NAHUM
(Nineveh was the capital city of the great empire of Assyria. It was, to the Hebrews, the expression of all the power and cruelty and bloodthirstiness of that mighty and oppressive empire. The story of the barbaric savagery of this empire almost passes belief. The monuments of Assyria are its own strongest accusing witnesses. They show pictures of captives of war whose eyes are being put out, who are being skinned alive, who are suffering all the tortures that a savage imagination can invent. Any such torture might come to any Hebrew taken in war. Is it any wonder that the people not only dreaded, but bitterly hated this city? Is it strange that they thought Jehovah would certainly overthrow it? Nahum, in a poetic prophecy of great vigor and vividness, pictures the overthrow, and exults in the fall of the great, rich, cruel city. That fall came, at the hands of the Medes and Babylonians, in about 608 B. C. Since that time, Nineveh has remained in ruins, and is to-day buried under the sand hills of the desert.)
I
THE GOODNESS AND THE GREATNESS OF THE LORD
The Lord is a jealous God and avengeth; the Lord avengeth and is full of wrath; the Lord taketh vengeance on his adversaries, and he reserveth wrath for his enemies. The Lord is slow to anger, and great in power, and will by no means clear the guilty: the Lord hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of [{386}] his feet. He rebuketh the sea, and maketh it dry, and drieth up all the rivers: Bashan languisheth, and Carmel, and the flower of Lebanon languisheth. The mountains quake at him, and the hills melt; and the earth is upheaved at his presence, yea, the world, and all that dwell therein. Who can stand before his indignation? and who can abide in the fierceness of his anger? his fury is poured out like fire, and the rocks are broken asunder by him. The Lord is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble; and he knoweth them that put their trust in him. But with an overrunning flood he will make a full end of the place thereof, and will pursue his enemies into darkness. What do ye imagine against the Lord? he will make a full end: affliction shall not rise up the second time. For though they be like tangled thorns, and be drenched as it were in their drink, they shall be devoured utterly as dry stubble. There is one gone forth out of thee, that imagineth evil against the Lord, that counselleth wickedness.
Thus saith the Lord: Though they be in full strength, and likewise many, even so shall they be cut down, and he shall pass away.
Though I have afflicted thee, I will afflict thee no more.
And now will I break his yoke from off thee, and will burst thy bonds in sunder.
And the Lord hath given commandment concerning thee, that no more of thy name be sown: out of the house of thy gods will I cut off the graven image and the molten image; I will make thy grave; for thou art vile.