The Minor Writing Prophets VI: Nahum – a poet
February 19, 2012
BMC- Nahum
Introduction: a poet
I want to begin this morning by inviting you to brainstorm famous poets or memorable poems. Who are some of the great poets in history or the present and what are some memorable poems that have stayed with you? {Take some answers}
We began our Bible Study on Thursday night with this question as well. That list included Edgar Allen Poe and William Shakespeare as well as Shell Silverstein and Dr. Suess. It included poems like “Crossing the Bar,” “The Road Less Traveled,” and “Richard Cory.”
This list served as a good reminder for us; because I think all too often when we think of poetry in general, we tend to think of flowery and pretty words. When in reality poetry often deals with deep and dark realities of the human experience. Poetry has a power to be able to say something or to make a point in a memorable and transformative way.
In his commentary entitled Be Amazed, Warren W. Wiersbe begins his section on Nahum by saying, “Queen Victoria was celebrating sixty years on the British throne when Rudyard Kipling published his poem, “Recessional.” Not everybody in Great Britan liked the poem because if punctured national pride at a time when the empire was at its peak. “Recessional” was a warning that other empires had vanished from the stage of history and theirs might follow in their train. God was still the Judge of the nations. Kipling wrote:
Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget – lest we forget!”[1]
Who was Nahum?
With that in mind, perhaps it is not as startling to consider Nahum as a poet. Certainly after reading his book I doubt that any of us would see his work as a beautiful or uplifting piece of literature. And yet it is incredibly poetic and it served to send a powerful message. On the surface, it may appear to be nothing more than a message of doom and destruction; but when we get deeper into the implications of what Nahum writes, I believe we have a more profound message than one sees from a cursory read.
Nahum was from Elkosh, a town that we do not know much about or even where it was. He prophesied about a single message, the destruction of Nineveh; but whether he ever delivered it to the people of Nineveh or not we don’t know. It could be that the message was actually intended more for the people of Judah as a word of comfort after ongoing abuse by the Assyrians. Nahum afterall means “comfort” or “consolation.”
He probably delivered his message in the late 600s BCE, but likely before the fall of Nineveh in 612BCE. In that way Nahum, unlike Jonah, was right about the destruction that was to come. While Nahum probably came a hundred years or so after Jonah, he likely overlapped with Zephaniah and gave his message during the reign of King Josiah.
Through considering this deeper context, we come to have a better understanding of the meaning behind Nahum. We come to see that it was significant in its day and that it still has some important reminders for our modern day.
Lesson 1: Release of Captives
When I was 4 or 5, I remember going over to visit a friend of my mom’s. This woman had two boys who were probably more like 7 and 10. I went off to play with them while our mothers talked inside in the kitchen. The boys took me outside to see their club house. It was a pretty simple design built up on stilts. You climbed a latter to get up to a porch and the only door for getting in and out of the clubhouse.
We climbed up and I don’t remember what game we were playing, but they asked me if it would be okay for them to lock me in the club house while they went down as part of the game. The door was such that it had a hook and eye latch that could only be locked or unlocked from the outside. Without any real thought about what it would mean for me to be locked in, I said, “Sure.” They left and locked me in by myself. Well it wasn’t long before I was yelling for help to get me out of that club house.
I did not like the feeling of captivity in there by myself with no control over whether or not I could leave. But I remember the relief and the sense of freedom I had when I was released. Now certainly, this is nothing compared to the captivity that many people in the world experience everyday whether as a result of their own poor choices, or by no fault of their own; but it was my experience.
This brings us to the first lesson that we see in Nahum: the release of the captives. It is difficult for us in our modern day world and US context of freedom to fully appreciate and understand Nahum because we read this from a position of power, authority, and great freedom. We are not held captive and we do not have the sense of a ruling authority that is oppressing us.
But that is exactly the experience for Judah at the time of this message. They were being oppressed, held captive by the nation of Assyria and Nahum proclaims on behalf of God freedom to captive Judah. In chapter 1 verse 13 we read, “Now I will break their yoke from your neck and tear your shackles away.” God was coming to release the prisoners.
We do not experience this type of oppression or captivity and yet many people throughout history have. Invictus is a movie that came out a few years ago with Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon. It is the story of Nelson Mandela after his release from prison and his work to rebuild South Africa. During one scene, Matt Damon who plays the captain of the rugby team and his teammates take a tour of the prison that Mandela was held in. He stands in the cell that held Mandela captive for so many years and gains a new insight into the captivity and release that the man experienced.
Human trafficking and Modern Day slavery still keep people in bondage today. CNN reports that 32 billion dollars a year is generated from modern day slavery. They also report that between 14,000 and 17,000 human beings are trafficked into the US annually. And worldwide, they estimate between 10 and 30 million people are slaves.[2]
In a very real and tangible way, bondage and captivity still exist today. Nahum brings a message of hope for freedom from captivity. God freed Judah from captivity and God is still capable to free people today from their captivity. The real question is what is our role in that? God used the Medes and the Babylonians to over through the Assyrians and free Judah. In what ways might God be calling us stop the human traffickers in the nation in which we live?
