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Context No. 1775 of 4322 · Nahum

Context · Reflection

Nahum 3:8-13: in context

8Are you better than No-Amon, who was situated among the rivers, who had the waters around her, whose rampart was the sea, and her wall was of the sea? 9Cush and Egypt were her boundless strength. Put and Libya were her helpers. 10Yet was she carried away. She went into captivity. Her young children also were dashed in pieces at the head of all the streets, and they cast lots for her honorable men, and all her great men were bound in chains. 11You also will be drunken. You will be hidden. You also will seek a stronghold because of the enemy. 12All your fortresses will be like fig trees with the first-ripe figs. If they are shaken, they fall into the mouth of the eater. 13Behold, your troops among you are women. The gates of your land are set wide open to your enemies. The fire has devoured your bars.

Nahum warns Nineveh by pointing to another great city that had already fallen: Thebes, called No-Amon, set among the waters, defended by the river and the sea, backed by the strength of Cush and Egypt and allies beyond. For all that, Thebes was carried away into captivity, her children dashed in the streets, her leaders bound in chains. Are you better than Thebes? Nahum asks Nineveh. Your fortresses too will fall like ripe figs shaken from the tree; your gates stand open, and the fire has consumed your bars.

The argument Nahum makes is simple and sobering: Thebes was strong, better defended than you, and Thebes fell; so will you. Nineveh trusted in its walls, its fortresses, its position, imagining itself secure; and Nahum holds up the ruin of an even stronger city to shatter that false confidence. No fortress is impregnable before the judgment of God; the defenses that seem to make a city, or a life, untouchable are like ripe figs that fall at a shake. There is a warning here against the false security we build for ourselves. We fortify our lives with defenses of our own, wealth, position, reputation, the walls of accomplishment and self-sufficiency, and imagine that these make us safe, that what we have built cannot be shaken. But Nineveh's walls were higher than ours, and Thebes' higher still, and both fell. The strong city is a strong city only in the imagination of the one who trusts it; the fortresses we lean on cannot finally secure us against the things that matter, against judgment, against death, against the God before whom all our defenses are ripe figs. This is not counsel to despair but to relocate our security. The one who trusts in his fortresses trusts in what will fall; the one who trusts in God has a refuge that does not. Nineveh, sure of its walls, was told to look at fallen Thebes and reckon with the frailty of everything it trusted. We do well to look honestly at the defenses we lean on and ask whether they can bear the weight we put on them, or whether our real security must be found in the God whom no wall can substitute for.

What are the fortresses I trust to keep me secure, my wealth, position, reputation, the walls of my own accomplishment, and can I reckon honestly, as Nineveh was told to reckon with fallen Thebes, that such defenses cannot finally secure me, and relocate my security in the God whom no wall can replace?

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