NAHUM
Let us begin with Nahum. I have argued elsewhere that this prophet mentions some very striking and probably very accurate descriptions of the fall of Nineveh.11 However, my object was never to convict Nahum as a false prophet.
On the contrary, his is one of the only true prophecies in the corpus (if by true you mean that what was originally predicted actually happened in good time).At one level, Nahum is just a description of what happened when the Babylonians (the warriors “clothed in crimson”) took a rather tardy revenge for Sennacherib’s treatment of Babylon. However, a recurring theme broached already in the opening psalm (Nahum 1:2- 10)12 is the universality of the application of God’s vengeance. “Who can stand before His wrath? Who can resist his fury?” within which is embedded an ominous warning: “Why will you plot against the Lord? He wreaks utter destruction: No adversary opposes him twice!”13
Indeed, throughout, passages which describe the terrible things that have happened or are in the process of happening to Nineveh or Egypt14 (marked as third-person forms with the exception of Nahum 3:16-19) alternate with clear addresses to Judah and dire warnings addressed to “you.” Note in particular Nahum 1:11-14 and 2:1-2,15 where the destruction of Judah’s enemies is followed with terrifying suddenness by God’s angry curse directed at “you”: “The base plotter who designed evil against the Lord has left you.... The Lord has commanded concerning you... I shall do away with the carved and graven images in the temples of your gods” and “Celebrate your festivals, O Judah, fulfill your vows. Never again shall the scoundrels invade you, they have totally vanished. A shatterer has come up against you.... Brace all your strength.”
Nahum 2:3-14 begins with “For the Lord has restored the Pride of Jacob” and proceeds through a harrowing description of the destruction of Nineveh to end with: “I am going to deal with you declares the Lord of Hosts: I will burn your thicket in fire.
the sound of your messengers will be heard no more.” So also Nahum 3:1-5 which begins with “Alas, bloody city... Hosts of slain and heaps of corpses, dead bodies without number — they stumble over bodies” to end with “I am going to deal with you declares the Lord of Hosts: I will lift up your skirts over your face.”The key to understanding this difficult prophecy is the realization that Nahum is a lament.
Whole sections of Lamentations echo Nahum; compare also Ezekiel as follows:
| Nahum 1:2 | Lamentations 2:17 |
| The Lord is a passionate, avenging God. | The Lord has done what he purposed... he has torn down without pity. |
| Nahum 2:1-2 | Lamentations 4:21 |
| Celebrate your festivals, O Judah, fulfill your vows... A shatterer has come up against you... Brace all your strength! | Rejoice and exult, Fair Edom, who dwell in the land of Uz. To you, too, the cup will pass, you shall get drunk and expose your nakedness. |
| Nahum 2:8 Its mistress is led out and exiled... her handmaidens... beating their breasts | Lamentations 2:10-11 The maidens of Jerusalem have bowed their heads to the ground. My eyes are spent with tears |
| Nahum 3:1 | Ezekiel 22:2-4 |
| Ah, city of bloodshed, utterly treacherous | Arraign the city of bloodshed ... defiled by the idols you have made. |
| Nahum 3:5 I will lift up your skirts over your face and display your nakedness to the nations... I will throw filth over you. | Lamentations 1:8-9 All who admired her despise her, for they have seen her nakedness.... Her filth clings to her skirt. |
| Nahum 3:7 Who will console her? | Lamentations 1:9 She has sunk appallingly, with none to comfort her. |
| Nahum 3:11 You too shall drink of this till you faint away | Lamentations 2:12 As they faint away like the wounded in the squares of the town. |
| Nahum 3:13 | Lamentations 2:9 |
| The gates of your land have opened themselves... Fire has consumed your bars. | Her gates have sunk into the ground, he has smashed her bars to bits. |
JOANN SCURLOCK
| Nahum 3:15 There fire will devour you the sword will put an end to you. | Lamentations 4:11 The Lord vented all His fury... He kindled a fire in Zion which consumed her foundations. |
| Nahum 3:18 | Lamentations 1:6 |
| Alas, how your shepherds | Her leaders were like bucks |
| slumber... your people are | that found no pasture; |
| scattered over the hills, | They could only walk feebly |
| with none to gather them. | before the pursuer. |
| Nahum 3:19 | Lamentations 2:13 |
| There is no healing your hurt; | For your ruin is vast as the sea; |
| your wound is mortal | who can heal you? |
| Nahum 3:19 | Lamentations 2:15-16 |
| All who hear the news about | All who pass your way clap their hands at |
| you clap their hands over you. | you; they hiss and wag their head at Fair Jerusalem... (They say): Ah, this is the day we hoped for; we have lived to see it! |
Ezekiel’s “city of bloodshed” is Jerusalem, and the Lamentations passages that speak of sorrow and destruction are lamentations for Jerusalem’s destruction by Nebuchadnezzar. Those invited to rejoice, as Judah is invited to rejoice in Nahum, are those, like Edom in Lamentations, upon whom God’s judgment is about to, but has not yet fallen (Lamentations 4:21-22): Rejoice and exult, Fair Edom, who dwell in the land of Uz. To you, too, the cup will pass, you shall get drunk and expose your nakedness. Your iniquity, Fair Zion is expiated... Your iniquity, Fair Edom, He will note; he will uncover your sins.
The juxtaposition strongly suggests that Nahum is lamenting the fall of Nineveh and the ruin of Egypt by way of predicting the fall of Jerusalem and Judah to Nebuchadnezzar.[146] In short: “Your iniquity, Fair Nineveh is expiated...
Your iniquity, Fair Jerusalem, He will note; he will uncover your sins.” This impression is confirmed by the Qumran Nahum commentary (4Q169)[147] in which Assyria and Egypt are taken to represent Ephraim and Manasseh, that is, the Samaritans whose city John Hyrcanus completely destroyed, including running rivers over it so that it would never be rebuilt (Josephus, Antiquities 13.10.3). As in the original, this total destruction by water was seen to predict, in its turn, the fall of Jerusalem and Judahsins of the Judeans” (Taylor and Cleland 1956: 957), as well as attempts to justify him by joining in with the alleged schadenfreude, display the most profound misunderstanding of Nahum’s message. With Jeremias 1970, the warnings are for the community, and not its enemies. This is not, however, to accept a Hellenistic date for all or even part of Nahum.
17 See Wise, Abegg, and Cook 1996: 215-20.
to a foreign conqueror. This conqueror was the Roman army, once again, a prophecy that was fulfilled in historical time.
As with the Uruk Prophecy, it is sufficient in Nahum to mention the ominous events by themselves without need for them to have been repeated for any significance to be drawn from them. The fall of one capital city predicts the fall of another capital city just as one return of Nanaya predicts another, future, return of Nanaya.