Lesson 2: Power of God
Nahum declared release to the captives. He also proclaimed the power of God. I’ve shared with you before about the time that Beth and I were traveling in Michigan with the Followers. Due to Beth missing our turn twice, we just missed being taken out by a tornado that hit Cummins, Michigan.
The next day after attending worship and singing in a different church, we drove through Cummins. We saw trees that were hundreds of years old had been uprooted and destroyed, buildings wiped out by the sheer power of the tornado. But we also saw buildings that stood with nothing more than the fronts ripped off. As we drove by, we could look inside like they were doll houses with all of the furniture in place but the front missing.
Our God is a God of tremendous power and Nahum describes this power in what are sometimes called theophanies. A Theophany is “the coming of Yahweh from a definite place and the tumult in nature resulting from his nearness.”[3] Nahum describes oceans drying up, mountains quaking, hills melting away, and the earth trembling. He describes the power of a mighty God.
Ultimately, I would suggest that this is a reminder that God is in control. The people of Judah were being attacked and over taken by a foreign power. It would have been natural and easy for them to ask, “Where is God?” Or “Why isn’t God stopping this?” But Nahum reassures them that God will set them free and that God is in control.
Lesson 3: God is for Justice
God releases the captives and is a God of power. Finally, Nahum reminds us that God is for justice. It has been all too common throughout history and even today for a nation to believe and declare that God is on their side against their foe. Israel believed that God was on their side, that they were untouchable when their enemies came to overtake them.
Yet the message throughout the prophets we have studied so far was clear that God was working through these foreign powers to teach the people of God a lesson. They were God’s people, but they were not living like the people of God. They were practicing injustice against other people and God used Assyria to set them straight.
It would have been easy then for people to believe that God had abandoned Israel and taken sides with Assyria, yet Nahum gives us another message. Nahum teaches us that God is not on the side of the Assyrians either. The Assyrians had carried out God’s wrath on Israel, but they had gone too far. They too were practicing injustice against other people and as a result, God was now going to punish Assyria as well. From this we see that YHWH is not a God that is exclusive to anyone nation and that God is not a national deity.
“Nahum’s message declares that the God of Israel is not merely a national deity but the true sovereign God, whose power extends over all the nations. We know from Nah 1:12 and from the prophecies of Isaiah and Micah that God had used the experience of domination by Assyria to judge his people for their sins, because they had been unfaithful to the covenant. But now Assyria would be judged, as all nations who pursue evil and cruelty will be judged, eventually reaping what was sown and harvesting the seeds of their own destruction.”[4]
From Nahum we see that ultimately, God is on the side of justice. God is not on the side of any one nation or people. God is on the side of justice. Thus it is up to us to choose whether or not we will be on God’s side. It is up to us to choose whether or not we will be on the side of justice and thus on the side of God.
Peter Craige writes in his commentary that “If we have grasped Nahum’s message, we will not volunteer to join the ranks of Nineveh’s attackers; rather, we shall seek to transform the evil within the nation to which we belong.”[5] Listen again. “If we have grasped Nahum’s message, we will not volunteer to join the ranks of Nineveh’s attackers; rather, we shall seek to transform the evil within the nation to which we belong.”[6]
Craige suggests that if we truly grasp what Nahum is saying, if we truly understand his underlying message that God is not the God of anyone nation, that God is the God of divine justice; that we will not grab our pitchforks and join the witch hunt. We will not take up arms in the name of God to unleash destruction. Rather we will work within our own setting to bring about change. We will work to transform the evil and injustice in our midst. We will work to bring our nation in line with God, to become a more just nation.
Conclusion
In preparing for each of these prophets so far, I have gone back and looked at my notes from the class that I took on the prophets from Loren Johns at Bluffton College. I don’t have much down on Nahum except that Loren shared that from his perspective, Nahum should be removed from the Bible.
I disagree with him at two levels. First, scripture is God’s word in print and we do not get to pick and choose what we like and what we do not like. But second, his comment suggests that there is nothing of worth, nothing redeemable in the words of Nahum for us today and I disagree with that.
Nahum came with a very vivid message of destruction for the people of Nineveh this is true. And when taken at face value, his message can be very disturbing and terribly miss used. But in the larger picture of the story of God, we see that the destruction of the Assyrian empire was just the surface of the message.
Within Nahum’s poetic words, we are reminded of the freedom that came to these captives and that God still offers today. We are reminded of the awesome power of God, a power that is beyond our comprehension and is ultimately always in control. And we see that ultimately God is not on the side of any one people or nation. Ultimately, God is on the side of justice and it is we who must choose if we are on the side of God or not. We must choose whether or not we are going to live justly and thereby side with God’s purposes in the world.
Amen
[1] Be Amazed: restoring an attitude of wonder and worship Warren W. Wiersbe pg. 97
[2] http://thecnnfreedomproject.blogs.cnn.com/category/the-facts/
[3] Theology of the Prophetic Books: the death and resurrection of Israel Donald E. Gowan pg. 86-87
[4] The Renovare Spiritual Formation Bible pg. 1336
[5] Twelve Prophets Vol 2 Peter C. Craigie pg.76
[6] Twelve Prophets Vol 2 Peter C. Craigie pg.76
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