Sermon & Translation by Nate Wilson for Christ The Redeemer Church of Manhattan KS, 23 March 2025
There are three historical events referred-to in the book of Nahum which are used to figure out when it was that Nahum delivered his prophecy:
The first – and most obvious – is the fall of the Assyrian capitol city of Nineveh, which happened around 612BC, when Josiah was King over Judah. This is the main theme of the book of Nahum.
Another event is: the end of the Assyrian siege against Jerusalem and the death of Sennacherib, which seem to be described at the end of chapter 1, and which happened around 701BC, when Manasseh’s father Hezekiah was king over Judea.
And the third is Assyria’s victory over Egypt at No-Amon, described in chapter 3, which historians have pegged at 664BC, when Josiah’s father Manasseh was king over Judah (although there are other possibilities, since Assyria waged multiple war campaigns against Egypt).
So we have three definite events in history with well-known dates, the earliest being 612BC and the latest being 701BC.
Scholars who deny God’s existence and miracles have to say that Nahum wrote AFTER all these things happened, because nobody could have predicted all that he wrote so accurately about these historical events. But that denies the very purpose for which Nahum wrote, which was to affirm that Yahweh is God over all the nations of the earth and has supernatural power to punish those who are at enmity with Him. We accept that this is true and that Nahum has integrity, so Nahum had to have written before Nineveh fell in 612BC.
What is left is to decide whether Nahum was predicting the end of Sennacherib’s siege of Jerusalem and Ashurbanipal’s conquest of No-Ammon as future events or whether he was writing a history of past events, and how far in advance or retrospect was he from those events.
The commentaries I read suggested a wide range of possibilities, but I will mention two:
Several commentators worth mentioning placed Nahum during Josiah’s reign, after the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem and after the Assyrian campaign against No-Amon, but a decade or two before Nineveh’s fall.
Nahum’s logical argument in chapter 3 that “if No-Amon wasn’t un-conquerable, then Nineveh isn’t un-conquerable” makes the best sense if it was delivered after No-Amon was conquered, and most commentators believe this refers to Ashurbanipal’s conquests in Egypt in the year 6631.
Nahum also wrote of the fall of No-Amon in the Hebrew past tense, however, this isn’t necessarily conclusive, because Nahum could have been using the common technique of prophesying in the past tense – “the prophetic perfect” – to speak of the fall of No-Ammon as a future event. If this is a predictive prophecy in the past tense, then the fall of No-Ammon before the fall of Nineveh would be a kind of “Easter egg” that only people in the future would understand, but when it did happen, it would underscore the sovereign foreknowledge of God all the more, which was clearly the point of Nahum’s prophecy.
The Jewish Soncino commentary on Nahum suggested that, since Nahum doesn’t mention the need for Israel to repent, perhaps Nahum prophecied during the revival that happened in Josiah’s reign2, but there was also revivals in Hezekiah’s reign, so that doesn’t help us narrow the date down between the two of them.
Most of the commentators I read placed Nahum during Hezekiah’s reign, before all three events occurred, since Nahum’s writing style concerning the earliest event – the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem – seems to be in future tense, and it only makes sense as a consolation to God’s people if it hadn’t happened yet. (If Nahum were writing after the 663BC downfall of No-Amon, it would seem odd for him to still be encouraging Jews to trust God to deliver them from Assyria with assurances that Sennacherib would be assassinated, two decades after the threat of Sennacherib had passed.) After the fact, people wouldn’t be worried any more about the Assyrians being a threat, and wouldn’t need Nahum’s message that God was more powerful than Nineveh.
Placing Nahum during Hezekiah’s reign would date his book a little less than 100 years before the fall of Nineveh, and it would also make him a contemporary of the Prophet Isaiah, which would make sense of how much Nahum’s writing has in common with Isaiah’s.
The more I think about it, the more I wonder if Nahum’s chapters might have been written at different times in his life: perhaps chapters 1 and 2 as a young man under king Hezekiah, then chapter 3 decades later under king Josiah.
In that case, God’s deliverance of Jerusalem from Sennacherib could have been future to him when he wrote chapter 1, and then the Assyrian overthrow of No-Amon3 could have been past to him when he wrote chapter 3.
