual war-making in the Crusades, God’s battle against the principalities and powers that enslave lives remains a reality of the Christian life. Paul writes that the war has already been won by the cross, resurrection, and ascension of Christ. The powers of darkness are in submission to him. He has disarmed, made a spectacle of, and triumphed over them by his death on the cross (Col. 2:13–15; cf. 1 Peter 3:22).
As a result, Christians are under attack and need the armor of God. “Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Eph. 6:11–12). God’s armor, given as a gift, includes truth, righteousness, the gospel of peace, faith, salvation, and the word of the Spirit. In suffering for the gospel of peace, Christians live in confidence that nothing “in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:36–39). Like Nahum, we may live in the confidence that God has already determined the outcome of the battle. It was with this conviction that baptismal candidates were asked in the historic catechism, “Do you renounce sin, death, and the devil?” (M. Luther).
It would be a mistake to apply this battle imagery narrowly to the interior life of individual Christians. The purpose of Christ’s victory and the Christian’s confidence is that the gospel of peace may be proclaimed to those still living in bondage. Many people live under the authority of the same powers of evil that ruled in Nineveh. Many unbelievers are still enslaved by sin, death, and the enticements of evil. Paul uses Nahum’s declaration of the battle for the “gospel of peace” to call for public witnesses:
How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” (Rom. 10:14–15; Isa. 52:7; cf. Nah. 1:15)
The battle also calls for discipleship through teaching and explaining the gospel to those whose minds are held captive (2 Cor. 10:3–5). In all these things, the battle and the victory belong not to God’s people but to God. Judah did not defeat Nineveh by itself, the Babylonians did. Whether Judah fights and wins (2 Kings 19) or someone else engages the battle against God’s enemy, Yahweh is victorious and praised. The point is that God’s beloved creation is set free to serve and praise him.
Friend or foe of God? “‘I am against you,’ declares the LORD Almighty” (Nah. 2:13). When Abraham Lincoln came into office, he is reported to have said, “I am going to get rid of all my enemies. I will turn them into friends.” Reconciliation is what God attempted with Nineveh in the days of Jonah, but in Nahum the time had come to “make an end” (1:8). Jacob struggled against a stranger and enemy at the River Jabbok in his struggle to return to his home and to Esau. God had attempted to befriend him years earlier when he ran (at Bethel), but Jacob was noncommittal (Gen. 28:13–22). At the river, God assaulted Jacob and turned him into a friend, giving him the name “Israel,” which means “he strives with God and prevails” (Gen. 32:24–32). God also assaulted Moses after his call because of his failure to circumcise (Ex. 4:24–26).
In each case God was “against” people in order to turn them into friends. Even in the defeat of Nineveh, the possibility remained that Ninevite believers (from the time of Jonah) could rely on the friendship of God (see the introduction to Jonah). Jeremiah could profess his faith even in the horrific ruin that Yahweh brought on Jerusalem (Lam. 3, see above).
The opposition between Yahweh and people may be applied to our own situation from two perspectives. (1) God is against us, for our sake. It is not enough to ask, “Is God for us or against us?” The answer is “both.” The scriptural witness is that because God is “for us,” he stands against our daily tendency to rebel against him. Because of the constant temptation to live self-sufficiently, without reference to God, God confronts us and our communities with our need to confess our sin, accept his friendship, and offer praise to our Maker. God’s consistent attitude toward us is friendship, even when he stands against us, until, as in Nahum, time runs out.
(2) The second application of God as foe in Nahum is in a person’s or a community’s opposition to Yahweh. Over a long period of time, Israel, Assyria, and finally Jerusalem itself demonstrated their opposition to God. They were not interested in the conditions of friendship with the Almighty. They simply wanted a rubber stamp blessing. God is against those who continually demonstrate their opposition to him. He still desires their friendship but pursues it through opposition, not through invitation. Many believe, however, that their opposition to God is to their own advantage. This is the heart of the lie that Yahweh attacks. The creature cannot truly prosper by standing against the Creator. Even in standing as a foe to those who stand against him, God is for his beloved creation. Achtemeier says, “How we as nations or individuals stand in the eyes of God finally determines our death or life.”14 Only when one has known Yahweh’s opposition, confessed one’s sin (Matt. 12:41), and been reconciled can Paul’s words have meaning for us: “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Rom. 8:31b).
Excesses and the moderation of wealth. Nahum 2 focuses a theme that reverberates more subtly through the entire book. Nineveh is drowning in the irresponsible use of its excessive wealth. This word is not simply for the wealthy but for all who use money without reference to God.
Nineveh is like a pool,
and its water is draining away.
“Stop! Stop!” they cry,
but no one turns back.
Plunder the silver!
Plunder the gold!
The supply is endless,
the wealth from all its treasures! (2:8–9)
Other symptoms of their overconfident comfort and consuming lifestyle are found throughout the book. They are drunk from their wine, like dry stubble for burning (1:10). They are numerous and have many allies (1:12). They are full of lies and plunder (3:1), boundless in strength (3:9), and they have fortresses like a full ripe fig tree (3:12); merchants are as numerous as the stars (3:16), guards and officials are like swarms of locusts (3:17), and shepherds and nobles lie down to rest in the midst of a battle (3:18). Nineveh is full of ripe excesses.
The warning of the text to those who have wealth or who use money without moderation is that God takes that wealth away.15 Like a pool being emptied, its water is draining away. The main image that endures for the contemporary world is the control of the flow of the water. The people yell, “Stop! Stop!” but it is too late. The floodgates (levies) are no longer in their control.
Sennacherib had built a big reservoir to collect fresh water from the mountains. Levies controlled the water flow from this reservoir into the Husur River and into the city. The levies let the water into the city moats and canals or kept it out, thus controlling levels.16 The outflow levies controlled the water flowing out of the city. As long as Nineveh controlled the levies, it did what it pleased. When God’s agent Babylon took control, however, the draining of the reservoir into the city became a symbol for what Nineveh had been doing with its wealth and power: extravagantly gathering and flaunting at the expense of all other cultures. It was chastised because it did not control its wealth and power as it controlled its water levies. Because it did not, its water and wealth were both spilled out in unwanted ways.
No one social group within Nineveh is singled out in the book. Nahum uses the collective “you” to speak of the overripe excesses of a society. Nineveh’s life of collective excess ran its course to destruction like an overflowing pool. The warning against excess is not that wealth is necessarily bad. The levy symbolizes the moderate use of wealth and a generous hand to the poor of the world. Without these, a society or a person may drown in their own wealth.
