Translation & Sermon by
Nate Wilson for Christ The Redeemer Church of Manhattan, KS, 25 Jan.
2025
Omitting greyed-out text
should bring presentation time down
around 40 minutes.
Nahum is the next prophetic book after Micah. Nahum doesn’t show up in the history books of the Bible, nor does he talk about himself in his book, so we know very little about him.
The name Nahum means “comfort” in the Hebrew language, which may have something to do with his message.
The only other piece of information he gives us about himself is that he is “the Elkoshite,” but it is not known with certainty what that name “Elkosh” refers to. Most Bible scholars think it is the name of an obscure town lost to antiquity, although some think it is a forefather’s name1. There are some interesting theories, though:
The great Latin Bible translator Jerome wrote around 400 AD of a Jewish tradition that Elkosh was an old town in Galilee. His contemporary, Cyril of Alexandria, however, said that it was in Judea.
Others have even suggested that Caperneum in the New Testament is Nahum’s hometown, because “Caper” means “village” and so Caper-neum could mean “village of Nahum” – which would put him in Samaritan land outside of Judea. C.F. Keil, however, in his 1891 commentary on Nahum called the Caperneum theory “altogether visionary” – meaning they were imagining things.
Others have suggested that Elkosh refers to an Assyrian city ‘al-Kush’ on the banks of the Tigris River near Nineveh2. However, Homer Hailey, in his 1972 commentary said that was “most doubtful” because archaeologists have not discovered any town there by that name existing until some 2,500 years after Nahum.
The Jewish Soncino commentary on Nahum published in 1994 says that “internal evidence points to his hailing from Judah,” that “he was among the captives taken by the Assyrian conqueror, and that he died somewhere on the banks of the Tigris.” The great 19th century Hebrew scholar C. F. Keil took issue with that theory, commenting that Judah is too central to the book for it to be written by an exile, and there are no “allusions to the situation and circumstances of the exiles” outside of Judea, such as are in the book of Lamentations, for instance. Based on the many similarities with the book of Isaiah, Keil thought that Nahum was originally from Galilee but lived in Judea.
Of all the other prophets in the Bible, the Prophet Isaiah alone shares all three prophecy descriptions that are found in the first verse of Nahum:
“Burden/oracle” literally “that which is carried” – this word was used in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, as well as Habakkuk, Zecheriah, and Malachi as a prophecy of coming punishment.
The second descriptive word for Nahum’s prophecy is “book” – literally a “record,” which could have been written on clay tablets, parchment scrolls, or papyrus books, like the prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah.
The third word is “vision” – which was was supposed to be a revelation from God to a prophet, such as that also given to Isaiah, Daniel, Habakkuk, and Obadiah.
The time and place of Nahum’s prophecy can be narrowed down to about a hundred-year timeperiod between the destruction of the Northern kingdom of Israel and the destruction of the Southern kingdom of Judah, but commentators are not agreed on anything more specific than that.
100 to 150 years before Nahum, God had told the prophet Jonah to “Get up, Go to Nineveh (the great city), and Call upon her, for their evil has gone up before my face.” (Jonah 1:2, NAW) I’m assuming you know the story of Jonah: The king of Assyria paid attention to Jonah’s warning and commanded his nation to humble themselves and to worship Jonah’s God and to plead for mercy, and so God was merciful to them and held back His judgment.
Now Nahum comes along in the mid-to-late 600’s (maybe early 700’s BC)3, with another prophecy concerning Nineveh, but this time the message is delivered to Judah, not to Nineveh, and there is no mercy.
Nahum 3:8 mentions Assyria’s victory over Egypt at No-Amon, which historians have pegged at 664 BC, during Manasseh’s reign, but scholars don’t all agree on whether this was a prediction of the future or an account of a event in the recent past.
About half the commentators I read placed Nahum during Hezekiah’s reign, a little less than 100 years before the fall of Nineveh, while the other half placed Nahum during Josiah’s reign, a little less than 20 years before the fall of Nineveh.
The Jewish Soncino commentary on Micah plausibly suggests that, since Nahum doesn’t mention the need for Israel to repent, perhaps Nahum prophecied “soon after the religious reformation of King Josiah” which was around 622 BC, while there was a revival going on in Judea, and that would be just ten years before the fall of Nineveh in 612 BC4.
At any rate, this prophecy was made while Assyria was the superpower of the world, but shortly after this prophecy was made, Assyria was taken over by factions within its own empire – the northern Medes and southern Chaldeans, and shortly thereafter they destroyed the Assyrian capitol city of Nineveh, fulfilling Nahum’s prophecy down to the last detail.
Nahum is so specific with details – and he prophecied such unexpected details – that it couldn’t possibly have been the product of human guesswork about the future of Nineveh.
