Scripture Daily

Context No. 316 of 4322 · Nahum

Context · Reflection

Nahum 1:1-15: in context

1A revelation about Nineveh. The book of the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite. 2The LORD is a jealous God and avenges. The LORD avenges and is full of wrath. The LORD takes vengeance on his adversaries, and he maintains wrath against his enemies. 3The LORD is slow to anger, and great in power, and will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. The LORD has his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet. 4He rebukes the sea and makes it dry, and dries up all the rivers. Bashan and Carmel languish. The flower of Lebanon languishes. 5The mountains quake before him, and the hills melt away. The earth trembles at his presence, yes, the world, and all who dwell in it. 6Who can stand before his indignation? Who can endure the fierceness of his anger? His wrath is poured out like fire, and the rocks are broken apart by him. 7The LORD is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; and he knows those who take refuge in him. 8But with an overflowing flood, he will make a full end of her place, and will pursue his enemies into darkness. 9What do you plot against the LORD? He will make a full end. Affliction won’t rise up the second time. 10For entangled like thorns, and drunken as with their drink, they are consumed utterly like dry stubble. 11One has gone out of you who devises evil against the LORD, who counsels wickedness. 12The LORD says: “Though they are in full strength and likewise many, even so they will be cut down and pass away. Though I have afflicted you, I will afflict you no more. 13Now I will break his yoke from off you, and will burst your bonds apart.” 14The LORD has commanded concerning you: “No more descendants will bear your name. Out of the house of your gods, I will cut off the engraved image and the molten image. I will make your grave, for you are vile.” 15Behold, on the mountains the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace! Keep your feasts, Judah! Perform your vows, for the wicked one will no more pass through you. He is utterly cut off.

Nahum is a short book aimed at one target, the city of Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, the empire that had terrorized the region and crushed Israel's northern kingdom. It opens with one of the most frightening hymns in the Bible. The LORD is described as jealous and avenging, his wrath poured out like fire, the mountains quaking and the hills melting and the sea drying up at his approach. Who can stand before his indignation, the prophet asks, who can endure the heat of his anger? It is overwhelming, and it is meant to be.

And then, right in the middle of that storm, comes a single verse of a completely different temperature. The LORD is good, it says, a stronghold in the day of trouble, and he knows those who take refuge in him. The same power that is terror to Nineveh is a shelter to the ones who run to him. Nothing about God has changed between the two verses; what changes is where you are standing. To the oppressor, all that force is coming for you. To the oppressed, the same force is the safest place there is. For Judah, ground down under Assyria's yoke, the terror descending on Nineveh is not bad news at all. I will break his yoke off you, God says, and the book ends with a runner on the mountains: behold, the feet of the one who brings good news and proclaims peace. The fall of the oppressor is good news to the people he crushed.

It reframes something I may have gotten backwards. God's fierceness against what devours and enslaves people is not the opposite of his goodness; it is his goodness, felt from the side of the victim. Have I only ever pictured God's power as something to be afraid of, when to the one who takes refuge in him it is a stronghold, and his hardness toward evil is the very thing that sets the crushed free?

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