Reflections on Nahum 3

Reflections on Chapter 3

Enormous wickedness ordinarily attends great confluences of men. And curses, shame, contempt, and destruction, are the certain and final issue. Little reason than have been to be proud of what can be so quickly taken from them, or rendered their plague. But if our companions in guilt or grandeur have been ruined, it is time for us to take warning and repent. And if God be against us, who can be for us! Useless are all means of preservation in the day of His wrath. Unstable are the most exalted stations on earth. And they, who have rendered others miserable, will certainly be themselves reduced to misery at last.

Reflections on Nahum 2

Reflections on Chapter 2

Alas, what fearful punishment do injuries done to God’s people incur! And at what expense and labor demand destroy one another! But terrible are the weakest nations when God animates them; and pitiful and dastardly the most mighty and numerous when he fights against them. Unavailing are honor, wealth, number, or valor, in the day of his wrath. And it is terrible to have our consciences laden with guilt in an evil day, in which everything dear is taken from us. Awful is it for men to damn their souls by fraudulent attempts to aggrandize themselves and families: and dreadful is the case of oppressors, murderers, and blasphemers, when God rises up to punish them, and death and hell shut their mouths.

Reflections on Nahum 1

The devotional reflections in the next 3 posts, on Nahum, Chapters 1-3 respectively, as well as the concluding observations are from the Self-Interpreting Bible, by John Brown of Haddington (1722-1787). My copy was printed in 1855. 

Reflections on Chapter 1

It is terrible to have God as our enemy; but infinitely happy to have Him as our friend. Great and daring provocations of Him, and injuries done to His people, will certainly issue in men’s great and irresistible destruction; yea, nothing more plainly presages their ruin than carnal security and self-confidence: and their plots against Him but hasten it upon themselves and families. Men’s pride always lays them low; and shameful sins bring on shameful punishments: but God’s people shall be delivered from all their oppressors at last. And in this, but chiefly in the other world, they shall have blessed opportunities of celebrating the praises, and performing the solemn services, of Jehovah their gracious Deliverer. And great is the mercy to a land when Gospel ordinances have free course and are glorified.

Nahum 3:8-19 (Part 3)

8 Are you better than Thebes that sat by the Nile, with water around her, her rampart a sea, and water her wall? 9 Cush was her strength; Egypt too, and that without limit; Put and the Libyans were her helpers. 10 Yet she became an exile; she went into captivity; her infants were dashed in pieces at the head of every street; for her honored men lots were cast, and all her great men were bound in chains. 11 You also will be drunken; you will go into hiding; you will seek a refuge from the enemy. 12 All your fortresses are like fig trees with first-ripe figs—if shaken they fall into the mouth of the eater. 13 Behold, your troops are women in your midst. The gates of your land are wide open to your enemies; fire has devoured your bars. 14 Draw water for the siege; strengthen your forts; go into the clay; tread the mortar; take hold of the brick mold! 15 There will the fire devour you; the sword will cut you off. It will devour you like the locust. Multiply yourselves like the locust; multiply like the grasshopper! 16 You increased your merchants more than the stars of the heavens. The locust spreads its wings and flies away. 17 Your princes are like grasshoppers, your scribes like clouds of locusts settling on the fences in a day of cold— when the sun rises, they fly away; no one knows where they are. 18 Your shepherds are asleep, O king of Assyria; your nobles slumber. Your people are scattered on the mountains with none to gather them. 19 There is no easing your hurt; your wound is grievous. All who hear the news about you clap their hands over you.  For upon whom has not come your unceasing evil?

Let’s ask a crucial question: How is the foregoing message a representation of the Gospel? Nahum 1:15 as quoted by Paul in Romans 10, call is euanggelion, i.e., the Gospel. This is why I have repeatedly read Christ’s statements in Luke 24. We have it on no less authority than Christ’s own that all of Scripture regards Him. Hence we are misreading this book if we read it in a way that is not Christocentric.

Next week we will do a devotional survey of each chapter individually. Then on the 30^th, I’d like to wrap this semester up by defending our method. In other words, I want to consider why we must read and exegete Scripture in a covenantal and Christocentric way – and why any other way is both deficient and erroneous. But before we get side-tracked let’s get back to the subject at hand and just consider two final thoughts.