For instance, there was no army in the world capable of threatening Nineveh. According to first century Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, Nineveh had 1,200 towers, each 200 feet high, its ordinary wall 100 feet high – and so wide that it could support three lanes of cars. Famine could not reduce it, for its 60 miles of circumference enclosed space for plenty of cattle, and it could, within its walls, grow enough grain for its population of 600,000. So, when Cyaxeres’ parched-together army approached Nineveh, the Ninevites just scoffed at them. And yet, Nineveh lost, just as Nahum prophesied.
Moreover, Nahum prophecied that the city would be breached due to flooding and that the city would be burned, neither of which would have been expected, but that is exactly what happened.
Furthermore, in those days, no conqueror would ever destroy a city he conquered. It would be foolish to put all that construction to waste by destroying it! Armies would always keep the cities they conquered to make them into another fort for themselves, and yet Nahum’s prophecy came true that Nineveh would be made a wasteland instead of another fortress for the Medes and Persians.
Liberal scholars say that Nahum so specifically and accurately described the surprising and unexpected events of the fall of Nineveh, that he must have been an eyewitness writing his book after the fact, but if that were the case, there would be no reason to pretend that he was a prophet who had seen it in a “vision,” because it would have already happened! Furthermore, the Jews wouldn’t have given his book a place in the Bible if he had committed such an obvious pretense. No, this vision came before the destruction of Nineveh, and God intended it to be a testament to His sovereignty in the affairs of nations.
What was going on in the world at this time?
Since Jonah’s time, the Assyrians had conquered the northern kingdom of Israel (with its capitol city of Samaria) and had resettled it with foreigners, then they had invaded the southern kingdom of Judah, almost (but not quite) conquering Jerusalem.
John Calvin’s commentary on Nahum (published in 1559) notes, “Though indeed they were [a foreign country], God was pleased to show them favor by teaching them through the ministry and labours of JONAH: and their repentance was not altogether feigned. Since then they were already endued with some knowledge of the true God, the less excusable was their cruelty, when they sought to oppress the kingdom of Israel. They indeed knew that nation was sacred to God: what they did then was... an outrage against God Himself.”
E. B. Pusey, in his voluminous commentary on Nahum (published in 1880) also commented on this: “The prophet twice repeats the characteristic expression, ‘What will he devise so vehemently against the LORD?’ [D]evising evil against the LORD… was exactly the character of Sennacherib, whose wars, like those of his forefathers (as appears from the cuneiform inscriptions) were religious wars, and who blasphemously compared God to the local deities of the countries which his forefathers or himself had destroyed.”
F.W. Farrar, in his commentary on The Minor Prophets (p.148, published in 1890), wrote, concerning Assyrian culture at its prime, “Judged from the vaunting inscriptions of her kings, no power more useless, more savage, more terrible, ever cast its gigantic shadow on the page of history as it passed on the way to ruin. The kings of Assyria tormented the miserable world. They exult to record how ‘space failed for corpses’; how unsparing a destroyer is their goddess Ishtar; how they flung away the bodies of soldiers like so much clay; how they made pyramids of human heads; how they burned cities; how they filled populous lands with death and devastation; how they reddened broad deserts with carnage of warriors; how they scattered whole countries with impaled ‘heaps of men’ on stakes, and strewed the mountains and choked rivers with dead bones; how they cut off the hands of kings and nailed them on the walls, and left their bodies to rot with bears and dogs on the entrance gates of cities; how they employed nations of captives in making brick in fetters; how they cut down warriors like weeds, or smote them like wild beasts in the forests, and covered pillars with the flayed skins of rival monarchs.”
Meanwhile in the kingdom of Judea, Nahum was a prophet, along with Zephaniah, Jeremiah, and Habakkuk, and the kingdom was ruled, in succession, by the faithful (but fickle) King Hezekiah, his absolutely dreadful son Manasseh, and his young son Josiah.
Nahum’s prophecy of the downfall of Nineveh is portrayed as good news, so his prophecy is not direct towards Ninevites, as Jonah’s had been. Rather, through Nahum, God supernaturally informs His people in Judea about His sovereignty and justice in current events.
“Nahum has one sentence to pronounce, the judgments of God upon the power of this world, which had sought to annihilate the kingdom of God. God, in His then-kingdom in Judah, and the world, were come face to face. What was to be the issue? The entire final utter overthrow of whatever opposed God. Nahum opens then with the calm majestic declaration of the majesty of God…” ~E. B. Pusey, 1880 AD
With that introduction, please follow along in your Bibles as I read my translation of Nahum 1:1-4: Nineveh’s judgment-prophecy, the record of Nahum the Elkoshite’s vision: Yahweh is a super-jealous and avenging God. Yahweh is an avenger and a master of fury! Yahweh is an avenger against His adversaries, indeed He is a grudge-holder against His enemies! Yahweh is long-suffering, yet great in power, and He will certainly not acquit the guilty. As for Yahweh, His way is in the storm-wind and in the tempest, and the clouds are the dust under His feet. When He rebukes the sea, He makes it become dry land, and He dries up all the rivers. Bashan withers, and also Carmel; even the blossom of Lebanon withers!
