Destruction For Nineveh, Majesty For Israel (Nahum 2)

 

Nahum is looking ahead to the fall of Nineveh in August 612 B.C. S. D. Snyman: ‘For many people living in well-established and stable democracies, a situation of severe oppression by a foreign ruler is hard to imagine.’ But it not about democracy; it is about godliness.

  1. God’s enemies will be left in tatters.
    • 2:1 – God is mocking Nineveh.
    • Babylonians are at the door – 2:3-8. Nineveh was on the Tigris River, and is thought to mean ‘house of fishes’. Its end came with a flood, whether literal or metaphorical or both. Verse 7 seems to refer to the queen of Assyria.
    • 2:9. We are judged by how we have judged. Now, the plunderers are plundered. Assyrian kings often portrayed themselves as lions, and that explains the imagery in verses 11-13.
  2. There will be judgment for some, majesty for others.
    • 2:2. Calvin does not translate this in terms of restoring but of ‘turning away’. He sees it as a proclamation of judgment. But virtually all the translations go with something like ‘restoring’.
    • there have been promises of something better – see 1:7, 15. Note Matt.25:31-34, 41, 46.
  3. God is the sovereign Lord of all history.
    • God brings this all about – 2:13. God says: ‘Behold, I am against you.’ In verse 2 He was restoring the majesty of Jacob and Israel.
    • God is the Lord of everything. And He is holy – Heb.10:31; 1 Thess.1:9-10.