Nahum 1:5-8 – God’s Power To Protect

Translation & Sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ The Redeemer Church of Manhattan, KS, 9 Feb. 2025

Omitting greyed-out passages should bring oral delivery down to close to 40 minutes.

Introduction

• This is my second sermon on the Minor Prophet Nahum. If you didn’t hear the first one, I’d encourage you to look up the introduction in my previous sermon¹,

• but for a quick synopsis, here’s Michael Barrett, professor of Old Testament at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary in Michigan, from his 2021 commentary on Nahum: “God is gracious to whom he is gracious, but he withholds his mercy from whom he wills (Rom. 9:14–18). He is sovereign in both salvation and judgment. Nahum’s oracle against Nineveh is timeless because God always deals with sinners and saints the same way. Sinners of every age and place must learn not to trifle with God, and saints of every age must learn to rest secure in divine grace and in the certainty of God’s unfailing plan and purpose of redemption.”

• Let’s start back in by listening to the first 8 verses of Nahum chapter 1:
  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 mountains bucked away from Him, and the hills dissolved. The very earth heaves away from His face, indeed the world and all the inhabitants in it! Who will stand before His rage? And who will rise up during the fierceness of His anger? His fury is rained down like fire, and the landmark-rocks are broken down by Him. Yahweh is good for a stronghold during a day of crisis, and He knows those who take refuge in Him. But with a flood passing over, He will make an end of her place, and, as for His enemies, darkness will hunt them down.

v. 5 Yahweh Has Power Over The Whole World

• Modern Jewish commentator Dr. Lehrman wrote, “Theophany is accompanied, in Biblical descriptions, by a disturbance of nature, as if the very elements tremble at His approach.”

• Verse 5 opens with a litany of vast geological features shaking and shrinking away from God as He enters the scene to punish the violent wickedness of the Assyrians.

• I say “shrinking away” because the mem-prepositions in this Hebrew text picture the moun­tains moving “away from” the Lord, to get out of His way, as He rages through. (Alternately the mem-prepositions could be translated causally, as the NASB did, picturing them being melted and shoved out of the way because He is raging through the land.) This is no face-off between God and the mountains; there is no contest; not even the mountains nor “all the inhabitants of the earth” combined stand a chance of stopping the LORD!

• The “mountains” and “hills” may be literal mountains and hills to impress us with the mighty power of God over the world, but I think they are more probably figurative for big, powerful cities and their kings (which is what they stood for in Micah). They are in parallel with “inhab­itants of the earth” at the end of v.5, and only wicked persons would really have a reason to shy away from God, as they are doing in v.5, so I’m inclined toward that figurative interpretation².

• The verbs are all in past tense in Hebrew: “quaked… melted… heaved,” but Nahum’s words do not match any particular historical event in the Bible³. What they do seem to match is a judgment-picture, which recurs throughout the Psalms and Prophets, of God wreaking havoc on the earth as He punishes evil. A great variety of Hebrew words are employed in these prophetic word-pictures of God’s anger and judgment, but the general picture is the same:

  • Psalm 18:7 “Then the earth crashed⁴ and buckled, and foundations of mountains trembled. They crashed themselves because he was angry… 46:6 Nations roared; kingdoms were overthrown. He projected with his voice; the earth melted.” (NAW)

  • Psalm 97:5 “The mountains melt⁵ like wax at the presence of the LORD, At the presence of the Lord of the whole earth… 104:32 He looks on the earth, and it trembles⁶; He touches the hills, and they smoke.” (NKJV)

  • Micah 1:4 “Then the mountains will melt beneath Him, and the valleys will burst open like wax from flames of fire, like water being poured through a precipice.” (NAW)

  • Isaiah 13:13 “Therefore I will make the heavens tremble, and the earth will shake out of her place, at the wrath of Yahweh Commander of armies in the day of his fierce anger… 24:1&20 “Look, Yahweh: empties the land and desolates her, and He will distort her face, and scatter her inhabitants… The earth staggers like a drunk; She sways like a hammock; Her sin is heavy upon her, and she falls, and she will never again stand.” (NAW)

  • Joel 2:10 “The earth quakes before them, The heavens tremble; The sun and moon grow dark, And the stars diminish their brightness… 3:16 The LORD also will roar from Zion, And utter His voice from Jerusalem; The heavens and earth will shake; But the LORD will be a shelter for His people, And the strength of the children of Israel.” (NKJB)

  • And I could read similar passages from Amos, Jeremiah, and Habakkuk too.