The only other time in the Hebrew Bible that the word translated “jealous” is spelled the way Nahum spells it here in v.2 (kinvo instead of kinna) is in Joshua 24:19-20, when “Joshua said to the people, ‘You cannot serve the LORD, for He is a holy God. He is a jealous God; He will not forgive your transgressions nor your sins. If you forsake the LORD and serve foreign gods, then He will turn and do you harm and consume you, after He has done you good." This should give anyone who knows history pause for thought:
Well, no wonder the northern kingdom of Israel got destroyed by the Assyrians after covenanting to be God’s people and then worshiping golden calves and Baals and Asherahs instead!
And, if the Assyrians in Nineveh also say they are going to honor Yahweh after Jonah’s prophecy, but then turn back to the Assyrian gods, then, of course, the Lord is going to bring judgment on them too.
You don’t get to commit to God and enjoy His blessings... and then walk away from it all without consequences. God is a jealous God. He hates it when people say they love Him and then fall in love with some other thing besides Him.
In the New Testament, Hebrews 6:4-6 puts it this way: “...[I]t is impossible to renew again into repentance those once having been enlightened, both having tasted of the heavenly gift... and having tasted the good word of God and also of the powers of the coming age, yet having fallen aside, who are re-crucifying to themselves – and shaming – the Son of God.” (NAW)
In Nahum 1:2, he repeats three times that the LORD is “vengeful/avenging5.”
To those of us who have grown up in a culture that emphasizes God’s love, this may sound strange, but God used that word to describe Himself and His relational ways back in His covenant-making ceremony with the people of Israel in Leviticus 26:23-25 “If… y'all keep walking defiantly in relation to me, then I... will strike y'all sevenfold because of y'all's sins, and I will cause a sword to come upon y'all avenging the vengeance of the covenant...” (NAW)
“Vengeance” is the process of punishing a wrongdoer for the wrong they have done and setting right an injustice. The threefold name of the LORD may be a way of communicating that all three persons of the Trinity engage in such vengeance. (Pusey)
God promised this “vengeance,” not only upon Israel if it apostatized (Isa. 1:24; Jer. 5:9ff), but also upon Babylon after it had pledged to worship Yahweh under Daniel’s influence, then started mistreating God’s people again (Jer. 51:36; Ezek. 24:8).
Micah 5:15 “Thus will I execute vengeance in anger and in fury with respect to the nations which have not heeded.” (NAW, cf. Psalm 7:11)
Isaiah 59:18 “As it is with paybacks, so He will bring closure: wrath6 to His adversaries – payback to His enemies...” (NAW)
In v.2, Nahum literally calls Yahweh a “Master of wrath” (ba’al khamah).
God has perfect mastery over the emotion of wrath and knows how to use it with perfect precision to execute justice without pity upon His enemies.7
With His omnipotent power, nothing is going to be able to stop Him when He gets angry. If that doesn’t strike the fear of God in you, I don’t know what will, except seeing it for yourself – and I don’t want to be anywhere near when that happens!
Nahum ends verse 2 by saying that God “keeps/maintains/reserves wrath/is a grudge-holder against His enemies.”
We read the end of the book of Micah and like to focus on God as the one who “will have compassion on us... and will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea,” and that is indeed true for the “remnant of His inheritance” – the true church, but that is not true for the rest of mankind.
God will remember in photographic detail every cotton-pickin’ thing that every human being has ever done wrong. The language Nahum uses paints the picture of God, not merely keeping a record with clinical accuracy of every sin, but God actually nursing grudges over every single offense! That is terrifying – the amount of anger that the almighty God could be building up – and building up – against me over the course of my lifetime if I am an enemy of His. I can’t think of anything more frightening!
Using a synonym of the Greek word used to translate Nahum’s word for the “wrath” of God, the Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 1:18 “For the wrath [οργη] of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness,” and Romans 2:6-9 “[God] will render to each one according to his deeds: eternal life to those who by patient continuance in doing good seek for glory, honor, and immortality; but to those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness – indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, on every soul of man who does evil…” (NKJV)
And the Apostle John, using the same Greek word used to translate Nahum’s word for “vengeance8” reminds us in Revelation 19:2 that when Jesus returns and judges the world, it will be vengeance: “[T]true and righteous are His judgments... He has avenged the blood of His servants…” (NKJV)
And verse 3 tells us He’s not going to miss a thing!
Nahum’s doctrinal statement about the LORD in v.3 is rooted in Exodus 34:6-7 “Then the LORD passed by in front of him [Moses] and proclaimed, ‘The LORD, the LORD God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished...” (NASB) That’s how we know about God: He tells us in His Word about Himself.
