Historical Year
One of the most eloquent orators in the Bible cries out, “Nineveh has been laid waste.” And he immediately adds a pun on his name (Nahum means “the comforter”): “Who will comfort him?” (3:7). For nearly three hundred years, Assyria had controlled the Eastern world, and Nineveh was the capital for over a hundred years—attention has been paid to Nineveh since Gen. 10:11-12).
Assyria had an extremely brutal system of government and war practices, extorting heavy taxes, not tolerating any middle ground, not showing compassion to resistance and to the point of deporting an entire nation as was the case of Israel; The terror that was Assyria must have been the great resistance of Jonah to preach to such a city of this intolerant regime; the idea of God having mercy on a man without any mercy was unbearable for Jonah. With clenched fists and despair, his servants cried out for mercy to the heavens, “How long, Lord?” (Ps 89:47).
The book of Nahum is a Hallelujah chorus of triumphant relief. At the end he describes the destruction of Nineveh, “Whoever hears of you applauds your evil.” (3:19).
Nineveh (in northern Iraq) was destroyed in 612 BC by a coalition of Babylonians (in southern Iraq), Medes and Persians (modern Iran), with help from smaller tribes; the destruction was so complete that when Xenophon passed through Nineveh in 401 BC, he could only learn from the local inhabitants that a great people had once occupied the place and had been devastated.
Nahum writes in such a clear way that those who defend that his hometown Elkos was near Nineveh, but everyone, even in distant Judah, knew about Nineveh. A city of 7.3 km2 with a population of approximately 288 thousand people.
Style and Theology
Nahum not only writes as an eyewitness to the destruction, but also portrays himself as if he were in the city during its final hours. In chapter 2, his sound images resonate as a binary beat for alarm, march, and evolving into lamentation; his rhythm and poetic expressions are vibrant along with his literary, poetic genre; he is someone who speaks of tragedy with rhyme and poetry.
His theology is focused on a single monopolizing theme: God does not tolerate injustice forever!
Point of view.
The book of Nahum, which he calls a “vision,” in fact shows God in his fullness. The fact that God deals with nations and individuals, and offers them his communicable attributes such as Justice, Goodness, Love, Longsuffering, and these attributes are not mutually exclusive.
The God who is love is also justice; if it were not so, love without justice would be complicity and justice without love would be evil; But the effects of communication to man are balanced among themselves, where God is Justice! In the same proportion that he is Love!
And Nineveh, through divine sovereignty, shows us exactly this, now, in the time of Jonah, God practices his love for this city together with his justice, and the justice applied by God was forgiveness, due to hearts that sought forgiveness; Where even Jonah found something unbearable; God attributed his love before the justice itself that through sovereignty, knew of a generation that would repent, as in fact happened.
One hundred and fifty years after Jonah, this same city, another generation received the justice of God that is no less than His love, it is only His justice, which belongs to Him.
Now, if that generation repented and God and received forgiveness, this generation, on the contrary, turned away from God and received divine justice according to His sovereignty due to sinfulness without repentant hearts.
And why now has God not sent another prophet to preach repentance to Nineveh? Simple, because the previous generation itself was already a historical witness to the love of God that one day appeased the wrath of that city; For this generation, there was no lack of access to God, but rather, resistance to God.
God treats nations with the typology of a cup (Gen 15:16); Where His wrath is poured out when the iniquity of a nation or people overflows in this measure of God, once overflowing His wrath is applied, to fulfill His justice; Just as in the apocalypse the cup of the world (nations) is being filled until the day of destruction arrives.
Man, the individuality that we are for God, has the typology of the scale (Dan. 5,27 – Job 31,16.. etc.) Where God “weighs” man, to find equity or iniquity in him; A repentant heart, that seeks mercy in God, even if it is in a nation under the wrath of God, will find in God his love (Noah, Lot etc.);
Therefore Nineveh is a city chosen to present the character of God regarding his attributes of Justice and Love, full and sovereign.
That is why, almost always, when we observe people, peoples, nations with so many practices that are contrary to the Gospel, or with so many practices that are abominable to God, we immediately think: “Does God not see?” Or who has not felt a sense of injustice, where the “worst” seem to have nothing happening to them? Because God does not nullify His love, through His justice, this time that is passing, where it seems like impunity from heaven, is only a time when the cup may be filling up or the weight is balancing between equity and iniquity. Always know: God does not tolerate injustice forever.
Fabiano Moreno