    • Amos 9:5 The Lord GOD of hosts, He who touches the earth and it melts, And all who dwell there mourn; All of it shall swell like the River, And subside like the River of Egypt.” (NKJV)

    • Jeremiah 4:24-27 “I beheld the mountains, and indeed they trembled, And all the hills moved back and forth⁷. I beheld, and indeed there was no man, And all the birds of the heavens had fled. I beheld, and indeed the fruitful land was a wilderness, And all its cities were broken down At the presence of the LORD, By His fierce anger. For thus says the LORD: ‘The whole land shall be desolate; Yet I will not make a full end.’” (NKJV)

    • Habakkuk 3:6-12 “He stood and measured the earth; He looked and startled the nations. And the everlasting mountains were scattered, The perpetual hills bowed. His ways are everlasting. I saw the tents of Cushan in affliction; The curtains of the land of Midian trembled⁸... The mountains saw You and trembled⁹… You marched through the land in indignation; You trampled the nations in anger.” (NKJV)

• This same picture carries on into the New Testament describing the coming of Christ:

  • Luke 3:5 “Every valley shall be filled And every mountain and hill brought low; The crooked places shall be made straight And the rough ways smooth” (NKJV)

  • Hebrews 12:25-29 “...He has promised saying, ‘Once more I myself am shaking [not only] the earth [but] also heaven.’ Now, the 'Once more' shows the replacement of the things being shaken (in this case, of things which have been created) such that the things which are not being shaken may remain....” (NAW)

  • Matthew 24:29-30 “And immediately after the distress of those days, the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give off her glow, and the stars will fall from the heavens, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken, and then the sign of the Son of Man will be revealed in the sky, and then all the families of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming upon the clouds of the heavens with power and much glory…” (NAW, cf. Luke 21:26)

  • Revelation 6:12-17 “I looked when He opened the sixth seal, and behold, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became like blood. And the stars of heaven fell to the earth, as a fig tree drops its late figs when it is shaken by a mighty wind. Then the sky receded as a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved¹⁰ out of its place. And the kings of the earth, the great men, the rich men, the commanders, the mighty men, every slave and every free man, hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains, and said to the mountains and rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of His wrath has come, and who is able to stand?’” (NKJV)

  • This is Biblical Judgment Day genre of writing.

v. 6 The Wicked Won’t Survive God’s Anger

• Nahum 1:2 already informed us that “Yahweh is... a master of fury,”

• and the words of v.6 dwell on the passion of God’s anger when He invokes judgment: “...rage/indignation… burning/heat/fierceness of His anger… wrath fury rained down/poured out like fire…” Anyone who really understands what it means for God to be this angry against sin should rightly tremble in fear.

• Nahum asks, “who will stand before His rage, and who can abide/endure/literally rise up in/against the fierceness of His anger?” The answer is no-one. If not even the mountains can stand in His way, you’ll be as powerless to stand against Him as a piece of paper in a tornado!

  • Psalm 76:7 “You, Yourself, are to be feared; And who may stand in Your presence When once You are angry?” (NKJV)

  • Malachi 3:2 "But who can endure¹¹ the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner's fire...” (NKJV)

  • Joel 2:11 “...the day of the LORD is great and very terrible; Who can endure¹² it?” (NKJV)

• The wrath of God “poured out/rained down like fire” reminds us of what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah: Their wickedness got so great that God rained “fire and brimstone” down from heaven and destroyed them all (Gen. 19).

  • Archaeologists have found structures around the Dead Sea dating back to the time of Abraham, and with all of them, the fire started on their roofs¹³. It’s the remains of Sodom and Gomorrah. The wrath of God is real!

• The “breaking down” of “rocks” is the other illustration of God’s wrath mentioned by Nahum in v.6.