The earlier prophet Jonah also knew this doctrine about God being “gracious, compassionate, and long-suffering/slow to anger,” for he also quoted from Exodus 34 in the last chapter of his book9, and Jonah must have shared that doctrine with folks in Nineveh, because Jonah 3:9 tells us that the Ninevites pinned all their hopes upon God compassionately “turn[ing] away from His burning anger” towards them, and that’s what God wanted, so He relented.
In Jonah 1:210, God’s commission to Jonah to go to Nineveh uses the same wording found in Deuteronomy 20:10-1211 requiring a diplomatic mission be sent to offer terms of peace first before attacking a city, in hopes that the city might join the covenant community of God’s people instead.
The point is that God’s punishment of Nineveh prophecied by Nahum is no surprise-attack from a vengeful god; rather it comes from a God who does not have a short fuse when it comes to people doing things that bother Him – from a God who goes to great lengths to redeem and reconcile sinners to Himself, so Nahum’s message of doom against Nineveh follows a substantial warning and disclosure of God’s revelation about Himself to Nineveh, and it follows a substantial amount of time given to Nineveh to take action to get right with God.
At the same time, Nahum tells us in v.3, that God shouldn’t be trifled with, and that for a couple of reasons, first:
He has “power” “great” enough to overcome any opposition thrown up against Him, so there’s no point in trying to fight with Him.
“His delay in executing judgment is not out of weakness but power. If he had less power, he would be less patient. Divine patience is not evidence of inability or indifference, but rather that which is designed to lead to repentance (Rom 2:4) and to remove any excuse from sinners.” ~Barrett, 2021 AD
The “whirlwind... storm… and clouds” are awe-inspiring things in creation used throughout the Bible to symbolize God’s awesome power to destroy sinners in judgment:
It’s my opinion that the “of” in “dust of His feet” is not the ablative “of” – in other words, the dust isn’t coming “from” His feet, rather it’s the locative “of” – located under His feet. In other words, you see those clouds way up in the sky above us? God is so big that those clouds don’t even reach to the top of His feet!12 He’s an intimidatingly-big God – that’s the point.
Job 21:17-18 Job said, “How often is the lamp of the wicked put out? How often does their destruction come upon them, The sorrows God distributes in His anger? They are like straw before the wind, And like chaff that a storm carries away… 9:17-19 “...He crushes me with a tempest ... He will not allow me to catch my breath... If it is a matter of strength, indeed He is strong…” (NKJV, cf. Prov. 1:23-27)
The prophets Hosea (8:7), Jeremiah (4:13), Amos (1:14), and especially Isaiah also describe invading armies as “whirlwinds” sent by God to bring down wicked cities: Isaiah 17:13 “The communities roar like the roaring of many waters, but He will rebuke it, and it will flee far away, chased like chaff on the mountains before the wind and whirling dust before the face of a storm-wind…. 29:6-7 You will be visited from Yahweh Commander of armies with thunder and with commotion and a loud sound, storm-wind and tempest and a flame of consuming fire. And it will be like the night-mare-vision, the multitude of all the nations which are fighting, and all of them fighting against Ariel and ensnaring her and causing distress toward her.” (NAW, cf. 66:14-16)
God should not be trifled with, first because He is “powerful” enough to win every fight He picks, without fail...
Secondly, He is also so attentive that “He will certainly not acquit the guilty/by no means clear the guilty/not at all leave the guilty unpunished,” so there’s no point in hoping He will overlook or miss an offense against Him – you won’t be able to hide anything from Him.
Deut. 5:11 “...the LORD will not leave him unpunished who takes His name in vain.”
Proverbs 6:29b “...Whoever [violates his neighbor’s wife] will not go unpunished.”
Proverbs 16:5 “Everyone who is proud in heart is an abomination to the LORD; Assuredly, he will not be unpunished.”
Proverbs 19:5 “A false witness will not go unpunished, And he who tells lies will not escape.” (NASB)
Proverbs 11:21 “Assuredly, the evil man will not go unpunished, But the descendants of the righteous will be delivered.” (NASB)
Verse 4 continues to impress us with God’s power, using the merism of water and land to show that He is God over every inch of the planet.
The wording of v.4 about God “rebuking the sea, making it become dry land” calls to mind the parting of the Red Sea for the Hebrews to escape from Egypt on dry ground13:
Psalm 106:9 puts it in the same words Nahum used: “He rebuked the Red Sea also, and it dried up; So He led them through the depths, As through the wilderness.” (NKJV)
Likewise, the “drying up of rivers” reminds us of the Israelites’ crossing of the Jordan river at flood season into the Promised Land in Joshua 3:15-16 “...the feet of the priests who bore the ark dipped in the edge of the water (for the Jordan overflows all its banks during the whole time of harvest), [and] the waters which came down from upstream stood still, and rose in a heap... and the people crossed over opposite Jericho.” (NKJV)
It also brings to mind when Jesus, in Matthew 8:26 “...rebuked the storm-winds and the sea, and they became incredibly calm.” (NAW)
These historical demonstrations of God’s power over bodies of water teach us that He has the power to do anything He wants, and, indeed, not only Nahum, but also the prophets Isaiah, Zechariah, and Jeremiah14 drew upon this image of “drying up rivers/seas” when they prophesied of the future downfalls of Egypt (Isa. 19:5), Assyria (Zech. 10:11), and Babylon (Jer. 51:36). Here’s Zechariah 10:11 “He shall pass through the sea with affliction, And strike the waves of the sea: All the depths of the River shall dry up. Then the pride of Assyria shall be brought down, And the scepter of Egypt shall depart.” (NKJV)
God, in His justice, controls the rise and fall of even the mightiest nations on earth!