This could also explain why the writing style is so different between chapter one and chapter 3 and why there is so much repeated material between chapters 2 and 3 – perhaps it had been a long time since he had written chapter 2 and he felt the need as an old man to review some of it in his last chapter.
That is just a hypothesis. What’s important is that there are plausible explanations for the difficulty in figuring out when Nahum was written. We are not forced to conclude that it was a fraud-prophecy; we can still maintain that it is a message from God about His sovereignty among the nations.
From here, I want to go on to a broad overview of Biblical prophecy and hit three big-picture principles for interpreting prophecy, and then I want to conclude by just reading the whole book of Nahum without any further commentary.
We must remember that the people who heard Nahum preach in real time were also at the same time hearing prophecies from other prophets.
This is true, whether you set Nahum at an earlier date with Micah, Isaiah and Hosea or whether you set him at a later date with Jeremiah, Zephaniah and Habakkuk (and true for all of the above if you buy my theory of both dates).
So, although Nahum is railing against Nineveh, what his listeners would certainly notice is that the other prophets (also preaching in the streets at the same time) were saying about Israel some of the exact same things Nahum was saying about Nineveh. All the same sins of which Nahum accused the Assyrians were sins Isaiah and Habakkuk also accused Israel of committing. Even most of the judgments which God threatened against Nineveh through Nahum were also threatened against Judah by Isaiah and Habakkuk (and others).
So, when the people of Nahum’s day heard Nahum’s prophecy, it would have caused any thinking person to say, “Wait, if God is going to send an army against Nineveh for their bloodshed, lying, cheating, adultery, and idolatry, what’s that mean for us who are also guilty of bloodshed, lying, cheating, and adultery?”
And shortly thereafter, when they heard on-the-news that Nineveh had actually been destroyed, any thinking person would have said, “Uh oh, Nahum was right about Nineveh. That means we’d better pay attention to what Isaiah and Habakkuk are saying about us being next-in-line for God’s judgment! We’d better fall on our faces before God quick and repent, or we’re going to get wiped out just like Nineveh!”
Likewise, for us, although we are not living at the same time as Nahum, so we can’t hear all the prophets delivering their messages in real time together, we can feel the same effect, because God has preserved all His prophets’ messages together in the Bible, so we can read Isaiah right along with Nahum and see that sin and God’s judgment and God’s salvation are not just for Nineveh and Israel but God’s judgment and salvation are for us too!
Conversely, it would be a mistake to read and study only one prophet – especially one minor prophet like Nahum – in isolation from the rest of Biblical prophecy. It takes extra work to do a wider study and gain more perspective of God’s Word, but it is an important part of receiving God’s Word as He has presented it to us through multiple prophets and apostles.
Remember that, in Nahum, we are looking at only part of one process of God’s judgment. Nahum’s scope is limited; he centers on God’s judgment against the Assyrian empire, but there is a bigger picture.
If you go deer hunting with a rifle that has a scope and all you ever do is look through that scope, you will miss out on some important contextual information: perhaps there is another hunter shooting at the same deer, or perhaps there is a bear chasing you. If you can’t see them through the scope, it doesn’t mean they don’t exist!
As we have gone through our study of Nahum, I have tried to “widen the scope” and quote parallel statements from the other Biblical prophets and apostles to present a bigger picture of what God is doing, using the whole counsel of Scripture.
That bigger picture includes God’s creative, revelatory, and redemptive work, in addition to His work of judgment highlighted in Nahum. In the case of Nineveh, Nahum places the brick of his prophecy on top of multiple bricks already laid in God’s redemptive history concerning Assyria.
At the foundation is the book of Genesis,
which tells of the creation of the land and people of Assyria,
the revelation of God’s person and of His universally-binding ordinances upon all mankind (including Assyria),
the rebellion of mankind against God and His ordinances,
the judgment of God against sin, from the banishment out of Eden to the worldwide flood of Noah,
and the animal sacrifices which God ordained as the way to be reconciled to Him.
This was all part of the history of Nineveh which it shared in common with Israel and all the other nations of the world. God had not left the Assyrians without a witness concerning Who He is, what His standards are, what their accountability to Him was, and how they could be made right with Him.
