Nahum
The other Nineveh book: this time, the city doesn't repent.
Who wrote it: Nahum of Elkosh, a town nobody has located. Written after Thebes fell in 663 BC (he mentions it) and before Nineveh fell in 612, so probably around 630 to 615 BC.
What it is
A century after Jonah, Nineveh is still standing and has become the most feared city on earth. Assyria destroyed the northern kingdom, deported its people, and made a policy of flaying and impaling the conquered and carving it on palace walls. Judah had paid tribute for decades. Nahum's book is the announcement that it's over. He opens with the LORD as a jealous, avenging God who is also slow to anger and won't leave the guilty unpunished, and then describes Nineveh's fall as if watching it: chariots in the streets, the river gates opened, the palace dissolving, the queen led away, the lions' den emptied.
What Nahum is angry about is cruelty on a scale that had gone unanswered for generations. Woe to the bloody city, full of lies and plunder. His last line is that everyone who hears the news will clap, because who hasn't felt Nineveh's endless cruelty? Nineveh fell to the Babylonians and Medes in 612 BC, so completely that within a few centuries people didn't know where it had stood.
The hope in Nahum is for Judah, and it's the flip side of the rage: the LORD is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble, and he knows those who take refuge in him. Look, on the mountains, the feet of him who brings good news. Assyria won't pass through you again. Read Nahum next to Jonah. Same city, same God, a hundred years apart, and the difference is whether the city turned.
Verses worth keeping
- Nahum 1:7WEB
The LORD is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; and he knows those who take refuge in him.
Gen Zsame meaning, your wordsThe LORD is good, a safe place in the day of trouble, and he knows the people who take shelter in him.
One quiet verse of comfort in a book of fire. It's there for the small nation, not the empire.
- Nahum 1:3WEB
The 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.
Gen Zsame meaning, your wordsThe LORD is slow to get angry and great in power, and he will absolutely not let the guilty off. The LORD's path runs through the whirlwind and the storm, and the clouds are the dust under his feet.
Slow to anger is the phrase Jonah threw at God as a complaint. Nahum quotes it and adds the second half: slow isn't never.
- Nahum 3:19WEB
There is no healing your wound, for your injury is fatal. All who hear the report of you clap their hands over you, for who hasn’t felt your endless cruelty?
Gen Zsame meaning, your wordsThere's no healing for your wound. Your injury is fatal. Everyone who hears the news about you claps their hands, because who hasn't felt your cruelty, over and over?
The last verse of the book. No offer of repentance this time. The book is honest that some things end in applause.
Read Nahum
The full text, every chapter, from the World English Bible, a modern public-domain translation. Pick a chapter below. The highlighted verses are the place to start if you have never read it.
Nahum 1
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.
Questions about Nahum
Isn't celebrating a city's destruction wrong?
Nahum does celebrate it, and the book was kept as scripture. Two things are worth holding. Assyria's cruelty was extreme even by ancient standards, and Nahum speaks for the people it had crushed for a century; relief at the end of that isn't the same as bloodlust. And Nahum's God is 'slow to anger', which means Nineveh had a hundred years since Jonah. The book's claim is that justice delayed is still justice, and that the victims are allowed to be glad when it comes.
How does Nahum fit with Jonah?
Same city, opposite outcome. In Jonah, Nineveh repents and is spared, to Jonah's disgust. A century later in Nahum, it has gone back to what it was and is destroyed. Read together they say something the Bible says often: God's mercy is real and it isn't a permanent exemption. Turning matters, and so does staying turned. The pair is one of the clearest arguments in scripture that God responds to what people actually do.
Did Nineveh actually fall the way Nahum says?
Yes, in 612 BC, to a Babylonian and Median alliance. Nahum's details about the river gates being opened and the city flooding match what ancient historians recorded and what archaeology suggests: the Khosr river was probably used against the walls. The city was abandoned so thoroughly that when Greek armies passed the site two centuries later, they didn't know what it had been.