Nahum's Prophecy - Bible Baptist Church

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Capernaum means the city of Nahum. It is where the LORD Jesus spent most of this time.

Nahum is the second part of Jonah because Nahum is aimed at Nineveh just like Jonah was. About 150 years after Jonah preached and the LORD repented of the evil he thought to do against Nineveh, her wickedness again comes before the LORD. This time there is no remedy (Nahum 3:18-19). The significance of 3:18-19 is Assyria has no god that will clear her guilt so she’ll die in her sin.

The Assyrian King Sennacherib overstepped his authority. He’d personally challenged the God of Israel and mounted an attack against Jerusalem. Isaiah said he blasphemed the Holy One of Israel. Isaiah asked rhetorically if it was right for the axe to boast against the lumberjack as though the axe could wield itself. The axe was King Sennacherib of Assyria.

Chapter 1 The LORD will deliver Jerusalem and has commanded the assassination of the Assyrian King Sennacherib (1:11-14)
Chapter 2 King Nebuchadnezzar lays siege to the Assyrian capital Nineveh
Chapter 3 The fall of the Assyrian capital Nineveh at the hands of Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar

Thematic lessons are as follows:

Characteristics of the LORD (jealous in 1:2, revenger in 1:2, slow to anger in 1:3, just in 1:3, all nature is at His command in 1:3ff, good in 1:7, knows them that trust Him in 1:7)
The destruction of God’s enemies is the comfort of God’s people.
- The armor of God seen in feet shod with the preparation of the gospel is an idea that came out of this book of Nahum.
- Nahum 1:15, Isaiah 52:7, Romans 10:15, and Ephesians 6:15
Wickedness personified shows up in every generation and ultimately at the end as Satan incarnate. Wickedness can be defined by God as scoffing and blaspheming himself.
God’s interest in other nations

Before we begin reading this little collection of prophecies there are already a couple of lessons in store for you. Nahum describes the fall of one of the most powerful empires this world has ever seen. This vast and ancient kingdom was reduced to dust. Where thriving commercial enterprises and lavish buildings stood are now the home to strangers digging through the dirt to find memories of it. Generations of people for which this once mighty empire has no relevance. Nahum describes the assassination of one of the world’s most powerful leaders in history. He describes the destruction of one of the most powerful nations this world has ever seen.

Learning to VALUE God’s words

Here’s the first lesson.
God gives you his word very graciously. Then you say, that doesn’t apply and that’s not important to me. When did you get the idea that the words of God revolve around you to decide what’s important and what’s not? You ridicule Jehudi’s penknife and Zedekiah burning the words of God on the hearth and preach don’t take away from the words of God, yet you approach the Bible with your system of theology that says, “I don’t need that, I don’t need that, and I don’t need that.” You’re not trusting God’s word, you’re using God’s word to make a religion in your image. Consequently, your world is very small. Instead of learning, you’ve made it so you can’t know what you don’t know.
For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope (Romans 15:4). These observations of an eternal God about the extinction of a nation are important.
How about this? Every word of God is pure or man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Do you believe that?
- Or do you use those verses when you want to compare your supposed spirituality to someone who doesn’t believe in the Bible as you do?
- Maybe you just pick the parts of the Bible that you like, the verses that say God is for me!
- Or maybe you pick the verses that are about evangelism because that’s the most important thing to you. That reminds me of a farmer who never plants, never prepares his field, he just walks through his field hoping to find some crop somewhere to harvest. He’s continually disappointed; why is there no harvest?! Someone comes along and says, Hey have ever heard of planting seed? To which he replies, “Don’t bother me, the harvest is what’s important. You’re just distracting me from the real work.” The other man says, “But you’ll never have anything to harvest as long as all you’re doing is trying to harvest.”
- Whatever the reason, quit marginalizing and cutting out parts of God’s words to fit your understanding and your goals. Let the LORD inform your goals and your understanding.
Of the millions of books available to mankind, God chose sixty-six and this is one of them. Now, when you accept this and allow God to speak about more things than just John 3:16 you’ll really begin to learn what the LORD wants you to learn and be able to do the work God wants you to do.