  • The Hebrew word for “rocks” here is for big rocks – big enough to be a landmark (Ex. 17:6, 1 Sam. 24:2, 2 Sam. 21:10) or to have caves in them in which you could hide (1 Chr. 11:15, Ps. 31:2, 62, etc.).

  • The two main ways the verb associated with these rocks is used in the history books of the Old Testament is in the “breaking down” of pagan altars¹⁴ and in the “tearing down” of city walls during their overthrow¹⁵.

  • Nahum speaks of God Himself doing this.

    • The only pagan rock-altar that God broke down by Himself, as far as I can remember, was the one King Jeroboam of Israel had erected in 1 Kings 13, although the “breaking apart” of that altar is described with a different Hebrew word – a synonym to the one Nahum uses here¹⁶.

    • The only city rock-walls, to my knowledge, which God broke down by Himself, were those of Jericho, although again, the “falling down” of the walls of Jericho is described with a different verb [נפל] than the one Nahum uses.

  • Of course, God isn’t limited to “breaking” “walls” and “altars;” we see, in Genesis 7, Him “breaking up¹⁷” the vast tectonic plates of the earth to open the “fountains of the deep” and flood the entire earth.

• This God can overcome anything that stands against Him. No city wall, no supernatural power, and no measly man will be able to stop God’s wrath when it is time for them to be punished for their sin.

  • Isaiah 13:9 “Look, the day of Yahweh comes, Cruel wrath and fierce anger, to make the land into a desolation and to destroy her sinners from her…. 30:27 Look, the Name of Yahweh has come from afar: His anger is burning¹⁸, and there is heavy smoke rising. His lips are full of indignation, and his tongue is like a consuming fire… 66:15 For look, Yahweh will come with fire, and like the whirlwind His chariots will be, to return in the fury of His anger, and His rebuke will be with flames of fire.” (NAW)

  • Jeremiah 4:4 “Circumcise your… hearts, You men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem, Lest My fury come forth like fire, And burn¹⁹ so that no one can quench it, Because of the evil of your doings." (NKJV)

  • And in the New Testament: Revelation 6:17 “For the great day of His wrath has come, and who is able to stand? … 14:10 [worshipers of a false god] shall also drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured²⁰ out full strength into the cup of His indignation. He shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.” (NKJV) This is the God with Whom we have to deal.

• A century prior to Nahum, the people of Nineveh had heard about this part of God’s character and nature, through the Prophet Jonah, so they said in Jonah 3:9 “Who knows? The god may turn back... from his burning anger, and we will not perish.” (NAW) They fasted and put on mourning clothes and begged God to have mercy on them – and, sure enough, He did! But there was no such repentance going on in Nineveh any more; now was the time for judgment.

• And yet, God’s mercy is still available. Verse 7 shifts from focusing on God’s wrath to focusing on His merciful kindness as Savior:

v. 7 God Is Good, Safe, & Intimate With Those Who Trust Him

• The phrase “day/days/time of trouble/crisis” in v.7

  • is used to describe God’s judgment coming upon Jerusalem in the form of foreign armies: the Assyrians, Chaldeans, and later the Romans²¹.

  • But also, Nahum’s phrase, “day of crisis,” is used in eschatological passages in the Bible, such as Matthew 24 (29), Revelation 2 (10), and Psalm 50, where the Lord, in fierce wrath, comes and gathers all the nations to the final judgment.

  • And yet, even in the midst of that, God says in Psalm 50:15, “call out to me during a time of crisis. I will rescue you, then you will glorify me!” (NAW) Don’t wait until Judgment Day to call upon Jesus to be your refuge; do it now!

• There is a translation difficulty in the middle of v.7: How does the word “stronghold” relate to the rest of the sentence?

  • Most English translations separate it from the clause, “God is good.” But in all the manuscripts, the preposition “for” occurs just before the noun “stronghold,” and the Hebrew punctuation associates “for a stronghold” with “Yahweh is good.”

  • It may not make much difference in meaning, but I think that “a stronghold during a day of crisis” defines what Nahum means by “good.” God is, of course “good” for many things, but Nahum is commenting particularly about what God can do that is “good,” in light of the terrifying threat of judgment which he has just attributed to God²². Nahum is reminding us that our only hope for refuge from God’s wrath is in God Himself!

