Nahum 1:7

The first verse is the book’s heading, the kind of title line that opens other prophets’ books too (Isaiah 1:1, Hosea 1:1). In a few words it names the city the message concerns, the kind of message it is, and the man who received it.

“Burden” translates massâʼ, a noun from the verb “to lift” or “to carry”. In the prophets it means a weighty, authoritative word from God, very often a word of judgment, and it heads other prophecies against nations, such as “The burden of Babylon” (Isaiah 13:1) and “The burden of the word of the LORD” in Zechariah 9:1. The word fits both ends of the message. Nahum carries a solemn charge in speaking it, and Nineveh will bear the weight of what it announces. A burden of this kind is a decree from God, as certain as the one who gives it.

Nahum calls his message “the book of the vision”. It was written down as a lasting record, and it came by a châzôwn, a vision, from the root châzâh, “to see”. The word most often means a revelation from God, and here it marks Nahum’s message as God’s own word, given through him. The word of our God stands for ever (Isaiah 40:8), and so what Nahum saw was sure to come to pass.

Nahum is “the Elkoshite”, ʼElqôshîy, a man of Elkosh. Where Elkosh lay is uncertain, and places in Judah, in Galilee and even in northern Mesopotamia have been suggested. The name ties the prophecy to a real man from a real place, with a word for a real city. His own name, Nahum, means “comfort” or “consolation”. The book is a burden of doom for Nineveh, and for that very reason it was comfort to Judah, which had suffered at Nineveh’s hands. The God who judges the oppressor is the deliverer of the oppressed.

Nineveh was the capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, the great power of the eighth and seventh centuries BC. Assyria was known for its cruelty in war, with mass deportations, the impaling and flaying of captives and the wholesale destruction of cities, and its name spread terror through the region. It was an idolatrous nation as well. Nineveh itself was heavily fortified with massive walls, and to human eyes it was beyond the reach of any army. Judah had paid Assyria tribute and suffered its invasions (2 Kings 18:13–16), above all in the reign of King Hezekiah, when Sennacherib besieged Jerusalem and the LORD delivered the city (2 Kings 18–19).

Nineveh had once turned to God. About a century before Nahum, the city repented at Jonah’s preaching, and God spared it (Jonah 3:5–10). That repentance was short-lived. By Nahum’s day the city had gone back to its violence and oppression, growing rich through plunder, and God’s patience had reached its limit. So Nahum’s message is the reverse of Jonah’s. Jonah’s warning opened the way to repentance, and Nahum announces a destruction that is sure to come. He spoke some time between 663 BC, when Assyria destroyed the city of Thebes, an event the book itself recalls (Nahum 3:8–10), and 612 BC, when Nineveh fell.

Verses 2–8 are the foundation for everything after them. They form a poem that follows the order of the Hebrew alphabet through part of its length, an incomplete acrostic, and its subject is God himself. The particular words against Nineveh begin at verse 9 and run through the rest of Nahum 1, and Nahum 2 and Nahum 3 describe the city’s fall. So before we see the judgment, we meet the Judge, and we learn that Nineveh’s fall comes from who he is. He is the eternal Judge who judges the world in righteousness (Psalm 9:7–8), and every nation, however strong, is under his rule.

The poem opens with a sentence that gathers up its whole theme: “God is jealous, and the LORD revengeth; the LORD revengeth, and is furious; the LORD will take vengeance on his adversaries, and he reserveth wrath for his enemies.”

The word for God here is ʼêl, the short name that means God, which the lexicons also give the sense “mighty”. At the head of this verse it fits a God about to act in strength. He is qannôwʼ, jealous, a word that takes in both jealousy and anger. God’s jealousy is his passionate zeal for his own honour, for his covenant and for his people. He claims the whole worship of his people and guards fiercely what is rightly his, as the covenant warnings of Exodus 34:14 show.

Verse 3 holds verse 2 in balance. “The LORD is slow to anger” uses ʼaph, the nose or nostril, a word that came to mean anger from the rapid breathing of someone in a rage. “Slow to anger” is ʼarek ʼappayim, literally “long of nostrils”, and it means patient and forbearing. God holds back his anger and gives time for repentance. This is how he proclaimed his name to Moses, “merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth”, and in the same breath he said he would by no means clear the guilty (Exodus 34:6–7). The psalmist repeats it: the LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger (Psalm 103:8). Nineveh had known this patience in Jonah’s day.

“And great in power” follows at once. kôach is strength, might, the ability to do what one wills. God’s slowness to anger is deliberate grace, chosen by one who has all the strength he needs to act at once.

“And will not at all acquit the wicked” uses nâqâh, to be clean or clear, to be held guiltless or left unpunished. The Hebrew states the verb twice, a construction that makes it emphatic, and the KJV’s “not at all” catches the force of it. The guilty will surely answer to him.

