Nahum - Introduction

Nahum

Introduction

Another brief sojourn into the Old Testament, this time the prophet Nahum, not one who is preached on or quoted much. My main source of information and help will be:

Nahum, Habakkuk and Zephaniah - Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries - David W Baker (1988)

Not too much is known about Nahum. His name most likely means “comforter” or “reassurance”. He came from Elkosh, but apart from that we know nothing about him. In fact we are not actually that sure where Elkosh was, though it was probably a town in Judah. What this does show is that you do not have to be famous to be a prophet of God!

The dating is also a little difficult, but we can tie it down a little. Assyria was the strong nation, and key dates are:

612 BC	The downfall of Assyria
668-627 BC	The reign of Ashurbanipal, and the period of Assyria’s greatest strength.
663 BC	The fall of Thebes, an event mentioned in Nahum (3:8)

There are, of course, those who consider there to be no possibility at all of prophecy being predictive. However, God does know all things, so it is perfectly possible for prophecy to be predictive, therefore the prophecy can be dated between 663 and 612 BC. He does present the fall of Nineveh as imminent, so a date towards the end of this period seems likely. Nahum would then be a contemporary of Zephaniah and the young Jeremiah, and he would have lived under the reign of Josiah.

The book is largely concerned with the fall of Assyria. This might seem to be of limited value to Judah, especially as she was going to later fall to Babylon. However, a vital truth is that our enemies will one day fall. Israel repeatedly made the mistake of fearing her enemies rather than fearing God. This is also a lesson we need to heed today. We should fear no one but God, that means we should listen to His words and follow His instruction. To do otherwise is foolishness, for it means we are following the words of someone or something that is destined for destruction. As I write this (15 Feb 2017) the Church of England is having one if its debates about homosexuality and other LGBT matters. There will, as usual, be many voices urging the church to listen to the modern world, and very few recommending that we listen to God! Oh what fools we can be.

The literary form is that of oracles and poetic forms. Using word pictures, rather than prose. There are those who try to argue that the first chapter is an acrostic (ie each line begins with a succeeding letter of the Hebrew alphabet. However, evidence for this is tenuous at best and involves making changes to the text, so it seems an idea without much support at all.