  • Psalm 31:19 “How great is Your goodness, which You have hidden away for those who respect You, [which] You worked out for the ones who take refuge in You before the children of mankind!” (NAW, cf. 25:8)

• Throughout the Bible, God is called the “stronghold” of His people:

  • Psalm 27:1 “Yahweh is my light and my salvation. Of whom shall I be afraid? Yahweh is the stronghold of my life; Of whom shall I be in dread?” (NAW, cf. Isa. 17:10)

  • Psalm 37:38-40 “...transgressors will be altogether destroyed... But the salvation of righteous men is from Yahweh; He is their stronghold in a time [עד] of crisis. Yahweh will also help them and deliver them...” (NAW)

  • Joel 3:16 “...The heavens and earth will shake; But the LORD will be a shelter for His people, And the strength of the children of Israel.” (NKJV)

  • God is the place to go to find safety and protection because He is the strongest person there is. His power is omnipotent, and there is none who can compete with Him. If He is protecting you, then you are truly safe!

• So whom does God protect with His almighty power? “...those who trust/take refuge in Him.”

  • Psalm 2:12 Pay homage without hindrance, otherwise He will become angry and y'all will perish in the way, for His anger rages like a short [fuse]. Oh the blessings of all who take refuge in Him!

  • Psalm 18:30 This God has integrity in His ways; the speech of Yahweh is pure. He is a shield for all those who take refuge in Him.” (NAW, cf. v.2)

  • Psalm 34:8 How good Yahweh is! Y'all taste and see! Oh the blessings of the champion who takes refuge in Him! (cf. 36:7)

  • Psalm 46:1 “It is God who has truly been found to be a refuge, a strength, and a helper for us in crises”(NAW)

  • Proverbs 18:10 “The name of the LORD is a strong tower; The righteous run to it and are safe… 29:25 The fear of man brings a snare, But whoever trusts [בוטח] in the LORD shall be safe.” (NKJV)

  • Think about the imagery of “taking refuge”

    • It means going towards your Judge rather than trying to get away from Him. “Ironically, the Lord who is the source of wrath is the only refuge against that wrath. Safety is found not by trying to escape but by fleeing to the Lord.” ~Michael Barrett, 2021 AD

    • It means trusting that He will indeed change His stance from angry judgment against you to loving care and protection for you.

    • It also means surrendering yourself into His power. You’re the refugee; you’re at His mercy, and merciful He will be, but Lord He will also be!

• One last point in v.7: it says that the LORD “knows those who take refuge in Him.”

  • The New Testament also affirms this knowledge:

    • 1 Corinthians 8:3 “but if someone loves God, He is known by him.” (NAW)

    • 2 Timothy 2:19 “Nevertheless the solid foundation of God stands, having this seal: ‘The Lord knows those who are His,’ and, ‘Let everyone who names the name of Christ depart from iniquity.’” (NKJV)

    • John 10:27 "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.” (NKJV)

  • We hear news reports about the millions of refugees seeking to escape from violence and poverty into the borders of a stable country – especially when its our country! It’s not humanly possible to know that many people well. For starters, most of us wouldn’t even be able to pronounce their names correctly, but God says He “knows” whoever comes under His protection.

  • What is also means is that He knows who the hypocrites are, as well – who hang out with God’s people for the benefits they get out of it in this life, but who are not really taking refuge in the Lord. He’s not fooled by outward appearances; He knows your heart. Jesus says in Matthew 7:23 that in that day He will say, “Depart from me, workers of lawlessness; I never knew you!”

  • And the Hebrew verb for “know” is much more intimate than just knowing some things about someone. It is the same word used in Hebrew for how a husband and wife “know” each other. God’s knowledge of us spiritual refugees is intimate and comprehensive and is a result of an eternal commitment to love us.

  • If you ever get hung up on the judgment and wrath of God, all you need do is meditate on God’s intimate “knowing of all who take refuge in Him,” and your anxieties will melt into worship.

