12/17/2022 – Day 293 – Nahum 1 – 3 / “Learn ye, my friends, to look upon God as being as severe in His justice as if He were not loving, and yet as loving as if He were not severe…” Charles Spurgeon
My quote, the first part of a quote from Charles Surgeon, in the title above ,came from a footnote from 1: 2-6 in my “The Evidence Bible”. It is largely exemplified in the first paragraph of Halley’s Bible Handbook in the first paragraph.
NAHUM / The Doom of Ninevah
“Two of the Prophets had to do with Nineveh: Jonah, about 785 B.C., and Nahum, about 630 B.C., about 150 years apart. Jonah’s was a message of Mercy; Nahum’s, a message of Doom. Together they illustrate God’s way of dealing with nations: prolonging the day of grace, in the end visiting punishment of sins.”
The Man Nahum
“Little is known of Nahum. He is called the “Elkoshite” (1:1). His name is the word “Capernaum”, which means village of Nahum.” This may indicate he was a resident, or founder of Capernaum, which was later made famous as the center of Jesus’ ministry. Elkosh, his birthplace, was probably nearby. There is said to have been an Elkosh on the Tigris, 20 miles north of Ninevah, and that Nahum may have been among the Israelite captives. If Capernaum were his home then Nahum was of the same locality as Jonah and Jesus. …”
Chapters 1,2,3. Ninevah’s Utter Ruin
“Throughout these three chapters, in language spoken partly of Nineveh and partly to Nineveh, Ninevehs destruction is foretold in astonishing and graphic detail…
The fall of the bloody city (3:1), would be news of untold joy to the world it had so pitilessly crushed, especially to Judah. (For note pin Assyrian brutality see page 209)
‘Like a pool of water’ (2:8), the great number of protecting canals along the edge of the walls gave Ninevah this appearance.
Zephaniah also predicted the fall of Ninevah, in these words:
‘Ninevah, the joyous city that dwells carelessly, and says in her heart, I am, and there is none besides me, shall become a desolation, a place for beasts to lie down in, a wilderness; the pelican and the porcupine shall lodge in the capitals thereof; and every one that passes by shall hiss’ (Zephaniah 2: 13-15).”
Ninevah
“Nineveh was capital of the Assyrian Empire, which had destroyed Israel (see page 209). Founded by Nimrod, shortly after the Flood (Genesis 10: 11-12), it had, from the beginning, been a rival of Babylon: Babylon in the south part of the Euphrates valley, Nineveh in the north part of the Euphrates valley; the two cities about 300 miles apart (see map page 49). Nineveh rose to world power about 900 B.C. Soon thereafter it began to “cut off” Israel. About 785 B.C. God had sent Jonah to Nineveh in an effort to turn it aside from its path of brutal conquest. Within the next 60 years (by 721 B.C.), the Assyrian armies had completed the destruction of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. For still another 100 years Nineveh continued to grow more and more powerful and arrogant.
At the time of Nahum’s prophecy, Nineveh was the Queen City of the earth, mighty and brutal beyond imagination, head of a warrior state built on the loot of nations. Limitless wealth from the ends of the earth poured into its coffers. Nahum likens it to a den of ravaging lions, feeding on the blood of nations (2: 11 – 13).”
The Fall of Nineveh
“The Fall of Nineveh, 607 B.C. (or 612?). Within about 20 years after Nahum’s prediction an army of Babylonians and Medes closed in on Nineveh. After 2 years of siege a sudden rise of the river pushed away part of the walls. Nahum had predicted that the ‘river gates would be opened’ for the destroying army (2;6). Through the breach thus made the attacking Babylonians and Medes swept into their work of destruction. Prancing horses, cracking whips, rattling wheels, bounding, raging chariots, flashing swords, great heaps of dead bodies (2: 3-4; 3: 1-7). It all came to pass exactly as Nahum had pictured it; and the bloody vile city passed into oblivion.
Its destruction was so complete that even its site was forgotten. When Xenophon and his 10,000 passed by 200 years later he thought the mounds were the ruins of some Parthian city. When Alexander the Great fought the famous battle of Arbela (331 B.C.), near the site of Nineveh, he did not know there had ever been a city there.
Discovery of the Ruins of Nineveh. So completely had all traces of the glory of the Assyrian Empire disappeared that many scholars had come to think that the references to it in the Bible and other ancient histories were mythical; that in reality such a city and such an empire never existed. In 1820 an Englishman, Claude James Rich, spent 4 months sketching the mounds across the Tigris from Mosul, which he suspected were the ruins of Nineveh. In 1845 layered definitely identified the site; and he and his successors uncovered the ruins of the magnificent palaces of the Assyrian kings whose names have now become household words, and hundreds of thousands of inscriptions in which we read the history of Assyria as the Assyrians themselves wrote it, and which to a remarkable degree confirm the Bible. (*1)
(*1): This theme has played out over and over again with the archaeological discoveries over the past 200 years or so. Soli Deo Gloria indeed! Just adding so much more to the already: “I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist!”