God’s word on giving has many facets. God said at Sinai that a tenth of all income belonged to him for his work in the community, including sustenance for those who did not have an inheritance of land (Lev. 27:33). God also advised that when you give, it should be done freely and ungrudgingly, by opening your hand to the needy and poor (Deut. 15:10–11). Jesus raised the bar by telling the rich young ruler to give everything away before following him (Mark 10:21). In that light, a tithe seems like a bargain. Jesus advised us not to lay up treasures on earth, thereby neglecting heaven and our hearts (Matt. 6:19–21). The psalmist echoed the law that the offering was an integral part of worship when he said, “Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name; bring an offering and come into his courts” (Ps. 96:8).
Jesus chastised the Pharisees for neglecting the important matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faithfulness, telling them that they should attend to them as well as to their tithe (Matt. 23:23). He advised the multitudes to “give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you” (Luke 6:38). Using the floodgate image, God said through Malachi, “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this … and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it” (Mal. 3:10). Great generosity, Paul told the Corinthians, makes us rich in every way (2 Cor. 9:10–11).
By contrast, John warns that anyone who has the world’s goods and closes his or her heart also closes out God’s love altogether (1 John 3:17–18). Paul echoes this belief when he says that those who sow sparingly will reap sparingly (2 Cor. 9:6). He also said that we should give to support the weak, remembering the words of Jesus that “it is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). Those who have the ability to give much should consider it a spiritual gift and give with liberality (Rom. 12:6–8). Finally, Paul echoes the Lord’s word at Sinai about giving freely when he says that God loves a cheerful giver (2 Cor. 9:7).
The total witness of Scripture on the use of wealth is more positive than Nahum’s. Clearly God calls all his people to compassionate and generous giving, with at the very least the first tenth literally belonging to him. The message of Nahum on wealth and the levy is more severe: You have been given the power to control the flow of your money in moderation. If you don’t, God will take control of it for redistribution.
Original Meaning
Nineveh’s Fall (2:6–10)
IN THESE VERSES of prophecy, Judah is led to imagine the incredible possibility that the plunderer, Nineveh, will be plundered. Her fall is pictured in five stages of her capture, verse by verse. The gates through which the Husur River flowed are opened (by someone inside, or by an undermining flood; see 2:1–2), and the Babylonians, Medes, and Scythians enter and capture the city (2:6). As was common with cities that posed a threat to the general security, the people are exiled (2:7). The surprise that Nineveh could fall is realized too late. Some cry “Stop!” (lit., “Stand still”); they think of Nineveh as a “deep pool,” full of reserves, and are confused by its draining (2:8). The conquering army shouts commands to “plunder” the silver, gold, wealth, and treasures in endless supply (2:9). The final scene is a city emptied of all but people, and they are weak in their hearts and knees; their bodies tremble and their faces are blank (2:10).
The first stage of Nineveh’s fall is the breach of the walls and the fall of the palace. The “palace collapses” when the gates of the river are opened (2:6). “Collapse” echoes “melts away” in 1:5 (Heb., mug). The connection between Yahweh’s control of the nonhuman creation in chapter 1 and the fall of Nineveh is subtly made. The palace virtually “melts away.” The repetition of “river” (1:4 and 2:6) is a second related echo. Whether the river runs full (2:6) or runs dry (1:4), Yahweh is near.
The Hebrew word translated “palace” (heykal) in 2:6 is, in other contexts, translated “temple.” Yahweh is considered the true king in Israel, so his “palace” is the temple. The residence for Judah’s king is called the “house of the king.”6 Outside Israel, however, “palace” is a correct translation of heykal. It establishes a contrast between Jerusalem’s ideal of God on the throne and Nineveh’s king living in its highest place of authority, the palace.
The second stage of Nineveh’s fall (Nah. 2:7) is the decree of exile and the general mourning that accompanies the deportation of a city’s population. In the NIV “the city” is in corner brackets because it is an implied subject of the verb “that [she] be exiled.” Other translations follow a scholarly consensus that the “she” is the statue of Ishtar, Nineveh’s goddess of fertility or Nineveh’s queen.7 In ancient warfare, the conquering army usually paraded a defeated city’s deity out of the city (see 1 Sam. 4:1–11). The “girls” who beat their breasts and moan are possibly those who have served in Ishtar’s temple in ritual acts of fertility.
In Jonah the moaning of repentance was heard across the spectrum, from the king to the animals (Jonah 3). In Nahum, the “slave girls moan like doves” (yonim). The name “Jonah” is formed from the same word as “dove” (see the introduction to Jonah). The ancient reader could not have missed the play on words or the echoes of Jonah’s earlier encounter at Nineveh. This reference adds exile to the weight of the picture, since its avoidance through repentance was possible. To the original hearer of the oracle, the possibility of repentance may have been considered. In Nineveh, however, the “moaning” is too late, and it comes from the slave girls, not the king (cf. Jonah 3:6).
In the third stage of Nineveh’s fall (Nah. 2:8) the nobles realize that Nineveh is actually captured: “Nineveh is like a pool.” Nineveh is named (rather than implied) for the first time since 1:1 (it is named only once more, when it is completely abandoned, 3:7). This reference begins positively by comparing Nineveh to a pool.8 Nineveh’s reputation included its control of deep water reservoirs. It was protected by moats formed by the Husur and Tigris Rivers. Abruptly, however, its water is draining or running out. Nineveh’s moats are running dry.
People shout “Stop,” but with little effect because many are running away. No one looks back. Nineveh (like a pool) collapses as it empties. The speed and surprise of its collapse are expressed by the ineffective shouting. This is a contrast to God’s voice in 1:4, where Yahweh “rebukes the sea,” and it turns back immediately!
The fourth stage of Nineveh’s fall (Nah. 2:9) is the discovery of her seemingly endless treasury. The large amount of wealth accumulated because for years Assyria had stripped the lands around them (see 3:16). The expression “the supply is endless” (or “there is no limit”) is also used in 3:3 of Nineveh’s atrocities against its victims (“dead bodies without number”) and in 3:9 of its “boundless strength.” The expression refers to Nineveh’s unrestrained hoarding practices. Even the oracle expresses astonishment at the “wealth” (lit., “glory”) of all its treasures. There is no hesitation in calling for the seizing and redistribution of all this stolen gold and silver.
