Read Nahum 3:1–7
Questions from the Scripture text: How does Nahum 3:1a begin? Upon whom is this woe pronounced? With what two things is she full (verse 1b)? What does she always have (verse 1c)? What four things are heard in Nahum 3:2? What four things are seen in Nahum 3:3? How is the fourth one emphasized? Why has all of this happened—what has the “good harlot” done (Nahum 3:4a)? What does verse 4b call her? What does she do to what two entities (verse 4b–c)? What is Nineveh’s biggest problem (Nahum 3:5a)? How does the description of her humiliation (verse 5b–d) match up with the description of her wickedness? What will be the effect of her judgment (Nahum 3:6)? So that who (Nahum 3:7a) does what (verse 7b) and says what (verse 7c)? What will they not find someone to do (verse 7d–e)?
How can God’s people withstand the attacks and temptations of the great ones of the world? Nahum 3:1–7 prepares us for the morning sermon in the holy assembly on the coming Lord’s Day. In these seven verses of Holy Scripture, the Holy Spirit teaches us that God destroys the world’s power and humiliates the world’s promises of pleasure and pride.
Woe (Nahum 3:1a)! While the powerful of the world congratulate themselves, Scripture takes a dimmer view of their condition (cf. James 5:1). If we are to think of them rightly, we need to take Scripture’s view, lest we end up their victims.
Full of lies and robbery (Nahum 3:1b). Nineveh was a classic example of both dangers that the “great ones” of the world pose: deception and destruction. We see an example of the deception in 2 Kings 8:31–32, where they promised the Judeans each his own vine, fig tree, and cistern in a new land of grain, wine, bread, vineyards, olive groves, and honey. And with regard to destruction, the history of Assyrian brutality is extreme.
Living godly in the world means suffering persecution (cf. 2 Timothy 3:12). While the wicked remain, being righteous will mean the continual risk (and, often, reality) of being harmed by them.
But the wicked threaten something far worse: that we would get sucked in by their lies, and allured by their harlotry, to join in their idolatries. It is one thing to be sold to wicked men through Assyrian brutality, but a far worse thing to be sold to idols/demons through Assyrian religion.
Envying the “great ones” of the world endangers you of living for what they live for, depending upon what they depend upon, and delighting in what they delight in. Nations and families (and eternal souls!) are destroyed by being sucked into the idolatries of the world (Nahum 3:4).
So YHWH of hosts is against them (Nahum 3:2-6). His two-pronged response is appropriate to the two-pronged danger that they pose to the world.
Corresponding to their brutality, their downfall will be brutal (Nahum 3:2-3). The verses bring us into the experience by sounds (Nahum 3:2), sights (Nahum 3:3a–b), and even the sensation of verse 3c–e. We can hear (and even feel) the whirring of the whip (Nahum 3:2a), and the rattling of the wheels (verse 2b); the pounding of the hooves (verse 2c), and the jolting sounds of chariots as they skip and leap (verse 2d). We can see swords that appear like flames as they wave about with blood, and spears that fly like bolts of lightning (Nahum 3:3a). We can see the ground covered with the bodies (verse 3c–d) and feel the unsteadiness of trying to walk but finding nowhere to place our feet (verse 3e). The brutes will be brutalized.
Corresponding to their deceptions, and the allurement of their idolatries, they will be humiliated (Nahum 3:5-6). The Assyrians supposed themselves to be exalting their own gods over-against all other gods (2 Kings 18:34–35), but YHWH has declared that He is cutting off the idols out of their temples (cf. Nahum 1:14). Now, He repeats that their great problem is not that the Chaldeans and Medes have arisen against them, but that YHWH of hosts Himself is against them (Nahum 3:5a, cf. Nahum 2:13).
When idolaters are confronted by the one true God, how great is their humiliation! Their existence becomes an excruciating embarrassment of the pathetic uselessness of their “purpose,” helplessness of their “power,” and worthlessness of their “property” and “pleasure.” Whereas she had tempted the nations with promise to be exposed unto their pleasure (Nahum 3:4), when she is exposed by the light of God’s justice and wrath, it is actually to their horror (Nahum 3:5) and disgust (Nahum 3:6).
Until only those remain who love and praise the justice of the Lord (Nahum 3:7). At the last, all worldly deceptions will be defeated, and those who remain will praise God for His justice, rather than mourn for the wicked. Nineveh (and, ultimately, all like her) will go from endless victims (Nahum 3:1c) to zero sympathizers (Nahum 3:7d–e).
Dear Christian reader, God is such a Savior that He will not suffer you to continue being either crushed or captivated. Those who seek to crush you will be destroyed; do not fear them. Those who seek to allure you will be humiliated; do not envy or imitate them.
The Lord has made Nineveh a spectacle. He has done this with the world’s “great ones,” many times throughout history. In Nahum 3:7 we see His purpose in all of this. Behold the Lord’s justice—unto your comfort and faithfulness, all unto His praise!
How are you tempted to be afraid of what the world might do to you? How are you tempted to live for what the world lives for? How does God’s sure, and total, justice help you to resist such temptations? In what current circumstances do you most need to remember this?
Sample prayer: Lord, in a world full of lies and robbery, give us to remember the gospel of Your Son. Make us submit to Him, Who dashes all His enemies to pieces. Make us to trust in Him, with Whom alone all true blessing is found. And keep us from giving in either to fear or to the idolatry of envy, for we ask it through Christ, AMEN!
Suggested songs: ARP2 “Why Do Gentile Nations Rage” or TPH73B “Yes, God Is Good to Israel”
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