But God did even more to reveal Himself along with His justice and mercy: God sent prophets to Israel and to all the surrounding nations to remind them of the ancient revelation they had received of Him (recorded in the book of Genesis) and to warn them that if they did not get right with God, He would destroy their civilizations. In the case of Nineveh, that was the mission of the prophet Jonah.
According to my reckoning, Nahum’s prophecy was not more than a century after Jonah’s, so it had not even been a hundred years since the Assyrians had understood enough about God to repent and honor God appropriately and receive mercy from God.
Yet the very last phrase of the book of Nahum is “your evil continually.” They chose to “continue” to do “wrong” to everyone, including God. John Calvin commented, “[H]e says, ‘continually,’ to show that God’s forbearance had been long exercised. Hence, also, it appears, that the Assyrians were inexcusable, because, when God indulgently spared them, they did not repent, but pursued their wicked ways for a long course of time.”
So, when Nahum wrote in chapter 3 verse 19 that Nineveh was “incurable,” it was not some snap judgment by an impatient, ethnocentric Jew in the 8th Century Before Christ; rather, it God passing sentence on the Assyrians’ rejection of God and His word over thousands of years.
But, if all we were looking at was Nahum, it might be hard to see the larger picture of God’s process of relating to human beings; we might think that condemnation for wrongdoing was all that God was about if we don’t bring alongside of Nahum the prophecies of Moses, Isaiah, Jonah, and the rest, which fill in the gaps for us and help us see the rest of what God has done (and is doing) from creation to redemption to final judgment.
It’s one of the hallmarks of cults (and otherwise aberrant theology) to major-on certain verses without understanding the whole counsel of Scripture.
So when we look at any one part of Scripture, we need to consider:
Is this God revealing who He is and setting the ground rules? That demands a certain response of believing and obeying.
Is this describing human rebellion against God? (For instance, the book of Judges, when “everyone was doing what was right in their own eyes.”) This demands a different response, not of following those examples but of avoiding their examples and learning from God’s punishments.
Is this describing God’s way of redeeming sinners? This requires yet another response, not of sinning more to get more grace, and not of obeying the rules to earn our redemption, but rather of seeking God’s mercy to come to us through the atoning death of Christ.
Is this God mercifully warning people to repent of their sin, or is this God punishing people for persisting in rebellion against Him? This calls for more then mere assent to theological truths, and more than mere asking for forgiveness, but also for earnestly turning away from sinful practices.
Is this describing discipline to refine God’s people, or is this final destruction of the irredeemable wicked? Nahum teaches us that it’s great that God hates mean people, but simply believing in a God who punishes bad-guys is not an adequate picture of all of who God is and what He is doing; we need to fit this truth alongside of Scriptural messages of God’s justice and love and mercy, in order to come up with a properly-balanced theology.
A third aspect of the big picture, of which Nahum is only a part, is the way God’s temporal judgments against nations are sequenced. As the Apostle Peter put it in the fourth chapter of his first epistle, “It is time to begin the judgment at the household of God, and if [it comes] first at us, what will be the end for those who are unpersuaded by God's good news?” (1 Peter 4:17, NAW) In the larger picture, we see that God brings discipline first upon His covenanted people (usually by means of other people oppressing them, resulting in a remnant of God’s people who are more faithful), then God brings judgment upon those other peoples (often wiping them out completely).
For instance, the children of Israel were enslaved by the Egyptians, then God delivered His people from the Egyptian’s oppression and decimated the Egyptian army at the Red Sea. First the house of God, then the nations.
Throughout the books of Joshua, Judges and Samuel, one Canaanite (and Aramean) nation after another brought crisis upon the people of Israel, only to be conquered subsequently by Israel’s Judges and Israel’s Kings.
Then, during the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah, more-distant nations of Assyria, Egypt, and Persia became God’s means of judgment and chastisement against His people. Nahum is one of the prophets who declared God’s plan to punish those nations, in turn, for rebelling against their Creator and abusing His people. So Nahum’s message comes sequentially after Assyria had brought destruction to unfaithful Jews and refinement to the Jewish remnant, and it’s important to keep it in that context.