The last stage of Nineveh’s fall (Nah. 2:10) is the emptying of the people from the city. In the Hebrew the emphasis of the alliteration is striking (buqah, mebuqah, mebulaqah); the NIV preserves it in the words “pillaged … plundered … stripped.” This devastation, desolation, and destruction, with its emptiness, void, and ruin, form the final word in the picture of Nineveh’s coming fall. It is matched in the expression of finality in the faces of the people. The strength of every person is drained. Hearts melt, knees give way in a flash (like lightning in 2:4 and spears in 3:3), and bodies that were braced for battle (2:1) now tremble. Finally, the blood drains from the faces of all who are present. They are pale and “blank,” like the vines that Nineveh stripped in Israel. Nineveh’s ability to continue in cruelty is to be absolutely ended.9
No More Strangling Lions (2:11–13)
Bridging Contexts
WHY IS THERE such a graphic and extended narrative concerning the assault, siege, breach, and deportation of Nineveh? It is said that God is in the details. That is also the claim of the text (2:2, 13). Although the Medes and the Babylonians are the ones who attack, Yahweh says that he is doing the work.
The details of this record of Nineveh’s fall to the Babylonian empire in 612 B.C. are important to Scripture for at least two reasons. (1) Recitation of how God delivers the oppressed is a longstanding and valuable tradition for inducing hope in oppressed and abused peoples. In hearing the story of deliverance, the abused may be carried to the first step of deliverance through hope that God fights for them. (2) The detailed description also stands in the biblical tradition as a warning to the arrogant that God is against anyone who is an oppressor.
Inducing hope. Hope is created in hopeless communities in Scripture in at least two fundamental ways. (1) The first is by remembering, accomplished through the recitation of stories of deliverance that God fought for his people through mighty acts in the past. The centrality of the Exodus story and the Passover cannot be overestimated. It was told at least once a year in the Jewish community, and its themes stand behind the Easter celebration. The precedent for this retelling is found in Scripture itself. In addition to the command to remember (Ex. 12:25–27), the psalmists found great hope in retelling the story in the midst of the congregation (Ps. 78; 105; 106).
These detailed remembrances of Yahweh’s acts of deliverance helped later oppressed communities of faith to maintain hope. Nahum stands in this tradition of celebrating the defeat of a heinous enemy, for Israel and the Jews have faced many enemies in the years after Nineveh’s demise (the Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, pogroms, Stalin, Hitler, etc.). Remembering God’s past salvation endures in Christian communities in personal witness and through pastors preaching texts of deliverance, including the cross of Christ.
Nahum takes the reader through the details of any enemy’s defeat by Yahweh: a warning to the enemy (Nah. 2:1) and a promise of deliverance to the oppressed (2:2), an agent of salvation approaching in order (2:3), the enemy dashing about but stumbling (2:4, 5a), the agent attacking (2:5b) and capturing the enemy’s stronghold (2:6a), the enemy moaning (2:7b) but realizing defeat and yelling “stop” (2:8), the agent plundering the wealth (2:9), the enemy being sapped of all strength (2:10), the power of the enemy’s terror being recalled (2:11–12), and Yahweh declaring his opposition to the enemy and its power (2:13). Other detailed battle scenes are the one against Tyre (Ezek. 26) and the one against the Persians as God’s agent against Babylon (Isa. 21:1–10; Jer. 50–51).
(2) The second fundamental way hope is created in hopeless communities is by release from bondage to anger. The recitation of the violence found in Nahum has a purifying effect when it is voiced and when God remains the subject of the sentence of vengeance. It functions in communities that seek to deal in healthy ways with the anger that comes from deep injury. Nahum stands in the tradition of the imprecatory psalms, which invoke God’s vengeance on one’s enemies (Ps. 35; 58; 69; 83; 109; 137). These psalms have been piously avoided in churchly practice because they are difficult to use properly. They are for communities who suffer deeply at the hand of the powerful and violent, and they are cries for God to act.
After struggling with the value of these psalms, C. S. Lewis concluded: “If we look at their railings we find they are angry not simply because these things have been done to them but because these things are manifestly wrong, are hateful to God as well as to the victim.”11 When used in this context, they release the anger that is unavoidably present and keep it from exploding in self-destructive ways. The common pattern without this voiced release of hurt and anger to God is that the oppressed become violent themselves, and the cycle of violence persists.
A warning to the arrogant. Anyone who stands against Yahweh’s peace and justice is subject to Yahweh’s words, “I am against you.”12 It is an error to read Nahum nationalistically, as if anyone who stands against God’s nation will be opposed by God. God himself declared war on his own people because of their injustice and violence against the powerless. At the time of Nahum’s prophecy (615 B.C.), three years before Nineveh’s fall (612 B.C.), Jerusalem was only eighteen years from being captured and twenty-nine years (586 B.C.) from being demolished by the same Babylonians who plundered the fortress at Nineveh (2 Kings 24:10–25:21).
The arrogant of Jerusalem heard the details of Nineveh’s destruction at the same time they were hearing Jeremiah’s preaching, warning them of their own destruction. The description would have given them food for thought and made them feel their vulnerability. Was Jerusalem more fortified against attack than Thebes and Nineveh (Nah. 3:3)? Did they trust in their defenses, or did they trust in Yahweh? If they continued flouting God’s law, would God let the fortress given to them through David and miraculously preserved in the Assyrian assault (2 Kings 18:13–19:35) continue to protect them? Would God send another angel of death into the enemy camp to slay its warriors by plague or sword in their sleep (Isa. 37:36–37)? Any reflective person would have felt his or her own vulnerability before Yahweh in hearing Nahum’s description.
Nahum was read in the centuries that followed the catastrophic falls of Nineveh and Jerusalem to the Babylonian empire. The prophets remembered and described the arrogance of both. The detailed description of Jerusalem’s fall in Lamentations reminds the attentive reader of Nahum that defeat is real and may come even to God’s people when his law and protection are no longer kept. That lament is gruesome but necessary for understanding Nahum’s message in context.
The people were stunned by the fall of Jerusalem (Lam. 2:13). During the siege, infants and babes died of starvation at their mother’s breasts (Nah. 2:11–12). Children, young people, and the elderly starved in the street, and women cannibalized their children (2:20–22). When the wall was breached, people were hunted in the streets of the ghettos and in the caves of the Judean desert (4:18–19). Those who survived were reduced to abject poverty, made to pay for water and wood (5:3–4). Virgins were raped in Zion and young men and boys were enslaved (5:11–13). Jeremiah wondered if Yahweh had rejected the people completely (5:20–22).
