Commentary on Nahum

The hand of the Lord was certainly severe in its punishment of the northern kingdom. The whip God had wielded to carry out His chastisement was the kingdom of Assyria, whose main seat was the city of Nineveh.

Gone was the generation that repented in fasting and sackcloth when the prophet Jonah announced their imminent destruction (Jonah 3:5). The Nineveh of Nahum's time had exhausted God's patience. The description of God rising from His throne to execute judgment is terrifying. There is no way Nineveh will escape its punishment unscathed.

Calvin reminds us: “The Prophet again teaches us that everything he prophesied concerning the destruction of the city of Nineveh was to this end: that God, by this notable evidence, would show that He cared for His people, and that He had not forgotten the covenant He had made with the children of Abraham.” His vengeance does not, in any way, annul what He had decreed to do through His chosen people.

The executioner of the northern kingdom, the Assyrian Empire, will in turn be overthrown. Nahum prophesies from the southern kingdom because his purpose is to give them a strong lesson in justice and faithfulness to the Covenant. The prophet Isaiah had written: “All the nations are as nothing before Him; they are accounted by Him as less than nothing and emptiness” (Isaiah 40:17). Assyria may be very fierce, very powerful, and extremely arrogant, but it is less than nothing in the estimation of the God of Israel. Who will stop Him? Who can stand before His judgment?

Let us accompany Nahum as he presents, as God's prosecutor, his case against Nineveh. And let all men learn to honor the Son (Psalm 2).

Pages: 120

Dimensions: 14.6 x 22 x 0.5 cm

ISBN: 9789930531587