• Verse 8 returns to the previously-established fact that God will punish His enemies, further underscoring our need to take refuge in Him.

v. 8 God’s Enemies Will Be Destroyed

• In verses 5-6, Nahum’s prophecy mentioned God’s use of earthquakes and fire in punishment; now, in v.8, he brings in two more factors of flooding and of darkness.

• The Hebrew word Nahum uses for “flood” reminds us of the worldwide cataclysm of God’s judgment in Noah’s day, when the only people who escaped a watery grave were those who entrusted themselves to the ark – the singular refuge which God provided.

  • God made a “complete end” of that world and started everything anew with Noah’s family on an earth wiped clean of human wickedness.

  • Almost every ethnic group on earth still carries in their traditions the memory of this event, which affected us all, and it is well worth remembering, because God will bring an end to this world too, and only those who take heed to the singular refuge which God has provided in Jesus Christ will survive to start fresh in the new world after God wipes this one out by fire.

• But, as is typical of most of the Old Testament prophets, I think Nahum has a near-term fulfill­ment to his prophecy which serves as a type of the ultimate eschatological fulfillment of his prophecy.

  • As E. B. Pusey, the Regius professor of Hebrew at Oxford in the mid 1800’s put it in his famous commentary on the Minor Prophets, “[T]he first destruction and the last which it pictures, meet in the same words.”

  • The near-term fulfillment of his prophecy of an “overflowing/overwheming/ overrunning flood” which brings an “end” can be found in the history of Nineveh, which was conquered only after the river it was located next-to flooded and eroded the earth under part of its city wall, causing the otherwise-impenetrable wall to collapse, and opening the city to the Medo-Persian troops which had been unsuccessfully besieging it for years.

  • In the first century BC, Diodorus Siculus, published an account of the fall of Nineveh. Translated into English, it reads, “The Siege continu'd Two Years, during which time nothing was done to any purpose, save that the Walls were sometimes assaulted, and the Besieg'd pen'd up in the City. The Third Year it happened that Euphrates overflowing with continual Rains, came up into a part of the City, and tore down the Wall Twenty Furlongs in length. The King hereupon conceiving that… the River was an apparent Enemy to the City, utterly despair'd, and therefore that he might not fall into the Hands of his Enemies, he caus'd a huge Pile of Wood to be made in his Palace Court, and heapt together upon it all his Gold, Silver, and Royal Apparel, and enclosing his Eunuchs and Concubines in an Apartment within the Pile, caus'd it to be set on Fire, and burnt himself and them together, which when the Revolters came to understand, they enter'd through the Breach of the Walls, and took the City...”²³

  • And, as we saw in the previous sermon, Nineveh – as a city – was indeed “made an end of,” rather than being maintained as a city or fortress. It is still a ruin today²⁴.

  • Diodorus Siculus’ descriptions of the utter debauchery and sexual degeneracy of the king of Assyria are enough to make the reader blush, and the carvings the Assyrians made all over their walls of them torturing their enemies in so many gruesome ways are enough to make the viewer nauseated. God made an “end” to this wicked kingdom, and it stands as a warning to mankind that God will bring a like end to all who do not find refuge in Him.

• There has been debate for thousands of years as to whether Nahum wrote “an end to its place” or “and end to its adversaries.”

  • The ESV and NLT followed the ancient reading of the Septuagint and Targums with “adversaries,”

  • while all the other English versions followed the ancient reading of the Vulgate, Peshitta, and Masoretic Hebrew which read “her place” – some of them replacing the literal word “place” with the name of the city, “Nineveh.”

  • The confusion likes in the fact that, in the unpointed Hebrew, the word for “place” is spelled the same as the word for “uprising,”

  • but since the Hebrew word has a 3^rd singular pronoun at the end of it²⁵, I think that “He will make an end of her place” makes more sense, regarding Nineveh.

