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.- Nah_1:2.
The Lord is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble; and he knoweth them that put their trust in him.- Nah_1:7.
1. The general thought of the acrostic psalm introducing the prophecy of Nahum concerns itself with the terrors of Jehovah's anger against His foes. In an ever-changing series of bold and striking metaphors the poet seeks to create a vivid impression of this Divine wrath and thus to quicken the faith and hope of those who have trusted in and obeyed Jehovah.
“Jehovah is a jealous God and an avenger;
Jehovah is an avenger and full of wrath;
Jehovah is an avenger unto his adversaries;
And he reserveth wrath for his enemies.”
He brooks no rival. He will not condone iniquity. If He seem at times slack to interfere, it is the patience of omnipotence, and neither the helplessness of impotence nor the apathy of indifference. When once He wills to act, none can resist His power.
“Before his indignation who can stand?
And who can rise up in the fierceness of his anger?
His fury is poured out like fire,
And the rocks are broken asunder by him.”
2. The repetition of the fact of Jehovah's vengeance is modified by the statement that the Mighty One is also slow to anger, and that
“Jehovah is good, a strong hold in the day of adversity;
And he knoweth them that take refuge in him.”
His judgment is not the contrast to His goodness, but the proof of it. There is no need to mention the name of the arch-adversary, the embodiment of antagonism to Jehovah. The prophet's eye is riveted upon that guilty city. Her offence is insolent defiance of Jehovah, high-handed oppression not of His chosen people only, but of a multitude of nations, upon whom she has trampled with brutal inhumanity. The genius of the tyrant race-Sennacherib, or some other Assyrian king-was her typical representative, and to him the prophet's mind turns. He thought to do evil against the Lord, and counselled mischief, but whatever the strength and the numbers of Jehovah's foes be, “they shall be cut down and pass away.”
3. And now there is a kind word for Judah. There will be no more affliction for her as has been in the past. The yoke will be broken off from her neck and her fetters burst asunder. As for the race of the tyrant, the Divine decree, declaring barrenness as its fate, has gone forth. Its very temple and altars shall be robbed of their gods and images. Only a grave is needed for the worthless race.
“Behold, upon the mountains the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace!” What a joyous note, suggestive, however, of the same message in a time much later than that of Nahum! “Keep thy feasts, O Judah, perform thy vows: for the wicked one shall no more pass through thee; he is utterly cut off.”
4. The religion of this proem to the Book of Nahum is 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 emphasize 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.
The wrath of God is an expression which has played a great part in Christian teaching. “Flee from the wrath to come.” “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness.” “What!” many pious souls have exclaimed, “can we impute the harbouring and exhibition of anger to the heavenly Father?” Men speak unguardedly of an “angry judge”; but no judge would be tolerated who allowed himself to be angry on the bench. The calm, dispassionate condemnation of wrong is that which gives weight to the words of our judges. Nevertheless, where cruelty or tricky dishonesty is brought home to the criminal, a good judge will hardly restrain the strong feeling of indignation. We must observe, however, that the object of God's wrath is in its true essence not the sinner, but the sin. And a just indignation, if shown by one in authority, will always be directed, not to the injury of the wrong-doer, but to his reclamation. In the Scriptures every punitive infliction is attributed to the wrath of God, as, for instance, St. Paul's prediction (1Th_2:16, etc.) of the destruction of Jerusalem. What is anger in the weak man against his child is sublimated, when spoken of God, to a hatred of the evil which is injuring His children, and a determination, even by the infliction of suffering, to rid them from it.1 [Note: W. H. Fremantle, Natural Christianity, 160.]
One event in history expresses to the full the moral terribleness of God. The passion of Jesus Christ is the crown of all terrible things, and the supreme measure, not only as we are accustomed to say, of God's mercy, but quite as really of God's severity. How does God estimate pain in comparison of guilt? Is He of such deadly earnestness in His displeasure against wrong that He can, in despite of pity, inflict the extreme of pain, of wrath, of bitter death? for, if so, He is beyond question a most fearful God. A Being who possesses such strength as His, and at the same time is not too tender to use it against sin, must be to every sinner unspeakably dreadful. I do not say whether God can inflict uttermost suffering for sin; I say He can endure it. Here is a better test of the firmness of the Divine character and of its capacity for displeasure than any infliction could be. He was hard against Himself. He bore what it would be fearful to see another bear. He pursued sin to His own death, and in His jealousy for justice satisfied justice in His own blood. I make bold to ask every one of you who is not sure that he has repented of his sins, whether he thinks the God who took flesh and died for sin at Jerusalem is a God with whom it is safe to trifle. I do not threaten. I do not know the power of God's anger, and I cannot show it to you. The cross does not show it. Like everything else in this world, it shows pre-eminently God's mercy. His anger is still veiled. Behind the silent blanched face of the sacred Sufferer, in the secrets of His breaking heart, is hidden away from us, among the unsearchable things of God, the wrath of the Eternal against sin. But in the cross I do show you the terribleness of God; how terribly He hates sin; how terribly He is in earnest to be done with it; how terribly small store He sets by any sort of anguish or penalty in comparison of being just. And I tell you that according to His fearfulness so is His wrath.1 [Note: J. O. Dykes, Sermons, 216.]