In the case of Lamentations, the only words of hope come in the physical center of book. Jeremiah declares his faith through clenched teeth of anguish:
Yet this I call to mind
and therefore I have hope:
Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, “The LORD is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him.” (Lam. 3:21–24)
Israel’s witness (the biblical witness) to the destruction of the wicked has integrity only because they also tell the truth about the judgment of God against themselves. The difference is that the remnant turns to Yahweh in repentance and faith.
The enduring message of Nahum in the context of Scripture’s full counsel is that God is against anyone and will destroy anyone who is rebelliously arrogant. Amos (who prophesied before Assyria enslaved and destroyed the northern ten tribes) made this abundantly clear by drawing the circling net of God’s judgment against the lawlessness and arrogance closer and closer to home. He began with distant Damascus (Amos 1:3–5), Gaza (1:6–8), and Tyre (1:9–10). He moved closer with words against the sins of Edom (1:11–12), Ammon (1:13–15), and Moab (2:1–3). Then Yahweh spoke through Amos against Judah (2:4–5) and at length against the northern kingdom of Israel for their violence against the poor, for economic corruption, for sexual corruption, and for oppressing true faith (2:6–16). Nationalism and nationalistic interests even among God’s chosen people do not protect them from the wrath and judgment of God.
Coming just before Nahum in the canon are Jonah and Micah. In Jonah, forgiveness is extended to the Ninevites when they repent. In Micah, the destruction of Jerusalem is declared for its corrupt government, people, priests, and prophets. Yahweh is against evil, no matter who is involved: Ninevite, Phoenician, pagan, Moslem, Jew, or Christian.
Contemporary Significance
Contemporary Significance
ALTHOUGH FINDING A modern Christian application for the battle scene in Nahum 2 is challenging, there are several possibilities. The first is the relationship between warfare and the good news of the gospel. The second is to see how the Ninevites, once chosen by God to do his work and once forgiven of their sin through repentance, came to be enemies of God. Finally, an examination of the Ninevites’ use of wealth may teach us a lesson about controlling our assets in ways that are pleasing to God.
Good news and warfare. In the preface to the battle scene in Nahum 2 (1:15 is 2:1 in the Heb. text), Nahum writes:
Look, there on the mountains,
the feet of one who brings good news,
who proclaims peace!
Celebrate your festivals, O Judah,
and fulfill your vows.
No more will the wicked invade you;
they will be completely destroyed.
In certain times in the life of the church, images of warfare were used in thinking about the advance of the gospel. The Gospel of Mark in particular presents Jesus’ confrontations with the spiritual enemy in his healing ministry. Paul describes how warfare against enemies is to be engaged in by heaping fiery coals of kindness on their heads (Rom. 12:14–21). The early church took hope in this verse as a promise of the resurrection of the martyrs in the last day—that they would experience victory over the enemies of death and the opponent of life, Satan.13
In spite of the misapplied historical burden of actual war-making in the Crusades, God’s battle against the principalities and powers that enslave lives remains a reality of the Christian life. Paul writes that the war has already been won by the cross, resurrection, and ascension of Christ. The powers of darkness are in submission to him. He has disarmed, made a spectacle of, and triumphed over them by his death on the cross (Col. 2:13–15; cf. 1 Peter 3:22).
As a result, Christians are under attack and need the armor of God. “Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Eph. 6:11–12). God’s armor, given as a gift, includes truth, righteousness, the gospel of peace, faith, salvation, and the word of the Spirit. In suffering for the gospel of peace, Christians live in confidence that nothing “in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:36–39). Like Nahum, we may live in the confidence that God has already determined the outcome of the battle. It was with this conviction that baptismal candidates were asked in the historic catechism, “Do you renounce sin, death, and the devil?” (M. Luther).
It would be a mistake to apply this battle imagery narrowly to the interior life of individual Christians. The purpose of Christ’s victory and the Christian’s confidence is that the gospel of peace may be proclaimed to those still living in bondage. Many people live under the authority of the same powers of evil that ruled in Nineveh. Many unbelievers are still enslaved by sin, death, and the enticements of evil. Paul uses Nahum’s declaration of the battle for the “gospel of peace” to call for public witnesses:
How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” (Rom. 10:14–15; Isa. 52:7; cf. Nah. 1:15)
The battle also calls for discipleship through teaching and explaining the gospel to those whose minds are held captive (2 Cor. 10:3–5). In all these things, the battle and the victory belong not to God’s people but to God. Judah did not defeat Nineveh by itself, the Babylonians did. Whether Judah fights and wins (2 Kings 19) or someone else engages the battle against God’s enemy, Yahweh is victorious and praised. The point is that God’s beloved creation is set free to serve and praise him.
Friend or foe of God? “‘I am against you,’ declares the LORD Almighty” (Nah. 2:13). When Abraham Lincoln came into office, he is reported to have said, “I am going to get rid of all my enemies. I will turn them into friends.” Reconciliation is what God attempted with Nineveh in the days of Jonah, but in Nahum the time had come to “make an end” (1:8). Jacob struggled against a stranger and enemy at the River Jabbok in his struggle to return to his home and to Esau. God had attempted to befriend him years earlier when he ran (at Bethel), but Jacob was noncommittal (Gen. 28:13–22). At the river, God assaulted Jacob and turned him into a friend, giving him the name “Israel,” which means “he strives with God and prevails” (Gen. 32:24–32). God also assaulted Moses after his call because of his failure to circumcise (Ex. 4:24–26).
In each case God was “against” people in order to turn them into friends. Even in the defeat of Nineveh, the possibility remained that Ninevite believers (from the time of Jonah) could rely on the friendship of God (see the introduction to Jonah). Jeremiah could profess his faith even in the horrific ruin that Yahweh brought on Jerusalem (Lam. 3, see above).
The opposition between Yahweh and people may be applied to our own situation from two perspectives. (1) God is against us, for our sake. It is not enough to ask, “Is God for us or against us?” The answer is “both.” The scriptural witness is that because God is “for us,” he stands against our daily tendency to rebel against him. Because of the constant temptation to live self-sufficiently, without reference to God, God confronts us and our communities with our need to confess our sin, accept his friendship, and offer praise to our Maker. God’s consistent attitude toward us is friendship, even when he stands against us, until, as in Nahum, time runs out.
