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Another short prophetic book we should mention now is the Book of Nahum. It's very different
from the other prophetic books. It doesn't really contain prophecies and it doesn't really
upbraid the people for their failings, which are two things that most of the other prophets
do. The Book of Nahum is a short little book and it's really a series of three poems and
the first one is an acrostic poem, an alphabetical poem--each line beginning with successive
letters of the Hebrew alphabet--and these poems rejoice over the fall of Nineveh in
612, the capital of the cruel Assyrian empire. The Assyrians were actually quite widely hated
in the Ancient Near East. They were noted for their exceptional brutality, their inhumanity,
particularly in their conquests and empire building. They deported populations wholesale;
they were guilty of all sorts of atrocities like mutilating their captives; they would
butcher women and children--all sorts of horrendous deeds. We have lots of testimony about this,
both in Assyrian sources but other Ancient Near Eastern sources [too], texts as well
as artwork. So Nahum, in this poem, is celebrating the
avenging and wrathful God who has finally turned around to destroy this terrible enemy
of Israel and indeed the world. According to Nahum, it's quite true that God had used
Assyria as his tool. He had used Assyria to discipline the kingdom of Israel--they did
destroy Israel--and to discipline Judah for Judah's sins. But God is ultimately the universal
sovereign and so Assyria's savagery--even if it was part of God's disciplining of his
children is--Assyria's savagery is itself something that must be punished. So for Nahum,
the fall of Nineveh is God's vengeance upon Assyria for her barbaric inhumanity.
The Book of Nahum has often been praised for its very vivid poetic style. It describes
these armed legions that march against Nineveh and plunder its treasure, and some of the
most exciting archaeology that's been going on has been the digging up of Nineveh. I think
the dig has obviously stopped for reasons having to do with the [political] climate
in that part of the world, but the findings of Nineveh and the sacking of Nineveh--how
shallow pits were dug and treasures thrown into them and covered over by the gates of
the city as people were fleeing, and many of these things-- when you read the description
of Nineveh and look at some of the archaeological data, it's quite fascinating.
But Nahum looks forward to a happy era of freedom for Judah and he says in 2:15 [correction:
meant to say 1.15]: "For never again shall the wicked come against you." Well, this isn't
true, and in fact, in a few years Josiah's going to be killed. Judah's going to be made
subject to Egypt and in fact Babylon. By 605 Babylon manages to extract tribute from Judah
as a vassal. So in a way, we have here really a glaring error and it's important to note
that this error in Nahum--it wasn't updated, it wasn't repaired in order to protect his
prophetic reputation. So we see this interesting tension. We sometimes
see prophetic books being edited, revised, having interpolations put into them, partly
out of this conviction that their words must be relevant and continue to have some relevance;
and other times, there seems to be good evidence that prophetic oracles were preserved rather
faithfully.