In the years to come, the Persians, Greeks, Romans, Europeans, Muslims, Communists, and others would each take their turn persecuting God’s people, the church (in its Old Testament and New Testament forms), and God has subsequently humbled one empire after another, and will continue to do so until His church is complete and He is ready to make an end of this world.
So, is always strategic to ask, “where are God’s people, and what are they doing?” and “where is Jesus, and what is He doing?” Christians need to keep sight of both Jesus and the church and stay connected to both Jesus and His church, then the rest of the sequence of what God is doing in the rest of the world will make more sense.
But remember, even the heathen nations are not treated dispassionately by God as mere fodder fated for hell, He has revealed to each one of those nations who He is and what their accountability to Him is and how they can be made right with Him, and, like the prophets He sent in the Old Testament to the nations (Moses to Egypt, Isaiah to Phoenicia, Jonah to Nineveh, Daniel to Babylon, etc.), He continues to send His messengers (we call them “missionaries” these days) to remind the nations of what God has revealed and to call them to repentance, and God is still in the process of saving persons out of every nation, at the same time that He is using those nations as tools and destroying nations for their evil.
That’s the big picture. So, with those principles of interpretation in mind, I want to...
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.
What are y’all planning against Yahweh? He is making an end [of it.] The oppressor will not rise up a second time, because they are always bunched briers or like their beer they are imbibing: they will be consumed like fully-dried straw. It was from you that the man who planned evil against Yahweh came forth – the counselor of ungodliness.
Thus says Yahweh, “Although there are peaceful-circumstances, even so there will be many, even so they will be shorn, then he will pass on. Thus will I humble you; I will not humble you again. And now, I will break his carrying-pole from off of you, and I will tear off your chains. And Yahweh will command concerning you, “Let there be no dissemination of your name again. I will cut off carved-image and cast-image from the house of your gods; I will appoint it to be your grave, because you are despised.
See, the feet of an announcer upon the mountains, causing peace to be heard! “Celebrate your feasts, Judea; make good on your vows, because the ungodly will not presume again to pass through you; he has been entirely cut off.”
One who scatters has come up against your front: guard the fort-wall! Monitor the road; tighten belts; marshal extra strength, because Yahweh has turned the arrogance of Jacob like the arrogance of Israel, for evacuators have evacuated them and have destroyed their pruned-grapevines.
The shield of its mighty-men is red-colored; the infantry men are crimson-clad. The cavalry [comes] with fiery steel-plating since the day it was outfitted, and the /war-horses\ quiver. And, as for the cavalry, they will flash through the streets; they will run to and fro through the plazas. Their appearance is like torches – speeding like lightening-bolts.
He will keep in mind his noblemen; they will be weakened on their way; they will hurry to her wall, and the protective-cover will be set up. The rivers’ gates were opened, and the palace dissolved. Then he will be confirmed-victor; she will be exposed; she will be taken away, even her maids moaning like the sound of doves, beating themselves over their heart. So, as for Nineveh, her waters will be like a pool of waters when they are running away.
“Stop! Stop!” but there is not one who will face-about. “Plunder the silver! Plunder the gold! For there is no end to the opportunity; there is a load of every thing you could want!”
Vacuousness and evacuating and being evacuated! So the heart melts and the knees wobble and everybody’s sides are in agony, and the faces of all of them collect a blush.
Where is the haunt of lions and the feeding-place itself for the young-lions, where the lion walked to go to the lion-cub, and there was no one to disturb? The lion was one who caught-victims enough for his lion-cubs and strangled some for his lionesses, and filled his caves with victuals and his haunts with dead-victims.
“Look at me; I am against you,” declares Yahweh, Commander of armies, “and I will cause your cavalry to burn up in smoke, and the sword will devour your young lions. Furthermore, I will cut loose your victims from your land, and the sound of your messengers will not be heard any more."
Woe to the city of bloodshed! All of it is full of fraud – of misappropriation; no victim gets away. There is the sound of the whip and the rumbling sound of the chariot-wheel and horse galloping and chariot bouncing! There is the horseman raising both the flash of the sword and the lightening-bolt of the spear, then the multitude of the wounded. There is the mass of dead-bodies, indeed there is no end to the bodies. They will stumble over their bodies, because of the multitude of the prostitute’s adulteries. She is a well-favored expert at witchcrafts. She is the one who sold nations by means of her adulteries, and families by means of her witchcrafts.