• Isaiah also prophesied the end of the Assyrian empire:

  • Isaiah 10:22-25 “...Destruction is decreed, overflowing with righteousness. For the Lord Yahweh Commander of armies will make a full end, as decreed, in the midst of all the earth. Therefore thus says the Lord Yahweh Commander of armies: ‘O my people, who dwell in Zion, be not afraid of the Assyrians when they strike with the rod and lift up their staff against you as the Egyptians did. For in a very little while my fury will come to an end, and my anger will be directed to their destruction.’” (NAW)

  • But as much as God promised to end wicked nations, He also promised not to bring an end to His people, for instance Jeremiah 30:11 “‘...I am with you,’ says the LORD, ‘to save you; Though I make a full end of all nations where I have scattered you, Yet I will not make a complete end of you...’” (NKJV, || 46:28, cf. Neh. 9:31; Jer. 4:27; 5:10, 18; & Ezek. 20:17)

• Our passage closes with the promise that those who do not take refuge in the Lord will be banished/chased into “darkness.”

  • Now, if you are reading a Bible printed after the year 1850, and it’s not the New King James or the American Jewish Version, it will say, “He will pursue his foes/enemies into darkness,” but if you are reading a Bible printed before 1850, it will say, “darkness will pursue his enemies.”

  • The Hebrew wording does leave some uncertainty as to whether “God” or “darkness” is the subject of the word “pursue,” but what is certain is that the Hebrew word “darkness” does not have the word “into” before it, and that the ancient Latin, Greek, and Aramaic translators all thought that “darkness” was the subject doing the “pursuing²⁶,” so I prefer the older way of translating it, but either way it leaves God’s enemies in “darkness.”

  • There is one other place in the Bible where the “pursuing/hunting down” of the wicked is correlated with “darkness” and that is Psalm 35:6 “Their way will be dark and slippery while the angel of Yahweh hunts them down [רדף]” (NAW)

  • Job 18:18 used synonyms to say the same thing: “The wicked... is driven [הדף] from light into darkness, And chased [נדד] out of the world.” (NKJV)

  • In the New Testament, we see that there are supernatural powers of darkness – Satan and his demons, who exercise control over the ungodly, “ruling over the darkness”:

    • Ephesians 6:12 “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” (NKJV)

    • Colossians 1:13 “He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love” (NKJV)

    • So it is to the darkness of Satan and his demons that one is banished if he/she does not take refuge in God, who is the “light.”

  • In Isaiah 8:22 those who “curse God” “will look to the earth, and behold, distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish; thrust into thick darkness.” (NAW)

  • And Jesus said in Matthew 8:12 that even Jews who do not believe in Him “...will be thrown out into the outer darkness. Weeping and the gnashing of teeth will be there.’” (NAW)

  • The apostles Peter and Jude also used the same word to portray hell as a place of eternal “darkness” for unbelievers: 2 Peter 2:17 “These guys are fountains without water and clouds propelled by a storm, for whom the gloom of eternal darkness has been kept” Jude 1:13 “... for whom the gloom of darkness has been kept for eternity.” (NAW)

CONCLUSION

• The message should be clear by now: God should be feared because His power is unstoppable and He will not fail to punish everyone for breaking His laws.

  • Commenting on the hills melting and the rocks being broken before God in vs.5-6, John Calvin commented, “We must be aware how great our brittleness is. Since there is no hardness which melts not before God, how can men, who flow away of themselves like water, be so daring as to set themselves up against him? … This comparison ought ever be remembered by us whenever a forgetfulness of God begins to creep over us, that we may not excite his wrath by self-complacencies, than which there is nothing more pernicious.” ~J. Calvin, 1559 AD

  • Keep in mind who God is, the Almighty Judge, as He has revealed Himself through the Bible and show respect for Him.

• But secondly, keep in mind who God is, the merciful refuge for sinners and boldly go to Him for salvation. “[L]et not those that trust in God tremble before him. For... He is slow to anger (Nah. 1:3), not easily provoked, but ready to show mercy to those who have offended him and to receive them into favour upon their repentance... The same almighty power that is exerted for the terror and destruction of the wicked is engaged, and shall be employed, for the protection and satisfaction of his own people... those that trust in him in the way of their duty, that live a life of dependence upon him, and devotedness to him; he knows them, he owns them for his, he takes cognizance of their case, knows what is best for them, and what course to take most effectually for their relief…” ~M. Henry, 1714 AD