The second half of Nahum 1:4 recognizes God’s power over land as well as sea.
Three places in northern Israel are mentioned: Bashan, Carmel, and Lebanon. The latter two are mountains, but beside Mount Carmel and Mt. Lebanon are some very fertile lowlands, which, on many maps is shaded green. Bashan is also a fertile, green flatland that stretches North and East from the Sea of Galilee.
The destructive power Nahum describes God possessing to make every crop in the breadbasket of a nation to “wither,” should give pause to anyone who thinks they can rebel against God and get away with it!
And again, Nahum isn’t the only prophet to use this image to impress us with God’s power to judge nations:
Amos 1:2 “...The LORD roars from Zion... The pastures of the shepherds mourn, And the top of Carmel withers.” (NKJV)
Isaiah 33:9-10 “The land mourned and drooped; Lebanon blushed; it withered. The Sharon became like the desert, and Bashan and Carmel shook. ‘Now I will get up,’ says Yahweh. ‘Now I will lift myself up; now I will be exalted!’” (NAW)
In the face of a God powerful enough to punish any sinner and attentive enough to punish every sin, our only hope is for Him to be patient and merciful toward us.
And for those who have found God’s mercy through Jesus, we need never worry that the wicked might get away with doing wrong things.
Furthermore, the book of Ephesians uses the same Greek word, used to translate the word “power” in Nahum 1:3, to remind us that all that divine power resides in Jesus and is intent upon your good: Ephesians 1:18-22 “the eyes of your heart having been enlightened, resulting in [you] knowing: what the hope of His call is, what the wealth of the glory of His inheritance in the saints is, and what the hyperbolic greatness of His power into us believers is, according to the energy of the might of His strength, which He worked in the Christ when He raised out of the dead and seated Him in His right hand in the heavens above every ruler and authority and power and lordship and every name being named (not only in this age but also in the one which is about to be), and everything He subordinated under His feet, and to Him He gave headship over everything in the church… [and so he says in ] 6:10 y’all be made mighty in the Lord and in the power of His strength!” (NAW)
1 Peter 4:11 elaborates on this power which Jesus shares with His people: “When someone speaks, let it be like God's words; when someone serves, let it be like it's out of the strength which God stages, in order that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to Whom belong the glory and the power forever and ever, Amen.” (NAW)
DouayB (Vulgate) |
LXXC |
BrentonD (Vaticanus) |
KJVE |
NAW |
Masoretic HebrewF |
1 The burden of Ninive. The book of the vision of Nahum, the Elcesite. |
1 Λῆμμα Νινευη· βιβλίον ὁράσεως Ναουμ τοῦ Ελκεσαίου. |
1 The burden of Nineve: the book of the vision of Naum the Elkesite. |
1 The burden of Nineveh. The book of the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite. |
1 Nineveh’s judgment-prophecy, the record of Nahum the Elkoshite’s vision: |
|
2
The Lord is a jealous God, and a revenger:
the Lord is a revenger,
and |
2
Θεὸς ζηλωτὴς καὶ ἐκδικῶν
κύριος, ἐκδικῶν
κύριος μετὰ X θυμοῦ
ἐκδικῶν κύριος
τοὺς ὑπεναντίους αὐτοῦ, καὶ
|
2
God is jealous, and the Lord avenges;
the Lord avenges
with X
wrath; the Lord takes vengeance
on his adversaries,
and he |
2 God is jealous, and the LORD revengeth; the LORD revengeth, and is X furious; the LORD will take vengeance on his adversaries, and he reserveth wrath for his enemies. |
2 Yahweh is a super-jealous and avenging God. Yahweh is an avenger and a master of fury! Yahweh is an avenger against His adversaries, indeed He is a grudge-holder against His enemies! |