“Look at me; I am against you,” declares Yahweh, Commander of armies, “and I will strip your skirts over your face, and I will show nations your nakedness, and kingdoms your shame, and I will throw abominable-idols on top of you, and I will make a fool of you, then I will set you up as a sight [to see], and it will be that everyone who sees you will withdraw from you and will say, 'Nineveh has been devastated; who will be sympathetic toward her?' Where ever would I seek comforters for you from?
Are you better than No-Amon – the one settled along the rivers, water all around her, the rampart of which was the sea, her defensive-wall being /the water\? Ethiopia was her strength, and so was Egypt, and that without limit. Sudan and Libya were in your alliance.
Even she become an exile; she went into captivity. Even her nursing-babies were dashed to pieces at the head of all the streets. And over her honored men they handled dice, and all her great men were bound with chains. Even you yourself will become intoxicated; you will be disregarded, Even you yourself will seek refuge from the enemies."
All your forts are fig-trees with first-fruits; just let them be shaken, and they will fall into the mouth of the devourer! Look, your people are women in your midst. Before your enemies, the gates of your land are completely open; fire devours your door-bolts.
Bottle water for yourself for the siege. Strengthen your forts. Go to the mud-pit and make a mix with the clay; get a handle on the brick-work. It is there that the fire will devour you. The sword will cut you down; it will devour you like a young-locust. Let it make itself as overwhelming as the young-locust; let it make itself as overwhelming as the swarming-locust!
You have made your merchants more numerous than the stars of the skies. The young-locust has molted and taken wing. Your devotees are like the swarming-locust. Furthermore, your officers are like burrowing locusts that entrench in the walls on a cold day. When the sun has risen, he is withdrawn, and it is not known where his location is.
Your shepherds have gotten drowsy, O King of Assyria. Your nobles have gotten cozy. Your people were panicked upon the mountains, and there is no rallying them. There is no diminishing to your brokenness – [no] weakening of the strike against you. All who listen to the hearsay about you clap hands over you, for upon whom has your evil not had a lasting effect?
The Sovereignty of God among the nations of the world
In Luke 1:50-52, Mary touted God’s authority over kings and rulers, singing, “He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has put down the mighty from their thrones, And exalted the lowly… His mercy is on those who fear Him From generation to generation.” (NKJV)
and Paul, in 1 Timothy 6:14-15, called “our Lord Jesus Christ” “the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords.”
The certainty of accountability. God will punish evil.
Philippians 3:18-19 “...many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame [αἰσχύνῃ]-- who set their mind on earthly things.” (NKJV, cf. 2 Cor. 4:2)
God’s concern For His People
“[W]hatever the Prophet has hitherto said against the Assyrians ought to be extended indiscriminately to all the enemies of the Church… whenever the ungodly cause trouble to us, they carry on war with God himself… God sets up himself as a shield and declares that He will protect us under the shadow of His wings all those who commit themselves to His protection.” ~J. Calvin
Psalm 5:8-12 “Yahweh, guide me in your righteousness because of my opponents; level your way in front of me. Because in [every] mouth there is nothing that will stand; their innards are empty-desires, an open grave their larynx; they flatter [with] their tongue. Judge them guilty, God! They will fall as a result of their counsels. Cause them to go away through multiplication of their transgressions because they are resistant with You. Meanwhile, all refugees in You will be happy, they will sing out forever, you will even fabricate shelter over him, and lovers of Your name will exult in You! Because You yourself really bless a righteous [person]; like a big shield, Yahweh, you encircle him with favor.” (NAW)
1The Assyrians conducted quite a few campaigns against Egypt, but Keil was the only commentator I found to diverge from identifying Nahum’s account with Ashurbanipal’s siege of Thebes. Keil identified it with Sargon’s conquests in Egypt in the early 700’s, before Sennacherib’s siege of Jerusalem, during Hezekiah’s reign, comporting with the many commentators advocating for dating Nahum during Hezekiah’s reign.
2cf. M. Barrett: “...most likely it was nearer the time of Nineveh’s fall.”
3Again, assuming No-Amon to be Thebes.