Where it fits

Nahum is the 34th book of the Bible, with three chapters. We know only that Nahum came from a place called Elkosh, whose location is uncertain. The book falls between 663 BC, when Assyria sacked the Egyptian city of Thebes (3:8), and 612 BC, when Nineveh itself fell. Read straight through, it takes about ten minutes.

The prophet and his message

Start with Jonah. More than a century earlier, Nineveh had repented at Jonah's preaching and God had spared it. Since then Assyria had become the superpower of the ancient Near East, destroying the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 BC and forcing Judah to pay tribute. Its kings were known for brutality: impaling prisoners, deporting whole populations, and boasting about it. Nahum speaks to the people who lived under that shadow and wondered whether God had noticed.

He opens with a hymn describing God's character. The LORD is jealous and avenging, but also slow to anger and great in power, and he will not leave the guilty unpunished (1:2–3). He is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble, and he knows those who take refuge in him (1:7). Then the poetry turns to battle. Chariots flash in the streets, the river gates are opened, and the palace melts away (2:3–6). Many scholars connect this to the flooding of the Tigris that helped break the city's defenses, though the book doesn't spell it out. Chapter 3 pronounces a woe on the “bloody city,” full of lies and plunder (3:1), and offers a warning from history: Thebes had seemed just as secure, protected by rivers, and Assyria itself had conquered it (3:8–10). The book ends with a question for Nineveh's king, asking who has not felt his endless cruelty (3:19). In the middle, almost like an interruption, comes a line of good news for Judah: the feet of a messenger on the mountains, announcing peace (1:15).

Three ideas to hold on to

1. God sees what empires do. Nahum assures the oppressed that cruelty is not forgotten, and that no power, however secure, is beyond God's reach.
2. God's patience is not weakness. He is slow to anger (1:3), and Nineveh had been given time to change, but patience has a limit.
3. God is a refuge for those who trust him. In the middle of a book of judgment sits one of the gentlest lines in the prophets (1:7).

Passages people ask about

• Nahum 1:2–8. A hymn to God's power and goodness.
• Nahum 1:15. The messenger of peace.
• Nahum 2:1–10. The assault on the city.
• Nahum 3:1–7. The woe on Nineveh.
• Nahum 3:8–19. The warning of Thebes and a final question.

How it points to Jesus

The messenger on the mountains (1:15) echoes Isaiah 52:7, which Paul applies to everyone who brings the gospel (Romans 10:15). Nahum's picture of a God who is both a stronghold for his people and a judge of violent power points ahead to Jesus, who is the refuge for those who trust him and the one before whom, in Revelation, the empires of the world answer (Revelation 18–19). The New Testament also sums up Nahum's tension when it says that God is patient, not wanting anyone to perish, but that the day will come (2 Peter 3:9–10).

A common misunderstanding

Nahum can read like a celebration of violence, and some readers are uncomfortable with a God who seems to gloat over a city's destruction. It is helpful to remember who is speaking and to whom: this is the word of a prophet to people who were being crushed, and its main message is that evil doesn't win in the end. It is not a license for believers to take revenge, which the Bible assigns to God (Romans 12:19). Readers also sometimes assume Nahum contradicts Jonah. They are two chapters of one story: mercy offered, then, generations later, mercy abandoned.