(ב) Lאֵל קַנּוֹאM וְנֹקֵםN יְהוָהO נֹקֵם יְהוָה וּבַעַל חֵמָהP נֹקֵם יְהוָה לְצָרָיוQ וְנוֹטֵר הוּאR לְאֹיְבָיו. |
3 The Lord is patient, and great in power, and will not [cleanse and] acquit [the guilty]. The Lord's ways are in a tempest, and a whirlwind, and clouds are the dust of his feet. |
3
κύριος μακρόθυμος,
καὶ μεγάλη ἡ ἰσχὺς αὐτοῦ, καὶ
ἀθῳῶν οὐκ
ἀθῳώσει κύριος. ἐν |
3
The Lord is long-suffering,
and his power is great, and the Lord will
not hold |
3 The LORD is slow to anger, and great in power, and will not at all acquit the wicked: the LORD hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet. |
3 Yahweh is long-suffering, yet great in power, and He will certainly not acquit the guilty. As for Yahweh, His way is in the storm-wind and in the tempest, and the clouds are the dust under His feet. |
(ג) יְהֹוָה אֶרֶךְ אַפַּיִם Tוּגְדוֹל־כֹּחַ וְנַקֵּה לֹא יְנַקֶּה יְהוָהU בְּסוּפָה וּבִשְׂעָרָה דַּרְכּוֹ וְעָנָן אֲבַק רַגְלָיו. |
4 He rebuketh the sea and drieth it up: and bringeth all the rivers to be a desert. Basan languisheth and Carmel: and the flower of Libanus fadeth away. |
4 ἀπειλῶνV θαλάσσῃ καὶ ξηραίνων αὐτὴν καὶ πάντας τοὺς ποταμοὺς ἐξερημῶν· ὠλιγώθη ἡ Βασανῖτις καὶ ὁ Κάρμηλος, καὶ τὰ ἐξανθοῦντα τοῦ Λιβάνου ἐξέλιπεν. |
4
He threatens
the sea, and dries it up, and exhausts
all the rivers: the land of Basan, and Carmel
|
4 He rebuketh the sea, and maketh it dry, and drieth up all the rivers: Bashan languisheth, and Carmel, and the flower of Lebanon languisheth. |
4 When He rebukes the sea, He makes it become dry land, and He dries up all the rivers. Bashan withers, and also Carmel; even the blossom of Lebanon withers! |
(ד) גּוֹעֵר בַּיָּם וַיַּבְּשֵׁהוּ וְכָל הַנְּהָרוֹת הֶחֱרִיב Wאֻמְלַל בָּשָׁןX וְכַרְמֶל וּפֶרַח לְבָנוֹן אֻמְלָל. |
1According to Lehrman, “Ibn Ezra conjectures that it may be a patronymic... Judging from Targum Jonathan ‘Nahum of the house of Koshi’ … it appears to be either a patronymic or a family name.” He also cited Abarbanel’s theory that it just meant “the latter,” as in, the prophet after Jonah. (Soncino) Keil emphatically denied that it was patronymic.
2Including Michaelis (1814), Eichhorn (1780’s?), Ewald (1881), and Michael Barrett (2021).
3Many commentators (incl. Hailey, NASB, Lehman, Barrett, Hitzig, Whitcomb) place Nahum’s prophecy shortly before the fall of Nineveh, which was around 610 BC (give or take two years), although there are higher critics like Ewald who placed it afterwards. Josephus seems to be the most notable exception, claiming that Nahum was in the 730’s BC under Jotham. Calvin critiqued this by noting that if it were before Assyria had destroyed Israel it wouldn’t have made sense to be comforting the Israelites about God revenging Israel for Assyria’s destruction of Israel.) Abarbanel (1400’s), Calvin (1559), Vitringa (1730’s), Newcome (1785), Pusey (1880), and Keil (1891) all opted for a date late in Hezekiah’s reign or early in Manasseh’s (after Sennacherib’s death in 681 BC), whereas Henry (1714), Gill (1766) and Fausset (1871) thought it was early in Hezekiah’s reign (“720-714 b.c.”). Seder Olam ch. 20 claims he was a contemporary of Joel and Habakuk during Manasseh’s reign.
4M. Barrett: “...most likely it was nearer the time of Nineveh’s fall.”
5Rashi suggested that the three mentions of vengeance were intended to match the three incursions of Sennacherib into Israel.
6See also Jer. 23:19; 30:23; Ezek. 5:15; 16:38; 24:8; and 25:17 for other instances of God’s chamah wrath – mostly against Israel.
7cf. M. Henry: “[H]e has fury (so the word is), not as man has it, in whom it is an ungoverned passion (so he has said, Fury is not in me (Isa. 27:4), but he has it in such a way as becomes the righteous God, to put an edge upon his justice, and to make it appear more terrible to those who otherwise would stand in no awe of it.”
