Nahum 1:1-8
Slow to anger, and great in power
The opening holds jealousy, vengeance and fury in one hand and a stronghold in the day of trouble in the other, and says he knows them that trust in him.
People of the Bible
Nahum
Wrote the sequel to Jonah, about the same city, a hundred and fifty years later, and it does not end the same way.
Nahum prophesies against Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, an empire that had deported the northern tribes and left records of its own cruelty on its palace walls. The book has no call narrative and no biography, and it does not address Israel at all except to say that the yoke is about to be broken. What it does instead is describe the fall of a city in short, fast lines: the chariots raging in the streets, the noise of the whip, the prancing horses, and the piles of bodies without number.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Nahum
- 01
- 02
Nahum 1:9-15
Behold upon the mountains
The feet of him that brings good tidings, that publishes peace. Judah is told to keep her feasts, because the wicked shall no more pass through her.
- 03
Nahum 2:1-13
The chariots rage in the streets
Short lines that read like a bulletin. The shield of his mighty men is made red, the chariots jostle in the broad ways, and the palace is dissolved.
- 04
Nahum 3:1-19
Woe to the bloody city
The catalogue is deliberate: the whip, the wheels, the horsemen, the bright sword, the heap of corpses. It ends by asking upon whom has your wickedness not passed continually.
Why it matters
Nahum is the uncomfortable half of a pair. Jonah went to the same city and it repented and he was angry about the mercy; Nahum comes after the repentance has worn off and says the patience has an end. The book insists on both at once in its first lines: the LORD is slow to anger and great in power, and will not at all acquit the wicked. And the same chapter carries a line read at funerals since: the LORD is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble, and he knows them that trust in him.
5 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