(2) The second application of God as foe in Nahum is in a person’s or a community’s opposition to Yahweh. Over a long period of time, Israel, Assyria, and finally Jerusalem itself demonstrated their opposition to God. They were not interested in the conditions of friendship with the Almighty. They simply wanted a rubber stamp blessing. God is against those who continually demonstrate their opposition to him. He still desires their friendship but pursues it through opposition, not through invitation. Many believe, however, that their opposition to God is to their own advantage. This is the heart of the lie that Yahweh attacks. The creature cannot truly prosper by standing against the Creator. Even in standing as a foe to those who stand against him, God is for his beloved creation. Achtemeier says, “How we as nations or individuals stand in the eyes of God finally determines our death or life.”14 Only when one has known Yahweh’s opposition, confessed one’s sin (Matt. 12:41), and been reconciled can Paul’s words have meaning for us: “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Rom. 8:31b).
Excesses and the moderation of wealth. Nahum 2 focuses a theme that reverberates more subtly through the entire book. Nineveh is drowning in the irresponsible use of its excessive wealth. This word is not simply for the wealthy but for all who use money without reference to God.
Nineveh is like a pool,
and its water is draining away.
“Stop! Stop!” they cry,
but no one turns back.
Plunder the silver!
Plunder the gold!
The supply is endless,
the wealth from all its treasures! (2:8–9)
Other symptoms of their overconfident comfort and consuming lifestyle are found throughout the book. They are drunk from their wine, like dry stubble for burning (1:10). They are numerous and have many allies (1:12). They are full of lies and plunder (3:1), boundless in strength (3:9), and they have fortresses like a full ripe fig tree (3:12); merchants are as numerous as the stars (3:16), guards and officials are like swarms of locusts (3:17), and shepherds and nobles lie down to rest in the midst of a battle (3:18). Nineveh is full of ripe excesses.
The warning of the text to those who have wealth or who use money without moderation is that God takes that wealth away.15 Like a pool being emptied, its water is draining away. The main image that endures for the contemporary world is the control of the flow of the water. The people yell, “Stop! Stop!” but it is too late. The floodgates (levies) are no longer in their control.
Sennacherib had built a big reservoir to collect fresh water from the mountains. Levies controlled the water flow from this reservoir into the Husur River and into the city. The levies let the water into the city moats and canals or kept it out, thus controlling levels.16 The outflow levies controlled the water flowing out of the city. As long as Nineveh controlled the levies, it did what it pleased. When God’s agent Babylon took control, however, the draining of the reservoir into the city became a symbol for what Nineveh had been doing with its wealth and power: extravagantly gathering and flaunting at the expense of all other cultures. It was chastised because it did not control its wealth and power as it controlled its water levies. Because it did not, its water and wealth were both spilled out in unwanted ways.
No one social group within Nineveh is singled out in the book. Nahum uses the collective “you” to speak of the overripe excesses of a society. Nineveh’s life of collective excess ran its course to destruction like an overflowing pool. The warning against excess is not that wealth is necessarily bad. The levy symbolizes the moderate use of wealth and a generous hand to the poor of the world. Without these, a society or a person may drown in their own wealth.
God’s word on giving has many facets. God said at Sinai that a tenth of all income belonged to him for his work in the community, including sustenance for those who did not have an inheritance of land (Lev. 27:33). God also advised that when you give, it should be done freely and ungrudgingly, by opening your hand to the needy and poor (Deut. 15:10–11). Jesus raised the bar by telling the rich young ruler to give everything away before following him (Mark 10:21). In that light, a tithe seems like a bargain. Jesus advised us not to lay up treasures on earth, thereby neglecting heaven and our hearts (Matt. 6:19–21). The psalmist echoed the law that the offering was an integral part of worship when he said, “Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name; bring an offering and come into his courts” (Ps. 96:8).
Jesus chastised the Pharisees for neglecting the important matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faithfulness, telling them that they should attend to them as well as to their tithe (Matt. 23:23). He advised the multitudes to “give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you” (Luke 6:38). Using the floodgate image, God said through Malachi, “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this … and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it” (Mal. 3:10). Great generosity, Paul told the Corinthians, makes us rich in every way (2 Cor. 9:10–11).
By contrast, John warns that anyone who has the world’s goods and closes his or her heart also closes out God’s love altogether (1 John 3:17–18). Paul echoes this belief when he says that those who sow sparingly will reap sparingly (2 Cor. 9:6). He also said that we should give to support the weak, remembering the words of Jesus that “it is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). Those who have the ability to give much should consider it a spiritual gift and give with liberality (Rom. 12:6–8). Finally, Paul echoes the Lord’s word at Sinai about giving freely when he says that God loves a cheerful giver (2 Cor. 9:7).
The total witness of Scripture on the use of wealth is more positive than Nahum’s. Clearly God calls all his people to compassionate and generous giving, with at the very least the first tenth literally belonging to him. The message of Nahum on wealth and the levy is more severe: You have been given the power to control the flow of your money in moderation. If you don’t, God will take control of it for redistribution.
Original Meaning
No More Strangling Lions (2:11–13)
CHAPTER 2 CONCLUDES with a question for Nineveh concerning its cruel practices and with Yahweh’s direct declaration, “I am against you” (2:13; see also 3:5). The question in 2:11 (“Where now is the lions’ den?”) in its original context refers to the defeat that has not yet happened. It is raised beforehand in this oracle as an accusation against the Ninevites for their practice of hunting human prey and bringing them home in contentment. Isaiah said that Assyria was a lion that took whatever it pleased (Isa. 5:29). They bragged of driving children and women from their dead fathers and husbands into slavery.
The “lions’ den” is a metaphor for the Assyrian practice of bringing captives into the city to be tortured and killed publicly (Nah. 2:12b) (a practice the Romans emulated with early Christian captives). When the city of Surah (in Syria) surrendered with the promise of leniency, Ashurnasirpal burned it instead, cut off the legs of the military officers, brought the population home as slaves, and had the governor publicly flayed alive in the capital.
“The place where they fed their young” is more striking in the Hebrew, using a word that is commonly translated with the peaceful word “pasture.” It demonstrates a normalization of violent practice. The killing and eating activity of lions described in these verses is common to lions. The indictment against Nineveh is that they are people and their victims are people, but they have been content to become lions and to act as though others are flesh to be torn (prey). The strangling lions represent a self-satisfied army and administration that enjoyed the support of the people at home. When they returned from the hunt to the “den,” they had no anxiety or fear.
