Well I have a pretty high tolerance for the minor prophets and their often rather harsh messages. As said last week I even find their social critique reassuring as I try to navigate the injustice and violence and sin (if I dare use that word) of the world. But even I have struggled with Nahum this week and did consider skipping him. But I didn’t. Nahum too forms part of our sacred Scriptures, of God’s story amongst us. And as always some context helps us make more sense of Nahum and his message.
And so let’s pray, “We thank You, holy God, for Your word which You have revealed to us in creation, through Jesus our saviour and our sacred Scriptures. We pray this morning that you will speak to us afresh through this word and that it may dwell in us and amongst us. Amen.
So Nahum is the seventh of the minor prophets. Although he is the sixth in our series. We skipped over Jonah as Mel will tell the Godly Play story at our family service next week and Benj will share briefly on this story.
But Nahum and Jonah are related. In fact Nahum is sometimes referred to as part 2 of Jonah so I am going to reflect on the book of Jonah a little bit today as well. It is hard to understand Nahum without Jonah.
As you can see on our table, Nahum like Jonah has a message for Ninevah.
Ninevah was the oldest and most-populous city of the Assyrian empire. This empire was a rising world power from the 14th century BCE reaching its peak in the middle of the 8th century with the King Tiglath-Pileser. It fell to the Babylonians in 612.
Both Israel and Judah lived in fear of Assyria.
Ninevah is situated on the east bank of the Tigris River and encircled by the modern city of Mosul, Iraq.
There are no explicit references to dates in either Jonah or Nahum and so scholars try to date them from other biblical and non-biblical sources. And as is often the case there are ongoing debates about when the events in these books took place and then when and by whom they were written.
Traditionally, the authorship of Jonah has been ascribed to the Jonah son of Ammittai who is referred to in 2 Kings 14:25 during the reign of Israel’s king Jeroboam II. This would place the book somewhere between 782–753 BCE. This makes sense in terms of the history of Assyria and so this is the time period I am assuming.
It seems likely that Nahum prophesied about 100 or so years later. The book refers to the fall of Thebes which occurred around 664 B.C.E. Nahum also predicts the fall of Nineveh which happened in 612 B.C.E as a future event which has led scholars to date Nahum to between 664 and 612 B.C.E.
If this is indeed correct the story then goes something like this. In the middle of 8th century BCE God calls Jonah to “go at once to Ninevah, that great city, and cry out against it for their wickedness.”
Jonah, as most of us probably know, tries to run away but he is swallowed by a great fish. After three days the fish spits him out on the shore and God tells him again to go to Ninevah. This time Jonah obeys and and he tells the Ninevites, “forty more days and Ninevah shall be overthrown.”
Somewhat surprisingly the people of Ninevah believe Jonah and believe in God. They proclaim a fast, put on sackcloth and repent. Even the king takes part saying, “By the decree of the king and his nobles: No human or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. 8 Humans and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. 9 Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.”
And Indeed God does. And to Jonah’s dismay he spares the city.
However, when Nahum appears on the scene about 100 years later things have changed. Tiglath-pileser became king of the Assyrian Empire in 745 BCE and quickly reasserts Assyrian dominance throughout the region. Like many of the Assyrian kings before him, his reign was characterized by cruelty and destruction, especially upon those nations and peoples the Assyrians conquered. The northern kingdom of Israel experienced this cruelty, when in 722 BCE it was devastated by the subsequent Assyrian king, Shalmaneser.
I don’t know if I am pronouncing all those names right but I told the high school bible study that when they come across unfamiliar names to just say something confidently and people will go with it so Im taking my own advice.
Anyway, Ninevah also returned to worshipping other gods.
And so Nahum prophecies against them as we read saying, “You will have no descendants to bear your name. I will destroy the images and idols that are in the temple of your gods. I will prepare your grave, for you are vile.”
And indeed the Assyrian Empire comes to an end in 612 BCE when it is conquered by the Babylonians who become the dominant super power.
It’s an intriguing story no doubt. But also one that probably has at least some of you thinking so what? What has this got to with anything?
