Day 34 – Saturday -- The Book of Nahum

Day 34 – Saturday

The Book of Nahum

Worse than Obadiah when it comes to vengeance. The last two Hebrew words in this short book are רָעָתְךָ תָּמִיד (ra’ateka tamid), translated, “your endless cruelty.” English translations end with words like suffering…pain…cruelty…malice. Nahum is angry at the city of Nineveh (capitol of Assyria) for its cruelty toward other nations. The source of the cruelty must be wiped out! Can we at least join the author in wishing evil to be stamped out?

We need to understand that Assyria had been exploiting and terrorizing its smaller and weaker neighbors for three centuries. It was the bully of the Middle East who knew no mercy and was savage in its invasions.

King Ashurnasirpal bragged, “I captured many troops alive: I cut off of some their arms and hands; I cut off of others their noses, ears, extremities. I gouged out the eyes of many troops.” King Shalmaneser III bragged about building a pyramid of chopped-off heads. King Ashurnasirpal hung the heads on trees around the conquered town. Commanders often made a show of the enemy body count, stacking corpses like firewood at the city gate. King Sennacherib, who destroyed 46 Jewish cities, said after filling a plain with enemy corpses, “I cut off their testicles, and tore out their privates like seeds of a cucumber.” Sometimes captives were fed to the dogs or pigs. A king put a dog chain on one captured leader and imprisoned him “in a kennel at the eastern gate of Nineveh.” Travelers would stop and gawk. Palace art from Nineveh shows Assyrian soldiers peeling skin off captives. King Ashurnasirpal bragged, “I skinned all the nobles who rebelled against me and hung their skins on the walls.”

Nahum says toward the end of his little tract, every nation would stand and cheer when Assyria/Nineveh finally met its match in the Lord of the universe in 612 BCE.

God is pictured as the Holy Warrior. It’s doesn’t sound politically correct to talk about holy war or a Warrior God. But it is politically correct if we have a sanctified imagination. Military language is used metaphorically in the Second (new) Testament to describe our spiritual battles. Paul tells followers of Jesus to put on military garb: the helmet of salvation, the shield of faith, the belt of truth, and the sword of the Spirit (Ephesians 6.10-17).

To the Corinthians Paul makes it clear that “our warfare” is not carried out with actual weapons or military force. Followers of Jesus engage the “enemy” with words and thoughts and ideas:

Indeed, we live as human beings, but we do not wage war according to human standards; for the weapons of our warfare are not merely human, but they have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle raised up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to obey Christ (2 Cor. 10.3-5).

We’re mature enough to make the distinction, aren’t we? Can’t we use militaristic language in a metaphorical way to denote the spiritual struggle that is part of reality? I think we can as long as we are clear about the poetic nature of the language; and as long as we continually condemn the unnecessary use of real military violence in our world. There is no way of getting around the fact that life is a battle. We fight cancer. We battle against ignorance. We have the war on poverty. We should be mature enough to make distinctions.

The whole Book of Revelation is about the cosmic war between Good and Evil. The violent apocalyptic language is necessary to paint the picture of a reality too deep for words. Yet, in our explanations and interpretations of any book of apocalyptic images, we need to be clear about the nature of the genre.



Back to the question of vengeance in Nahum:

 J.J.M. Roberts of the Princeton Theological Seminary forcefully rejects the idea that Nahum itself is un-Christian, and turns the argument back on the critics:

One should beware of any bogus morality that dismisses vengeance as both inappropriate to humans and unworthy of God. . . . While the desire to see vengeance done can be twisted and corrupted like any other human desire, it arises out of a sense of justice, and vengeance cannot be discarded without discarding the concern for justice as well. . . . [W]ithout this frightening side . . . , one could misread the portrait of the loving God as that of a passionless, doting, and undemanding dispenser of cheap grace. 

The other point to remember is that both Nahum and Jonah sit near each other in the Hebrew Bible. The dialectic of these two books make for a balanced approach to our hearts and our actions.


Finish this: What I’m battling right now is…..