The second half of verse 3 turns from what God is to what he does with his power. “The LORD hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm.” The most violent forces in nature are paths he walks and instruments he uses to carry out his purposes, above all in judgment. The nations credited storms to their storm gods, and Nahum gives them to the LORD, the God of Israel. Job heard the LORD answer him out of the whirlwind (Job 38:1), and Psalm 29 praises the voice of the LORD over the same powers. “And the clouds are the dust of his feet.” A man walking along a road raises a little dust, and the great clouds of heaven are that dust to the LORD. The picture shows his greatness and the ease with which he commands the heavens.

Verse 4 shows that power at work. “He rebuketh the sea.” gâʻar means to rebuke or scold, and God speaks it to the sea as if to a rebel, and the sea gives way. Israel remembered such a day: “He rebuked the Red sea also, and it was dried up: so he led them through the depths, as through the wilderness” (Psalm 106:9). They remembered too how the waters of Jordan stood and rose up upon an heap before them. In Scripture the sea stands for untamed power, and a psalm says to the LORD, “Thou rulest the raging of the sea: when the waves thereof arise, thou stillest them.” Job says, “He divideth the sea with his power, and by his understanding he smiteth through the proud” (Job 26:12).

He “maketh it dry, and drieth up all the rivers.” The verb chârab means to dry up, and in its other sense to lie waste, ruined so that settled life is no longer possible there. Seas and rivers were the sources of life and food, and the God who dries them can turn any land into a waste.

Then the drought reaches the richest country Judah knew. “Bashan languisheth, and Carmel, and the flower of Lebanon languisheth.” Bashan was famous for its rich pastures and its oaks, Carmel for its vineyards and olive groves, and Lebanon for its great cedars. ʼâmal means to droop, wither, fade or grow feeble, and the verse says it twice. If these proverbial places of abundance wither at God’s rebuke, then a city that looked as secure and flourishing as they did lies open to his judgment too. The prophets use the drying of the waters and the withering of the land as signs of God’s fierce anger and of creation undone (Jeremiah 4:23–26), and Isaiah says that the LORD brings princes to nothing (Isaiah 40:23–24).

Verse 5 widens the picture. “The mountains quake at him.” râʻash means to shake or tremble violently, the word for an earthquake and also for people trembling in fear. Mountains are the picture of strength and permanence, and they shake at him. “And the hills melt.” mûwg means to melt, dissolve or flow down, and figuratively to faint with fear, and the hills run like wax before a fire. A psalm says the hills melted like wax at the presence of the LORD (Psalm 97:5), and Micah sees the mountains melt under the LORD’s feet (Micah 1:4).

“And the earth is burned at his presence.” pânîym is the face, and from it come the senses “front” and “presence”. The earth burns before the face of God, so God himself, coming near, is the cause of all this upheaval. The scene would have recalled to Judah the LORD’s appearing at Sinai. Then the circle reaches its widest: “yea, the world, and all that dwell therein.” The inhabited world and every creature living in it stand under his power.

Verse 6 asks the question the earlier verses have been leading to. “Who can stand before his indignation? and who can abide in the fierceness of his anger?” zaʻam, indignation, is God’s deep displeasure with sin, a strong and righteous anger that carries the weight of his judgment. “Fierceness” is chârôwn, a burning of anger, anger kindled like a fire, and it is joined to ʼaph, the word for anger from verse 3. To “stand” is ʻâmad, and to “abide” is qûwm, to rise up and stand firm. The two questions say the same thing twice, and the answer they expect is plain: no one. A psalm asks it in the same way: “Thou, even thou, art to be feared: and who may stand in thy sight when once thou art angry?” (Psalm 76:7). Revelation asks it again on the last day: “For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?” (Revelation 6:17).

Then the questions give way to statements. “His fury is poured out like fire.” Fury is chêmâh, heat or rage, from a root meaning to be hot, the word that made God “master of wrath” in verse 2. “Poured out” is nâthak, to pour, to flow forth or melt, and “fire” is ʼêsh. God’s fury runs out like a stream of fire, overwhelming and consuming. “For our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29). “And the rocks are thrown down by him.” tsûwr is rock or cliff, and nâthats means to tear down, pull down or break down. Rocks are the picture of what stands firm and unmoved, and God breaks them down. If the rocks of the earth fall before him, the walls of Nineveh will fall as well.

After five verses of storm and fire, verse 7 speaks to those who belong to God: “The LORD is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble; and he knoweth them that trust in him.” This is the hinge of the passage. The God who is a consuming fire to his enemies is a fortress to those who trust him, and both are true of the same God at the same time.

ṭôwb, good, is a very broad word. It covers what is morally right and also what is pleasant, beneficial, beautiful and bountiful. Said of the LORD, it means that he is good in himself and disposed to do good to his creation, and above all to his covenant people. His goodness is his very nature, so every one of his acts flows from it, his judgments included.