The lion was Assyria’s symbol of empire. The palace of Ashurbanipal was decorated with wall reliefs of lion hunts. He imported lions to a royal preserve for his hunts. The imagery of Ishtar, goddess of sexuality and war, also included lion imagery. Ashurbanipal was the proud “lion” who mastered peoples and even actual lions. The image of the lion as hunter is reinforced by mentioning his “prey” three times (Nah. 2:11[2x], 12).10 In the pronunciation of the Hebrew, the growls of his “lion cubs” in the lair can be heard. They sound like gurareyeh (2:11b) and gorotayw (2:12a).
In Nah. 2:13 Yahweh declares that four types of oppression will end: no more chariots, no more lions, no more victims, no more Ninevite messengers. Yahweh will burn the chariots and devour the devouring lions with the sword. He will end their imposition of suffering on their prey. Their “messengers” will no longer plague the nations. Assyria used messengers to demand surrender to looting and paying tribute. If the “prey” would not surrender, they would be destroyed and deported (cf. Isa. 36:1–22). Messengers also returned to Nineveh with news of victory and a procession of new victims and booty for the city. They collected regular tributes from those who did not resist Nineveh’s power.
Yahweh’s name “Almighty” (ṣebaʾot) is mentioned for the first time in Nah. 2:13. Older translations use “LORD of hosts,” which also conveys the might of the armies of heaven. This first declaration of “the LORD Almighty” is followed five verses later by another similar declaration (3:5–7). Between them is another brief picture (3:1–3), familiar to its victims, of Nineveh’s army at work in slaughter.
The reversals of fortune in 2:11–13 mirror the ironies of this chapter. What was full will be empty. Strong fortifications (2:1) will become weak (2:10), full pools will be drained (2:6, 8), stolen splendor (2:2) will be removed (2:9), and lairs full of prey (2:12) will be cut off (2:13). The lion hunter (2:12) is now the hunted lion (2:13).
Bridging Contexts
Bridging Contexts
WHY IS THERE such a graphic and extended narrative concerning the assault, siege, breach, and deportation of Nineveh? It is said that God is in the details. That is also the claim of the text (2:2, 13). Although the Medes and the Babylonians are the ones who attack, Yahweh says that he is doing the work.
The details of this record of Nineveh’s fall to the Babylonian empire in 612 B.C. are important to Scripture for at least two reasons. (1) Recitation of how God delivers the oppressed is a longstanding and valuable tradition for inducing hope in oppressed and abused peoples. In hearing the story of deliverance, the abused may be carried to the first step of deliverance through hope that God fights for them. (2) The detailed description also stands in the biblical tradition as a warning to the arrogant that God is against anyone who is an oppressor.
Inducing hope. Hope is created in hopeless communities in Scripture in at least two fundamental ways. (1) The first is by remembering, accomplished through the recitation of stories of deliverance that God fought for his people through mighty acts in the past. The centrality of the Exodus story and the Passover cannot be overestimated. It was told at least once a year in the Jewish community, and its themes stand behind the Easter celebration. The precedent for this retelling is found in Scripture itself. In addition to the command to remember (Ex. 12:25–27), the psalmists found great hope in retelling the story in the midst of the congregation (Ps. 78; 105; 106).
These detailed remembrances of Yahweh’s acts of deliverance helped later oppressed communities of faith to maintain hope. Nahum stands in this tradition of celebrating the defeat of a heinous enemy, for Israel and the Jews have faced many enemies in the years after Nineveh’s demise (the Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, pogroms, Stalin, Hitler, etc.). Remembering God’s past salvation endures in Christian communities in personal witness and through pastors preaching texts of deliverance, including the cross of Christ.
Nahum takes the reader through the details of any enemy’s defeat by Yahweh: a warning to the enemy (Nah. 2:1) and a promise of deliverance to the oppressed (2:2), an agent of salvation approaching in order (2:3), the enemy dashing about but stumbling (2:4, 5a), the agent attacking (2:5b) and capturing the enemy’s stronghold (2:6a), the enemy moaning (2:7b) but realizing defeat and yelling “stop” (2:8), the agent plundering the wealth (2:9), the enemy being sapped of all strength (2:10), the power of the enemy’s terror being recalled (2:11–12), and Yahweh declaring his opposition to the enemy and its power (2:13). Other detailed battle scenes are the one against Tyre (Ezek. 26) and the one against the Persians as God’s agent against Babylon (Isa. 21:1–10; Jer. 50–51).
(2) The second fundamental way hope is created in hopeless communities is by release from bondage to anger. The recitation of the violence found in Nahum has a purifying effect when it is voiced and when God remains the subject of the sentence of vengeance. It functions in communities that seek to deal in healthy ways with the anger that comes from deep injury. Nahum stands in the tradition of the imprecatory psalms, which invoke God’s vengeance on one’s enemies (Ps. 35; 58; 69; 83; 109; 137). These psalms have been piously avoided in churchly practice because they are difficult to use properly. They are for communities who suffer deeply at the hand of the powerful and violent, and they are cries for God to act.
After struggling with the value of these psalms, C. S. Lewis concluded: “If we look at their railings we find they are angry not simply because these things have been done to them but because these things are manifestly wrong, are hateful to God as well as to the victim.”11 When used in this context, they release the anger that is unavoidably present and keep it from exploding in self-destructive ways. The common pattern without this voiced release of hurt and anger to God is that the oppressed become violent themselves, and the cycle of violence persists.
A warning to the arrogant. Anyone who stands against Yahweh’s peace and justice is subject to Yahweh’s words, “I am against you.”12 It is an error to read Nahum nationalistically, as if anyone who stands against God’s nation will be opposed by God. God himself declared war on his own people because of their injustice and violence against the powerless. At the time of Nahum’s prophecy (615 B.C.), three years before Nineveh’s fall (612 B.C.), Jerusalem was only eighteen years from being captured and twenty-nine years (586 B.C.) from being demolished by the same Babylonians who plundered the fortress at Nineveh (2 Kings 24:10–25:21).
