20250322

Nahum’s Nineveh

Nahum 3:5-19 (JDV)

Nahum 3:5 Watch, I am against you. This is the declaration of Yahveh of Armies. I will lift your skirts over your face and display your nakedness to nations, your shame to kingdoms.
Nahum 3:6 I will throw filth on you and treat you with contempt; I will make a spectacle of you.
Nahum 3:7 Then all who see you will recoil from you, saying, “Nineveh is devastated; who will show sympathy to her?” Where can I find anyone to comfort you?
Nahum 3:8 Are you better than Thebes that sat along the Nile with water surrounding her, whose rampart was the sea, the river her wall?
Nahum 3:9 Cush and Egypt were her endless source of strength; Put and Libya were among her allies.
Nahum 3:10 Yet she became an exile; she went into captivity. Her children were also dashed to pieces at the head of every street. They cast lots for her dignitaries, and all her nobles were bound in chains.
Nahum 3:11 You also will become drunk; you will hide. You also will seek refuge from the enemy.
Nahum 3:12 All your fortresses are fig trees with figs that ripened first; when shaken, they fall — right into the mouth of the eater!
Nahum 3:13 Watch, your troops are like women among you; your land’s city gates are wide open to your enemies. Fire will devour the bars of your gates.
Nahum 3:14 Draw water for the siege; strengthen your fortresses. Step into the clay and tread the mortar; take hold of the brick-mold!
Nahum 3:15 The fire will devour you there; the sword will cut you down. It will devour you like the crawling stage locust. Multiply yourselves like the young locust; multiply like the winging stage locust!
Nahum 3:16 You have made your merchants more numerous than the stars of the sky. The crawling stage locust strips the land and leaves it dark.
Nahum 3:17 Your court officials are like the winging stage locust, and your scribes like clouds of locusts, which settle on the walls on a cold day; when the sun rises, they take off, and no one knows where they are.
Nahum 3:18 King of Assyria, your shepherds slumber; your officers sleep. Your people are scattered across the mountains with no one to gather them together.
Nahum 3:19 There is no remedy for your fracture; your injury is severe. All who hear the news about you will clap their hands because of you, because who has not experienced your constant cruelty?

Nahum’s Nineveh

Shame, fear and destruction will come to Nineveh: the same shame, fear and destruction that she has meted out to her neighbor nations. Why should the God of Israel waste time sending this message from his prophet? He cares about Nineveh, and showed that care by sending Jonah. But this time, there appears to have been no repentance. Nineveh got hers. How many times has the LORD sent his word to us, pleading for us to repent? We cannot escape Jesus Christ. He will either be our Savior or our judge.

LORD, renew our minds, so that we respond to your word. May we be like Jonah’s Nineveh, not like Nahum’s Nineveh.