Today in God's Word—December 2024
East Tallassee Church of Christ
December 8, Nahum 2
Behold, I am against you, declares the LORD of hosts, and I will burn your chariots in smoke, and the sword shall devour your young lions. I will cut off your prey from the earth, and the voice of your messengers shall no longer be heard. - Nahum 2:13
Nahum is a short book about the wrath of God and the doom of Nineveh. Through the words of Nahum, God pronounced judgment against the Assyrians and gave the remnant of Israel reassurance about his sovereignty and his perfect justice. If we remember the first chapter of Nahum as God's decree of Nineveh's doom, let's see how chapter 2 describes the coming doom of the great city.
You probably know the word montage. It came from the film industry and refers to a story told with pieces, short clips of film combined with still images. A montage compresses and expresses the story of a life, an event in history or some other subject into a single unit. In graphic arts, a montage is a combination of different media (perhaps words from a typewriter, photographs, drawings or paintings) into a single work of art that expresses an idea or a concept.
Nahum 2 is the verbal equivalent of a montage. It's a collection of images conveyed by descriptive phrases that combine into a unified picture or description. It pours out images of war and conquest and destruction.
This chapter is short, but dense. It’s a compact description of Nineveh's fall to Babylon. It is not a historical account, but a prophetic one. The things it described had not happened yet, but they would happen. God had relented from his plan to destroy Nineveh a little over a century before Nahum. But now, time was up, and God's judgment was coming soon against the hateful, violent Assyrians.
A force God called "the scatterer" in the first verse was coming against the proud, wicked city. The invaders wore red clothing and carried red armor. They poured over the walls and through the streets of the city like a flood. In their wake, they would leave another red flood, the blood of their victims. They moved swiftly across the great city, bigger in circumference than modern-day Atlanta. They stripped and carried away the goddess the Ninevites worshiped, and plundered her temple and looted the rest of the city. Nineveh was the repository of the great wealth the Assyrian forces had amassed as they crushed their opponents with blunt, brutal force. Now their mercenary soldiers ran away, and the lion of Assyria was defeated in his own den. The Babylonians would leave desolation, ruin, death and anguish behind them when they left the doomed city.
All these dark, violent events would come to pass because "the scatterer" mentioned in the first verse was the One who said, "I am against you" in the last verse. Yes, the Babylonians were the instrument by which God destroyed Nineveh. But they were simply that, an instrument in the great and deliberate hand of God. These people had mocked God. They terrorized and brutalized his people. So God, by his sovereign and irresistible power, executed his perfect justice against the capital city of the Assyrians. The fall of Nineveh was not so much a vindication of Israel, but more a defense of God's own honor and glory.
The Israelites and all the nations that have followed them in history should have learned that God is in complete control. He uses nations as he pleases. But when a nation despises God and disregards the Lord, that nation will not stand. That truth is verified by history, and will be demonstrated again to the whole human family at the final judgment.
The only hope fallen human beings have as they face God in judgment is in Jesus Christ, through whom the promised restoration of Israel would come. God gave his Son to redeem all who will come to him. He took the wrath of God against sin on himself by bearing our sins at the cross. Our only hope for salvation from the deserved judgment of God is to be reconciled to God in Christ. Let’s not neglect or reject that great salvation.
Copyright © 2024 by Michael B. McElroy. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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