The arrogant of Jerusalem heard the details of Nineveh’s destruction at the same time they were hearing Jeremiah’s preaching, warning them of their own destruction. The description would have given them food for thought and made them feel their vulnerability. Was Jerusalem more fortified against attack than Thebes and Nineveh (Nah. 3:3)? Did they trust in their defenses, or did they trust in Yahweh? If they continued flouting God’s law, would God let the fortress given to them through David and miraculously preserved in the Assyrian assault (2 Kings 18:13–19:35) continue to protect them? Would God send another angel of death into the enemy camp to slay its warriors by plague or sword in their sleep (Isa. 37:36–37)? Any reflective person would have felt his or her own vulnerability before Yahweh in hearing Nahum’s description.
Nahum was read in the centuries that followed the catastrophic falls of Nineveh and Jerusalem to the Babylonian empire. The prophets remembered and described the arrogance of both. The detailed description of Jerusalem’s fall in Lamentations reminds the attentive reader of Nahum that defeat is real and may come even to God’s people when his law and protection are no longer kept. That lament is gruesome but necessary for understanding Nahum’s message in context.
The people were stunned by the fall of Jerusalem (Lam. 2:13). During the siege, infants and babes died of starvation at their mother’s breasts (Nah. 2:11–12). Children, young people, and the elderly starved in the street, and women cannibalized their children (2:20–22). When the wall was breached, people were hunted in the streets of the ghettos and in the caves of the Judean desert (4:18–19). Those who survived were reduced to abject poverty, made to pay for water and wood (5:3–4). Virgins were raped in Zion and young men and boys were enslaved (5:11–13). Jeremiah wondered if Yahweh had rejected the people completely (5:20–22).
In the case of Lamentations, the only words of hope come in the physical center of book. Jeremiah declares his faith through clenched teeth of anguish:
Yet this I call to mind
and therefore I have hope:
Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, “The LORD is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him.” (Lam. 3:21–24)
Israel’s witness (the biblical witness) to the destruction of the wicked has integrity only because they also tell the truth about the judgment of God against themselves. The difference is that the remnant turns to Yahweh in repentance and faith.
The enduring message of Nahum in the context of Scripture’s full counsel is that God is against anyone and will destroy anyone who is rebelliously arrogant. Amos (who prophesied before Assyria enslaved and destroyed the northern ten tribes) made this abundantly clear by drawing the circling net of God’s judgment against the lawlessness and arrogance closer and closer to home. He began with distant Damascus (Amos 1:3–5), Gaza (1:6–8), and Tyre (1:9–10). He moved closer with words against the sins of Edom (1:11–12), Ammon (1:13–15), and Moab (2:1–3). Then Yahweh spoke through Amos against Judah (2:4–5) and at length against the northern kingdom of Israel for their violence against the poor, for economic corruption, for sexual corruption, and for oppressing true faith (2:6–16). Nationalism and nationalistic interests even among God’s chosen people do not protect them from the wrath and judgment of God.
Coming just before Nahum in the canon are Jonah and Micah. In Jonah, forgiveness is extended to the Ninevites when they repent. In Micah, the destruction of Jerusalem is declared for its corrupt government, people, priests, and prophets. Yahweh is against evil, no matter who is involved: Ninevite, Phoenician, pagan, Moslem, Jew, or Christian.
Contemporary Significance
Contemporary Significance
ALTHOUGH FINDING A modern Christian application for the battle scene in Nahum 2 is challenging, there are several possibilities. The first is the relationship between warfare and the good news of the gospel. The second is to see how the Ninevites, once chosen by God to do his work and once forgiven of their sin through repentance, came to be enemies of God. Finally, an examination of the Ninevites’ use of wealth may teach us a lesson about controlling our assets in ways that are pleasing to God.
Good news and warfare. In the preface to the battle scene in Nahum 2 (1:15 is 2:1 in the Heb. text), Nahum writes:
Look, there on the mountains,
the feet of one who brings good news,
who proclaims peace!
Celebrate your festivals, O Judah,
and fulfill your vows.
No more will the wicked invade you;
they will be completely destroyed.
In certain times in the life of the church, images of warfare were used in thinking about the advance of the gospel. The Gospel of Mark in particular presents Jesus’ confrontations with the spiritual enemy in his healing ministry. Paul describes how warfare against enemies is to be engaged in by heaping fiery coals of kindness on their heads (Rom. 12:14–21). The early church took hope in this verse as a promise of the resurrection of the martyrs in the last day—that they would experience victory over the enemies of death and the opponent of life, Satan.13
In spite of the misapplied historical burden of actual war-making in the Crusades, God’s battle against the principalities and powers that enslave lives remains a reality of the Christian life. Paul writes that the war has already been won by the cross, resurrection, and ascension of Christ. The powers of darkness are in submission to him. He has disarmed, made a spectacle of, and triumphed over them by his death on the cross (Col. 2:13–15; cf. 1 Peter 3:22).
As a result, Christians are under attack and need the armor of God. “Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Eph. 6:11–12). God’s armor, given as a gift, includes truth, righteousness, the gospel of peace, faith, salvation, and the word of the Spirit. In suffering for the gospel of peace, Christians live in confidence that nothing “in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:36–39). Like Nahum, we may live in the confidence that God has already determined the outcome of the battle. It was with this conviction that baptismal candidates were asked in the historic catechism, “Do you renounce sin, death, and the devil?” (M. Luther).
It would be a mistake to apply this battle imagery narrowly to the interior life of individual Christians. The purpose of Christ’s victory and the Christian’s confidence is that the gospel of peace may be proclaimed to those still living in bondage. Many people live under the authority of the same powers of evil that ruled in Nineveh. Many unbelievers are still enslaved by sin, death, and the enticements of evil. Paul uses Nahum’s declaration of the battle for the “gospel of peace” to call for public witnesses:
How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” (Rom. 10:14–15; Isa. 52:7; cf. Nah. 1:15)
The battle also calls for discipleship through teaching and explaining the gospel to those whose minds are held captive (2 Cor. 10:3–5). In all these things, the battle and the victory belong not to God’s people but to God. Judah did not defeat Nineveh by itself, the Babylonians did. Whether Judah fights and wins (2 Kings 19) or someone else engages the battle against God’s enemy, Yahweh is victorious and praised. The point is that God’s beloved creation is set free to serve and praise him.