8Cf. other uses of this same word: Eph. 5:6 and Heb. 10:30, which quotes from Deut. 32:35 “Vengeance is Mine, and recompense; Their foot shall slip in due time; For the day of their calamity is at hand, And the things to come hasten upon them… 41 If I whet My glittering sword, And My hand takes hold on judgment, I will render vengeance to My enemies, And repay those who hate Me.” (NKJV)
9Jonah 4:2 “...Oh please, Yahweh, wasn't this my saying while I was still on my turf? Because of this I went ahead to abscond to Tarshish: for I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate god, slow to anger, and full of kindness, and you are made sorry over the evil.” (NAW)
10https://www.ctrchurch-mhk.org/sermons/Jonah1_02.htm
11“When you approach a city to fight against it, you shall offer it terms of peace. If it agrees to make peace with you and opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall... serve you. However, if it does not make peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it.” (NKJV)
12Calvin understood it differently that when God “moves,” the “whole heaven” fills with dust. Keil and M. Henry saw it more as I did, “[H]e treads on them, walks on them, raises them when he pleases, as a man with his feet raises a cloud of dust. It is but by permission, or usurpation rather, that the devil is the prince of the power of the air, for that power is in God's hand.”
13cf. Exodus 14:22. Calvin was the only commentator surveyed who disagreed, but his English translator, Owen, in contradiction to Calvin, wrote that he saw in the past tense of these verbs “reference... to the past works of God, and in some instances to those performed in the wilderness.”
14Isaiah
19:4-5
“and I will give over the Egyptians into the hand of a hard
master, and a fierce king will rule over them, declares Yahweh GOD
Commander of armies. And the waters of the sea will be dried up,
and the river will be desolate
and dry...
50:2
Why was there not a man when I came? I called but there was not
one answering. Does my hand come up so very short from the
redemption, and is there not strength in me to deliver? Look, by
my rebuke I dry
up the sea;
I replace rivers (with) desert; their fish stink from there not
being water, and they die in their thirst.” (NAW)
Jeremiah
51:35-36 “‘Let the
violence done to me and my flesh be upon Babylon,’ The
inhabitant of Zion will say; ‘And my blood be upon the
inhabitants of Chaldea!’ Jerusalem will say. Therefore thus says
the LORD: ‘Behold, I will plead your case and take vengeance for
you. I will dry up
her sea
and make
her springs dry.’”
(NKJV)
AMy
original chart includes the following copyrighted English versions:
NASB, NIV, ESV, Bauscher’s version of the Peshitta, and Cathcart’s
version of the Targums, but these columns are removed from my
public, non-copyrighted edition of this chart so as not to infringe
on their copyrights. NAW is my translation. When a translation adds
words not in the Hebrew text, but does not indicate it has done so
by the use of italics or greyed-out text, I put the added words in
[square brackets]. When one version chooses a wording which is
different from all the other translations, I underline it.
When a version chooses a translation which, in my opinion, either
departs too far from the root meaning of the Hebrew word or departs
too far from the grammar form of the original text, I use strikeout.
And when a version omits a word which is in the original text, I
insert an X. I also place an X at the end of a word if the original
word is plural but the English translation is singular. I
occasionally use colors to help the reader see correlations between
the various editions and versions when there are more than two
different translations of a given word. The only known Dead Sea
Scrolls containing Nahum 1 are 4Q82 containing parts of verses 7-9
and dated between 30-1 BC, The Nahal Hever Greek scroll,
containing parts vs. 13-14 and dated around 25BC and the Wadi
Muraba’at Scroll, containing parts of verses 1-15 and dated around
135 AD. Where the DSS is legible and in agreement with the MT, the
MT is colored purple. Where the DSS
supports the LXX/Vulgate/Peshitta with omissions or text not in the
MT, I have highlighted with
yellow the LXX and its translation into English, and where I
have accepted that into my NAW translation, I have marked it with
{pointed brackets}.
BDouay Old Testament first published by the English College at Douay, A.D. 1609, Revised and Diligently Compared with the Latin Vulgate by Bishop Richard Challoner, Published in 1582, 1609, 1752. As published on E-Sword.
C“Septuagint” Greek Old Testament, edited by Alfred Rahlfs. Published in 1935. As published on E-Sword.
DEnglish translation of the Septuagint by Sir Lancelot Charles Lee Brenton, 1851, “based upon the text of the Vaticanus” but not identical to the Vaticanus. As published electronically by E-Sword.
E1769 King James Version of the Holy Bible; public domain. As published electronically by E-Sword.
FFrom
the Wiki Hebrew Bible
https://he.wikisource.org/wiki/%D7%9E%D7%99%D7%9B%D7%94_%D7%90/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%AA.
DSS text comes from https://downloads.thewaytoyahuweh.com
GLiterally “that which is carried” – used as a prophecy of coming punishment in Isa. 13:1; 14:28; 15:1; 17:1; 19:1; 21:1, 11, 13; 22:1; 23:1; 30:6; Jer. 23:33-38; Lam. 2:14; Ezek. 12:10; 24:25; Hab. 1:1; Zech. 9:1; 12:1; and Mal. 1:1. Owen of Thrussington wrote the following footnote in Calvin’s commentary: “Some regard it as the message carried or borne by the Prophets from God to the people, and hence the same as Prophecy. Others consider it to be the judgment to be borne by the people respecting whom it was announced. The latter seems to be its meaning here, where it is said, ‘the burden of Nineveh.’ It was the judgment laid on them, and which that city was to bear, endure, and undergo.” Matthew Henry poetically called this “burden” “a dead weight to Nineveh, a mill-stone hanged about its neck.” Keil’s more practical gloss was “threatening words.”