Seeing the VANITY of the world

Here’s the second lesson.
The world is full of vanity. How was a global empire reduced to such irrelevance that people have to dig it out of the ground?
Solomon said it best, Then said I in my heart, As it happeneth to the fool, so it happeneth even to me; and why was I then more wise? Then I said in my heart, that this also is vanity. 16 For there is no remembrance of the wise more than of the fool for ever; seeing that which now is in the days to come shall all be forgotten. And how dieth the wise man? as the fool. 17 Therefore I hated life; because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me: for all is vanity and vexation of spirit (Ecclesiastes 2:15-17).
And they that use this world, as not abusing it: for the fashion of this world passeth away (1 Corinthians 7:31). This is certainly wisdom: to navigate a world that is passing away while you are living out eternal life and laying up eternal things.

What VILENESS brought God’s condemnation

The burden Israel bears because of oppression and threats is the burden of Nineveh. It’s the burden found in 2 Kings 19. The burden is in relationship to Israel, not Assyria. The burden describes what Nineveh is to Israel as a weight of reproach that the LORD will lift and remove.
- King Pul of Assyria laid a tax on Israel’s northern tribes in 2 Kings 15:19.
- King Tiglathpilesar of Assyria later conquered Naphtali’s land in the north and exiled the Jews to Assyria in 2 Kings 15:29.
- King Ahaz of Jerusalem pays King Tiglathpileser to help him against Syria. King Ahaz is helped and sends a priest to get blueprints made of the Assyrian temple and altar in Damascus so he can duplicate it in Jerusalem in 2 Kings 16:7-18.
- King Shalmaneser of Assyria exacts a tax on the latest Israeli king in Samaria. But king Hoshea conspires against King Shalmaneser, but the conspiracy is found out. The Assyrian king besieged Samaria and then took it. He then removed Israelites and immigrated people from other nations into Samaria in 2 Kings 17.
- King Sennacherib then takes several cities in Judah when Hezekiah was king in Jerusalem. Hezekiah pays Sennacherib to make him go away in 2 Kings 18. But Sennacherib doesn’t go away. He sends an army to surround Jerusalem in 2 Kings 18. Hezekiah prays and the LORD kills 185,000 Assyrian troops outside Jerusalem’s city walls. Sennacherib returns to Nineveh and is assassinated a little later by his sons.
Two hundred years before the events at the end of Nahum occur, God said he would destroy the city of Nineveh. At that time he had already had it with the nation. In fact, they weren’t even on life support, the LORD had already decided to pull the plug and he sent Jonah to do it.
Asshur in Genesis 10:11 built Nineveh and also became the chief god of the nation. Maybe not from his own doing, but much like the name Washington appears in much of the country including the capital city.
- Cities named after this god.
- Streets named after this god.
- Money with this god’s inscription on it.
- Monuments named after this god.
God and country bear the same name because the land with all its individual parts feeds the god and the god embodies the land.
Artwork and reliefs found in this capital are much like the artwork and statues found in Washington DC. When you enter the palace in Nineveh and when you enter the capital in Washington DC there is artwork of military victories and significant triumphs of the nation.
The idea is that as people collectively brought their offerings to the temple they became a people of god. Temple and palace were the same. King was the priest.
The library in Nineveh was a monument to the psychology of royalty. There was an attempt by the Assyrians, particularly royalty, to gather documents and books from all over the world. Their view was that if history can be observed in decades and centuries then perhaps cycles can be observed. And better yet, cycles of how some all-powerful divine being interacted with humanity generation after generation. The lessons would then be applied to present life. How do we Assyrians either get ahead of the cycles, avoid catastrophe, or change the cycle of our civilization?
Nineveh, was a 1500-year-old city, too ancient and stable to be susceptible to danger. If you visit the site of the city today it is literally mounds of dirt. Whatever is left of the city is buried in the ground just like a body is buried when it’s dead. When excavations began on Nineveh in the 1850s by Layard Nineveh had been wasted for 2,400 years.
- Here’s a time travel experiment. If Washington DC were to be conquered this year. The city becomes a wasteland where no one lives. In the year 4400 AD, future, some future archeologists begin to dig through the dirt of what used to be Washington DC. They unearth pieces of broken pieces of granite with inscriptions of sacrifice and liberty from a nation long dead.
- Yet the God who destroyed the city is still very much alive and dealing with mankind just as He always had.