Nahum 1 – 3
One of my favorite OT books is Jonah where he prophesizes against Nineveh, they repent, God spares them and Jonah sulks. It’s a great story about repentance and our view of what is fair verse God’s view. But have you ever noticed that this great and powerful city no longer exists? Rome, Athens, Jerusalem, Tyre and Cairo all still exist in one form or another, but Nineveh is gone other than ruins of a city once great that was taken over and ransacked.
This gets us to Nahum, a prophet some 100 years after Jonah prophesized about Nineveh. One would think in that short of a period they would have not forgotten the stories of how God was going to destroy them, but in repentance they saved the land. But in a generation or two all these stories are forgotten and the return to their evil ways.
Verse 1:3 talks about the nature of God:
The LORD is slow to anger and great in power,
and the LORD will by no means clear the guilty.
His way is in whirlwind and storm,
and the clouds are the dust of his feet.
Sometimes we forget this and think God is ready to punish us at a minor infraction. Often we try to personify God and make Him in our image and since many of us have short fuses, we assume God must also. At the same time, unless you truly repent, YOU will end up the way of Nineveh. I know there are a bunch of people who feel repentance is just saying “forgive me for I have sinned” but lack true repentance. I was that way in college. I would sin, confess, and repeat. True repentance does not continue to repeat to the point that the confess part of the loop is forgotten.
Verse 2:8 is an interesting analogy:
Nineveh is like a pool
whose waters run away.
“Halt! Halt!” they cry,
but none turns back.
Think about the story of the little Dutch boy who saved the town buy putting his finger in a hole in the dyke. He saved Holland and eventually they fixed the dyke, but it illustrates that small holes may be fixed, or repented, but eventually the water will eat away to the point where there is no stopping the water. This illustration is awesome in describing how sin and corruption eats at the core and eventually will start events that cannot be stopped.
Like the small hole in the dyke, if sin is addressed quickly it can be plugged and save the land. But let sin go and it will start eating away and the hole will become larger. Now it takes more than a finger to stop the water! Eventually, as with Nineveh, the erosion in non-reversible and the city will crumble, like the dyke.
Verse 3:5 is just one of those verse I got a chuckle from:
Behold, I am against you,
declares the LORD of hosts,
and will lift up your skirts over your face;
and I will make nations look at your nakedness
and kingdoms at your shame.
Mardi Gras comes to mind where there is no shame when it comes to getting beads. A “celebration” that was started to eat rich foods before Lent since that was a time of sacrifice. Now it’s a time to drink, have sex with anything that moves and ignore God completely. I often wonder if the levees breaking in New Orleans during Katrina were this prophecy being repeated. Although New Orleans still exists, today with its same debauchery for Fat Tuesday, one must wonder was this a warning that was ignored.
Eventually we will be in shame for our actions and God will judge. Be ready! Don’t just accept the salvation of Christ, but ensure that when you sin you confess. 1st John 1:9 is not a do once and all is forgiven. If you sin, you need to confess it! Don’t fall into the trap of forgetting this, because you will drift away from you relationship with God!! Repentance is a difficult concept which is more than words, pray to understand what it means and live it.