HLiterally “record,” but refers to notes written on tablets, messages in scrolls, as well as books. Other biblical prophets had such “records,” notably David (Psalm 40:8), Isaiah (Isa. 29:11-18; 30:8; 34:16), and Jeremiah 51:60.
IThis kind of “vision” was supposed to be a revelation from God to a prophet, such as that to Daniel (8:1), Isaiah (1:1), Habakkuk (2:2), and Obadiah (1:1), although there were also false prophets who claimed to have such visions (Jer. 14:14; 23:16; Ezek. 12:24; 13:16). Pusey saw eschatological application in Nahum as a word from God to bring comfort to God’s people upon the final judgment of the wicked.
JBoth “Nahum” and “Elkoshi” are hapex legomena, with no cross-reference in the Bible.
K2nd Century Greek translators Aquilla and Symmachus rendered this verb εχων [θυμον] (“having [wrath]”) – which is more like the MT, although the MT reads “it” instead of “wrath.”
LVerses 2-8 roughly follow the Hebrew alphabet acrostic poetry form, with the second letter (beth) coming in the second line of v.3, then gimmel starting v.4. The second line of v.4 is irregular because there is no daleth, but he and vav start the first and second lines of v.5. Zayin starts the second (rather than the first) word of v.6, but chet starts the second line of v.6; tet starts the first line of v.7; yod starts the second line of v.7 (if you ignore the vav consecutive), and caph can be found starting the middle of v.8. This theory is advanced by the layout of the BHS, although, with five of the 11 letters having irregularities, it is worth considering whether or not such a construction was actually intended. In the Soncino commentary, Lehrman called it “misplaced ingenuity” and “violence” to the text to “force the diction of Nahum into the straitjacket of a supposed alphabetical arrangement...”.
MPusey noted this is the intensive spelling of the word for “jealous.” This form is only found here and in Josh. 24:19.
NAvenging: “Its meaning here is to watch the opportunity to take vengeance on his enemies.” ~Owen of Thrussington
OMT cantillation places a minor punctuation here, associating YHWH with “God,” “Jealous,” and “Avenging.”
PMT cantillation places a major punctuation here, separating the first from the second half of the verse. Nowhere else in the Bible is God called a “Baal of Wrath” (although the Proverbs mention a wicked men who is a Baal of Wrath a couple of times Prov. 29:22 cf. 22:24) but the prophets are clear that God will judge with wrath, e.g. Isaiah 59:18.
Q“...‘adversaries’ ... rather, his oppressors; the oppressors of his people were his own oppressors.” ~John Owen of Thrussington in Calvin’s commentary (cf. Acts 9:4)
RAlthough the Vulgate and Targum (followed by all the English versions) insert the word “wrath,” the MT, LXX, and Peshitta read “it,” but neither can be correct because this pronoun (“he”) is masculine, whereas “wrath” is a feminine noun and there is no other masculine noun in the vicinity that would make sense. Furthermore, this pronoun is in the subject position and has no direct object indicator, so it seems only natural to translate it as the subject of the participle “keeping.” As for that participle, its root only occurs about half a dozen times, half of them denoting “grudge-keeping (Lev. 19:18; Ps. 103:9; and Jer. 3:5 & 12), and the other half – all in Song of Solomon – denoting “vineyard-tending” (Cant. 1:6; 8:11-12).
Scf. Sym. καταιγιδος (“tempest”) και λαιλαπος (“hurricane”)
TDSS וגדל Qere = וּגְדָל – a more standard way of spelling this adjective, but no difference in meaning
UMT cantillation has the major punctuation here, making YHWH the one whose way is in the storms rather than the subject of “he will not leave the guilty unpunished.” Vulgate, Peshitta, Targums, and KJV all follow the MT cantillation, but NASB, NIV, and ESV follow the LXX in putting the line break before rather than after YHWH.
VAq. and Sym. chose the synonym ἐπιτιμων
WIn the Hebrew acrostic scheme, this word would be expected to begin with a daleth instead of an aleph. That substitution wouldn’t actually change the meaning, as דללו would mean “they languish/droop low.”
XThe Aramaic versions read with a different name “Mathnin,” but LXX and Vulgate support the MT. (The word is not visible in any known DSS). This singular location is the subject of the 3rd singular Pulpal perfect verb which comes before it, so KJV is correct. The NASB and NIV change the Hebrew singular verb to and English plural verb both times it occurs in this verse, whereas the ESV renders one of the Hebrew singulars as an English plural and the other as an English singular.