Friend or foe of God? “‘I am against you,’ declares the LORD Almighty” (Nah. 2:13). When Abraham Lincoln came into office, he is reported to have said, “I am going to get rid of all my enemies. I will turn them into friends.” Reconciliation is what God attempted with Nineveh in the days of Jonah, but in Nahum the time had come to “make an end” (1:8). Jacob struggled against a stranger and enemy at the River Jabbok in his struggle to return to his home and to Esau. God had attempted to befriend him years earlier when he ran (at Bethel), but Jacob was noncommittal (Gen. 28:13–22). At the river, God assaulted Jacob and turned him into a friend, giving him the name “Israel,” which means “he strives with God and prevails” (Gen. 32:24–32). God also assaulted Moses after his call because of his failure to circumcise (Ex. 4:24–26).
In each case God was “against” people in order to turn them into friends. Even in the defeat of Nineveh, the possibility remained that Ninevite believers (from the time of Jonah) could rely on the friendship of God (see the introduction to Jonah). Jeremiah could profess his faith even in the horrific ruin that Yahweh brought on Jerusalem (Lam. 3, see above).
The opposition between Yahweh and people may be applied to our own situation from two perspectives. (1) God is against us, for our sake. It is not enough to ask, “Is God for us or against us?” The answer is “both.” The scriptural witness is that because God is “for us,” he stands against our daily tendency to rebel against him. Because of the constant temptation to live self-sufficiently, without reference to God, God confronts us and our communities with our need to confess our sin, accept his friendship, and offer praise to our Maker. God’s consistent attitude toward us is friendship, even when he stands against us, until, as in Nahum, time runs out.
(2) The second application of God as foe in Nahum is in a person’s or a community’s opposition to Yahweh. Over a long period of time, Israel, Assyria, and finally Jerusalem itself demonstrated their opposition to God. They were not interested in the conditions of friendship with the Almighty. They simply wanted a rubber stamp blessing. God is against those who continually demonstrate their opposition to him. He still desires their friendship but pursues it through opposition, not through invitation. Many believe, however, that their opposition to God is to their own advantage. This is the heart of the lie that Yahweh attacks. The creature cannot truly prosper by standing against the Creator. Even in standing as a foe to those who stand against him, God is for his beloved creation. Achtemeier says, “How we as nations or individuals stand in the eyes of God finally determines our death or life.”14 Only when one has known Yahweh’s opposition, confessed one’s sin (Matt. 12:41), and been reconciled can Paul’s words have meaning for us: “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Rom. 8:31b).
Excesses and the moderation of wealth. Nahum 2 focuses a theme that reverberates more subtly through the entire book. Nineveh is drowning in the irresponsible use of its excessive wealth. This word is not simply for the wealthy but for all who use money without reference to God.
Nineveh is like a pool,
and its water is draining away.
“Stop! Stop!” they cry,
but no one turns back.
Plunder the silver!
Plunder the gold!
The supply is endless,
the wealth from all its treasures! (2:8–9)
Other symptoms of their overconfident comfort and consuming lifestyle are found throughout the book. They are drunk from their wine, like dry stubble for burning (1:10). They are numerous and have many allies (1:12). They are full of lies and plunder (3:1), boundless in strength (3:9), and they have fortresses like a full ripe fig tree (3:12); merchants are as numerous as the stars (3:16), guards and officials are like swarms of locusts (3:17), and shepherds and nobles lie down to rest in the midst of a battle (3:18). Nineveh is full of ripe excesses.
The warning of the text to those who have wealth or who use money without moderation is that God takes that wealth away.15 Like a pool being emptied, its water is draining away. The main image that endures for the contemporary world is the control of the flow of the water. The people yell, “Stop! Stop!” but it is too late. The floodgates (levies) are no longer in their control.
Sennacherib had built a big reservoir to collect fresh water from the mountains. Levies controlled the water flow from this reservoir into the Husur River and into the city. The levies let the water into the city moats and canals or kept it out, thus controlling levels.16 The outflow levies controlled the water flowing out of the city. As long as Nineveh controlled the levies, it did what it pleased. When God’s agent Babylon took control, however, the draining of the reservoir into the city became a symbol for what Nineveh had been doing with its wealth and power: extravagantly gathering and flaunting at the expense of all other cultures. It was chastised because it did not control its wealth and power as it controlled its water levies. Because it did not, its water and wealth were both spilled out in unwanted ways.
No one social group within Nineveh is singled out in the book. Nahum uses the collective “you” to speak of the overripe excesses of a society. Nineveh’s life of collective excess ran its course to destruction like an overflowing pool. The warning against excess is not that wealth is necessarily bad. The levy symbolizes the moderate use of wealth and a generous hand to the poor of the world. Without these, a society or a person may drown in their own wealth.
God’s word on giving has many facets. God said at Sinai that a tenth of all income belonged to him for his work in the community, including sustenance for those who did not have an inheritance of land (Lev. 27:33). God also advised that when you give, it should be done freely and ungrudgingly, by opening your hand to the needy and poor (Deut. 15:10–11). Jesus raised the bar by telling the rich young ruler to give everything away before following him (Mark 10:21). In that light, a tithe seems like a bargain. Jesus advised us not to lay up treasures on earth, thereby neglecting heaven and our hearts (Matt. 6:19–21). The psalmist echoed the law that the offering was an integral part of worship when he said, “Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name; bring an offering and come into his courts” (Ps. 96:8).
Jesus chastised the Pharisees for neglecting the important matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faithfulness, telling them that they should attend to them as well as to their tithe (Matt. 23:23). He advised the multitudes to “give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you” (Luke 6:38). Using the floodgate image, God said through Malachi, “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this … and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it” (Mal. 3:10). Great generosity, Paul told the Corinthians, makes us rich in every way (2 Cor. 9:10–11).
By contrast, John warns that anyone who has the world’s goods and closes his or her heart also closes out God’s love altogether (1 John 3:17–18). Paul echoes this belief when he says that those who sow sparingly will reap sparingly (2 Cor. 9:6). He also said that we should give to support the weak, remembering the words of Jesus that “it is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). Those who have the ability to give much should consider it a spiritual gift and give with liberality (Rom. 12:6–8). Finally, Paul echoes the Lord’s word at Sinai about giving freely when he says that God loves a cheerful giver (2 Cor. 9:7).
The total witness of Scripture on the use of wealth is more positive than Nahum’s. Clearly God calls all his people to compassionate and generous giving, with at the very least the first tenth literally belonging to him. The message of Nahum on wealth and the levy is more severe: You have been given the power to control the flow of your money in moderation. If you don’t, God will take control of it for redistribution.