Well, I think it does tell us a lot about God.
Ninevah, as said, was part of the Assyrian Empire. The people are not God’s “chosen” people. They have no covenant relationship with him.
And yet it seems they matter to God. He sends not one, but two prophets to them.
The Hebrew Scriptures tell us the story of Israel and Judah and how God worked in and through them. This matters. But from the beginning, God promises to make Abraham’s family a great nation by whom all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.
Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures we encounter outsiders who are used by God to fulfill His purposes, challenge His people, and demonstrate His inclusive love.
One of the earliest examples is Melchizedek, the king of Salem and priest of God Most High, who blesses Abram.
The accounts of Rahab, a Canaanite prostitute, who’s faith in God leads her to protect the Israelite spies and of Ruth, a Moabite woman, whose loyalty to Naomi and faith in God result in her becoming the great-grandmother of King David teach us that God’s grace extends beyond ethnic boundaries. Both these women are so significant they are included in the genealogy of Jesus.
And last week we read from Micah about the days to come when “the mountain of the Lord’s temple shall be established as the highest of the mountains and peoples shall stream to it, and many nations shall come and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.”
And then Jesus tells his followers that “The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in His name to all nations. And indeed it has.
But God has always been the God of all people, and all nations, and all creation.
Jonah and Nahum’s message to Ninevah is one of judgement (a word I know makes us squirm a little). But this is not unique to Ninevah because they are outsiders and enemies. The prophet’s also have messages of judgement to the insiders. But for God judgement is not condemnation. Even in his wrath God is for us. The purpose of prophet’s message is to make people aware of how the ways they are behaving is damaging their communities and themselves and will ultimately lead to their ruin. But there is always hope of forgiveness and restoration, there is always the opportunity to change, to turn to God and to live another way.
And if people do this, then God is gracious and merciful as he was with Ninevah in the story of Jonah.
And Jonah is actually quite angry about this. He prays to God, “O Lord! Is not this why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning, for I knew that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from punishment.”
Jonah storms out of the city and sits down under a bush. God causes the bush to grow and it gives Jonah shade which he appreciates greatly. But then a worm comes and easts the bush and it withers. Jonah is again angry and God says to him in the final verses of the book, “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. 11 And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons.”
We never find out how Jonah responds to this. Did he come to care for the people of Ninevah or would he have found himself saying to God, “I told you so” when the Assyrians eventually conquered Israel? Would he have been pleased, that when Nahum returned to again warn them of what was coming, they rejected the message?
We often think poorly of Jonah for his lack of compassion for the Ninevites, but I think we all struggle with the mercy of God. We do not like his anger and his judgement. But if we are honest we do not like his grace much either.
No wonder modern people struggle so much with the prophets. There’s not much worse in modern society than being seen as “judgemental.” Although we are all doing it, all the time. Our different tribes have strict rules though on who and what can and should be judged and who and what shouldn’t.
But forgiveness is not particularly in either. The idea that crimes go unpunished is anathema to us. Although again our tribes determine what we believe is a crime and the extent of the punishment.
But this is what the prophets are about – judgement and restoration.
This is also what the Christian faith and the cross of Christ are all about.
The cross is God’s judgement of sin and all that seeks to hurt and destroy his creation. The horror and the hideousness of it acknowledges the gravity of sin, that something seriously evil has been done and that those who have suffered great wrong demand justice. It acknowledges that forgiveness and reconciliation are costly.
However, God’s judgement against sin is preceded, accompanied, and followed by God’s mercy. The cross demonstrates the length that God will go to make things right, to show his love and grace to all the nations.
The prophets are hard work, they are weird and wild and say things we do not really want to hear. But I think our world might need people like them. People willing to name what is wrong with the world but also what is wrong in our own hearts and actions. What is wrong with the world is likely present in our own lives. But to do so in a way that does not shame people but rather frees them from shame. That does not cancel them or banish them but offers them hope and forgiveness, that helps them to repent and to find the love and grace of God. Something we all need right?