Looking over this passage as a whole we see two important lessons:

I. Nineveh already had examples of nations who had behaved as she had and were no longer in existence.

II. Confidence placed in anything or anyone but God is ill-placed trust.

            A. Nineveh trusted their own strength

            B. Nineveh trusted their natural defenses

            C. Nineveh trusted their great population

            D. Nineveh trusted their great walls and gates

            E. Nineveh trusted their kings and princes

            F. Nineveh trusted their ability to recover

            G. Nineveh trusted their false gods.

Nahum 3:8-19 (Part 2)

8 Are you better than Thebes that sat by the Nile, with water around her, her rampart a sea, and water her wall? 9 Cush was her strength; Egypt too, and that without limit; Put and the Libyans were her helpers. 10 Yet she became an exile; she went into captivity; her infants were dashed in pieces at the head of every street; for her honored men lots were cast, and all her great men were bound in chains. 11 You also will be drunken; you will go into hiding; you will seek a refuge from the enemy. 12 All your fortresses are like fig trees with first-ripe figs—if shaken they fall into the mouth of the eater. 13 Behold, your troops are women in your midst. The gates of your land are wide open to your enemies; fire has devoured your bars. 14 Draw water for the siege; strengthen your forts; go into the clay; tread the mortar; take hold of the brick mold! 15 There will the fire devour you; the sword will cut you off. It will devour you like the locust. Multiply yourselves like the locust; multiply like the grasshopper! 16 You increased your merchants more than the stars of the heavens. The locust spreads its wings and flies away. 17 Your princes are like grasshoppers, your scribes like clouds of locusts settling on the fences in a day of cold— when the sun rises, they fly away; no one knows where they are. 18 Your shepherds are asleep, O king of Assyria; your nobles slumber. Your people are scattered on the mountains with none to gather them. 19 There is no easing your hurt; your wound is grievous. All who hear the news about you clap their hands over you.  For upon whom has not come your unceasing evil?

The 2^nd detail I find interesting is the reference to being hidden or hiding. There are scholars who see here a prediction remarkably fulfilled in the state in which the ruins of Nineveh were found. Centuries past in which there was no visible record at such a place as Nineveh ever even existed. And I have reference this fact several times during our study that skeptical scholars doubted the existence of Nineveh, and therefore doubted the veracity of Scripture. And it was only in the mid-19^th century when Nineveh was in fact discovered. Nonetheless, it is very likely that the reference to being hidden or hiding predicts the fact that Nineveh will seek help from political allies in much the same way Thebes sought help from her political allies when she was attacked by Nineveh.

Verse 12. We have in verse 12 indication of how easy the fall of Nineveh will be. It is compared to a tree with ripe figs they can simply be shaken and fruit will fall off the tree. It seems to be the consensus among scholars that the reference to the first ripe figs expresses the rapidity and ease of the capture of Nineveh. We seem to have an indication of this from other passages, such as Isaiah 28:4 and Revelation 6:13.

Verse 13. Earlier I mentioned the underlying sarcasm in the passage, and in verse 13 this is very clearly seen. The passage reads, “Behold, your troops are women in your midst.” This is an archaic way of saying, “You throw like a girl!” By comparing their soldiers to women a prophet is insulting the city. It is a very snarky way of saying, “you have no one up to the challenge.” This language appears in other passages of Scripture as well (Isa. 19:16; Jer. 50:37; 51:30).

You will recall that several weeks ago I mentioned that the Assyrian king, rather than be captured by the enemy and subjected to who knows what humiliation, chose to burn himself and his family alive along with all his treasures. This effectively set the gates of the city on fire and this is a fact attested to by ancient historians.

The sarcasm is ramped up in verses 14, 15 and 16. Here we find Nineveh being told to get their act together and put up a fight. Yet they are told that nothing they will do will be of any avail. You’ll notice in this passage several references to locusts. If you have ever seen any documentaries or read anything about the devastation which locusts have wreaked upon him of the African nations you will understand how poignant this language is. In the ancient world nothing was feared more than a horde of locusts. In fact, the Hebrew language has 10 words for locust. You’ll remember that one of the devastating plagues in Egypt was a plague of devouring locusts. They travel in swarms numbering in the hundreds of millions. They have been measured in densities up to 500 tons of locusts per square mile. Swarms like this can travel hundreds of miles eating every leaf in their path. In 1954 a series of 50 swarms of locusts invaded Kenya. The largest of the Kenyan swarms covered 200 km² and had an estimated population of 10 billion individual locusts. In total hundred thousand tons of locusts descend upon the nation of Kenya covering an area of 1000 km². We’re talking a locust population in excess of 50 billion. What is interesting in this passage is that Nineveh is being warned that even if she were to multiply herself to such gigantic proportions this will avail her nothing. She will fall and she will fall hard. Not only will she fall, but it will be easy. A 2^nd reference to locusts deals with the way the swarm mysteriously vanishes after taking its fill. In the days before Doppler radar, a swarm of locusts could descend upon an area and move on, and no one knew where it had gone. Nahum tells us that this is what the nobility of Nineveh will look like. They will be there one day and gone the next and no one will know where they have gone.