He is “a strong hold”, mâʻôwz, a stronghold, refuge or place of safety, and the word can name a person who gives that safety, as God does here. Judah lived in fear of an empire that looked unbeatable, and their God was a fortress beyond that empire’s reach. “The day of trouble” is any time of distress: the danger of a nation under Assyria’s shadow, the crises of a single life, and the day when God’s judgment falls on the wicked and his faithful are kept safe.

Scripture sings of this refuge again and again. “I will say of the LORD, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust” (Psalm 91:2). “The name of the LORD is a strong tower: the righteous runneth into it, and is safe” (Proverbs 18:10). Isaiah praises God as “a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat, when the blast of the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall” (Isaiah 25:4). And the psalmist calls God our refuge and strength, “a very present help in trouble” (Psalm 46:1).

Verse 8 begins with “But”, and the word sets the fate of God’s enemies beside the safety of those he knows. “But with an overrunning flood he will make an utter end of the place thereof.” “Overrunning” is ʻâbar, to cross over or pass through, and the flood it describes sweeps over every barrier and beyond. People who lived where the Tigris and the Euphrates flooded knew how such water destroys everything in its path. “An utter end” is kâlâh, a finishing, a complete end, and “the place thereof” is Nineveh, the city with its power and its very existence. The judgment is total and final, and Nineveh fell in 612 BC.

“And darkness shall pursue his enemies.” chôshek is darkness in the plain sense, and in Scripture it also pictures misery, destruction, death and sorrow. Here it is the darkness of God’s judgment, the loss of his favour and of all hope, and the verse makes it a pursuer that follows his enemies wherever they run. Anyone who escaped the flood would find the darkness close behind. Joel describes the day of the LORD as a day of darkness (Joel 2:2), and Isaiah speaks of the LORD coming to judge the earth (Isaiah 26:21).

So the poem comes to rest on the two truths it has held together from the start. The LORD will take vengeance on his adversaries, and he is a stronghold to everyone who trusts him. Verses 7 and 8 stand side by side so that we see both at once.

The God of this passage is the God we meet in Jesus Christ. All things were created by him, in heaven and on earth (Colossians 1:16), and he is the Word made flesh (John 1:14), in whom God’s word comes to us in person. He came first to save the world (John 3:17), and the patience of the God who is slow to anger shows in his ministry, in his willingness to suffer for sinners and in his continued offer of grace.

Nahum asks who can stand before God’s anger, and the cross is God’s answer. Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), and on the cross he received the indignation that sinners deserved. He “bare our sins in his own body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24). He cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46), bearing the darkness of separation from God. He became the propitiation for our sins and satisfied God’s justice for all who believe (Romans 3:23–26). So the God who “will not at all acquit the wicked” keeps his justice whole and declares sinners righteous by faith in Christ. Christ was made sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21), so that believers can stand righteous before God on the day of judgment, and being justified by faith we have peace with God (Romans 5:1).

Christ is also the strong hold of verse 7. He has delivered his people from darkness and brought them into his kingdom (Colossians 1:13–14). Whoever has seen him has seen the Father (John 14:9), so the goodness of the LORD became visible in his healing, his teaching and his sacrificial love. He is the good shepherd who says, “I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine” (John 10:14), and “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27). All the promises of God, of goodness, refuge and being known, are yea in him (2 Corinthians 1:20).

And Christ is the one through whom God’s judgment will finally be done. The Father has committed all judgment to the Son (John 5:22), who will judge the living and the dead (2 Timothy 4:1). The Lord who has his way in the whirlwind calmed the storm with a word, and the clouds that are the dust of his feet are the clouds on which the Son of Man will come with power and great glory (Matthew 24:30). He is the rider on the white horse, the righteous Judge (Revelation 19:11–16), and he will be revealed from heaven in flaming fire against his enemies (2 Thessalonians 1:7–9). Every knee will bow to him and every tongue confess (Philippians 2:10–11, Romans 14:11). After the judgment come new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness (2 Peter 3:10–13). The first heaven and earth pass away (Revelation 21:1), God wipes away every tear (Revelation 21:4), and in the holy city “there shall be no night there” (Revelation 21:25).

This passage gives us a God whose patience is real and whose justice is sure. He sees every cruelty the strong inflict on the weak, and he answers it in his own time, as he answered Nineveh. For people who had suffered under Assyria that was comfort, as the prophet’s own name promised. For anyone set against God, it is a warning that his patience has an end, and verse 3 shows that he is slow to anger so that the guilty have time to turn.

At the centre of the storm stands verse 7. The God who shakes the mountains and pours out his fury like fire is good, and he is a stronghold for those who trust him. He knows them, and he keeps them in the day of trouble. In Christ that refuge stands open, because he has borne the very indignation verse 6 asks about. Whoever trusts him meets the day of trouble, and the day of judgment, safe within the strong hold that is the LORD himself.