We have seen that there are some reasons for doubting whether he wrote the first chapter of the book,[237] but no one questions its fitness as an introduction to the exultation over Niniveh’s fall in chapters ii. and iii. The chapter is theological, affirming those general principles of Divine Providence, by which the overthrow of the tyrant is certain and God’s own people are assured of deliverance. Let us place ourselves among the people, who for so long a time had been thwarted, crushed and demoralised by the most brutal empire which was ever suffered to roll its force across the world, and we shall sympathise with the author, who for the moment will feel nothing about his God, save that He is a God of vengeance. Like the grief of a bereaved man, the vengeance of an enslaved people has hours sacred to itself. And this people had such a God! Jehovah must punish the tyrant, else were He untrue. He had been patient, and patient, as a verse seems to hint,[238] just because He was omnipotent, but in the end He must rise to judgment. He was God of heaven and earth, and it is the old physical proofs of His power, so often appealed to by the peoples of the East, for they feel them as we cannot, which this hymn calls up as Jehovah sweeps to the overthrow of the oppressor. Before such power of wrath who may stand? What think ye of Jehovah? The God who works with such ruthless, absolute force in nature will not relax in the fate He is preparing for Niniveh. He is one who maketh utter destruction, not needing to raise up His forces a second time, and as stubble before fire so His foes go down before Him. No half-measures are His, Whose are the storm, the drought and the earthquake.
Such is the sheer religion of the Proem to the Book of Nahum—thoroughly Oriental in its sense of God’s method and resources of destruction; very Jewish, and very natural to that age of Jewish history, in the bursting of its long pent hopes of revenge. We of the West might express these hopes differently. We should not attribute so much personal passion to the Avenger. With our keener sense of law, we should emphasise the slowness of the process, and select for its illustration the forces of decay rather than those of sudden ruin. But we must remember the crashing times in which the Jews lived. The world was breaking up. The elements were loose, and all that God’s own people could hope for was the bursting of their yoke, with a little shelter in the day of trouble. The elements were loose, but amidst the blind crash the little people knew that Jehovah knew them.
A God jealous and avenging is Jehovah;
Jehovah is avenger and lord of wrath;
Vengeful is Jehovah towards His enemies,
And implacable He to His foes.
Jehovah is long-suffering and great in might, [239]
Yet He will not absolve.
Jehovah! His way is in storm and in hurricane,