Name means: “Compassionate.”
Home: Elkosh, possibly a city in southern Judah, although other locations have been suggested.
Occupation: Prophet.
Best known for: Prophesying the downfall of Nineveh, capital of the Assyrian empire. He spoke sometime after the fall of the Egyptian city of No Amon (Thebes; c. 663 B.C.; Nah. 3:8). His prediction was fulfilled when a coalition of Babylonians, Scythians, and Medes destroyed Nineveh (c. 612 B.C.).
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Scripture is clear that God is patient, slow to anger, and desires that no one perish under His judgment (Nah. 1:3; Ps. 103:8; 2 Pet. 3:9). But this does not mean that He will allow evil to go unchecked forever. Sooner or later, He deals with people who persist in sin. And when He does, His wrath often comes swiftly (Gen. 19:24; 2 Pet. 3:10).
The people of Nineveh had experienced God’s forgiveness as a result of Jonah’s preaching, and their understanding of His mercy made them all the more responsible. To whom much is given—or forgiven—much will be required (Luke 12:48). In the days of Jonah, the Lord had forgiven Nineveh’s enormous sins. Yet the Assyrians did not follow through on their repentance with lasting changes, especially in terms of how they acted toward their enemies. If they had, there would have been no reason for Nahum’s woeful message.
The Book of Nahum points out the limits of short-term repentance. God’s grace is free, but it is not cheap. It does not allow people to go on doing whatever they wish, without guilt or consequence. The Lord leaves rebellious sinners unpunished for only so long (Ex. 34:6, 7). He would not forever allow the lying, killing, abuse, and idolatry of the Assyrians (Nah. 3:1–4). And today, He will never turn His back on cruel injustice or ignore victims’ prayers (compare 1:12, 15). Maybe not immediately, but certainly reliably, He will intervene.
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Nahum’s graphic images of glittering swords and racing chariots (Nah. 2:3, 4; 3:3), dissolving walls (2:6), and corpses beyond counting (2:10; 3:3, 10) provide a grim picture of the horrors brought upon Nineveh by the Babylonians.
Unlike much of ancient literature, the Bible does not romanticize war. Its grim descriptions present war as a tragic outcome of human rebellion against God. The Lord does not enjoy watching armies clash. But at times He removes His guarding hand, exposing people and nations to their own unrestrained destruction, as He did in the case of Nineveh.
Canaan’s strategic location made it the site of numerous conflicts during the biblical era. Two major highways ran through the territory (see “The King’s Highway” at Num. 20:17 and “Travel in the Ancient World” at Acts 13:3, 4). Over the centuries, armies traveled back and forth across these roads, challenging each other for control of the Middle East. The table below lists some of the Bible’s most notable conflicts.
The battle of nine kings (Gen. 14) | Four kings fought against five, capturing Sodom and Gomorrah and taking Abraham’s nephew Lot prisoner. Abraham led a successful counteroffensive to rescue Lot and restore peace to the region. |
The conquest of Canaan (the Book of Joshua) | Led by Joshua, the Israelites displaced most of Canaan’s inhabitants. The initial battle of Jericho is one of the Bible’s most famous events. |
Gideon’s defeat of the Midianites (Judg. 6–7) | With a force of only 300 men, Gideon defeated the Midianites through a cunning surprise attack. |
David’s defeat of Goliath (1 Sam. 17) | The boy David volunteered to fight the Philistine champion Goliath while the rest of the Israelites trembled in fear. David felled the giant with a single stone hurled from his sling. |
King Ahab led Israel’s army to victory over Ben-Hadad’s invading troops by attacking during a Syrian drinking party. The Syrians regrouped but lost again. Ahab died in a third battle. | |
Samaria’s deliverance from the Syrians (2 Kin. 6:24—7:20) | The day after Elisha prophesied victory in a Syrian siege that brought Samaria to the brink of starvation, four lepers discovered that the Syrian army had vacated its camp after hearing a miraculous noise, leaving behind enough spoils to resupply the city. |
The fall of Samaria (2 Kin. 17:1–6) | The Assyrian king Shalmaneser captured Samaria following a three-year siege, carrying out the Lord’s judgment on the idolatrous northern kingdom. The people were resettled in Assyria. |
The Battle of Carchemish (Jer. 46:2) | In a turning point of history, Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon defeated the Egyptians at Carchemish, a strategic city connecting Mesopotamia with Asia Minor. |
On the last of three campaigns, Nebuchadnezzar captured and ransacked Jerusalem and deported most of its survivors to Babylon. | |
The fall of Babylon (Dan. 5) | The Persians captured the city of Babylon during the reign of Belshazzar. |
Armageddon | The apostle John envisioned a final international battle to take place at a site called Armageddon, possibly the Valley of Megiddo in Palestine. |
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The city of Nineveh was thought to be impregnable because it was protected by impressive outer and inner walls one hundred feet high and fifty feet wide. But Assyrian vulnerability in 612 B.C. enabled a coalition of vassal states—Medes, Babylonians, and Scythians—to lay siege to the city. Nineveh might have survived that onslaught, but in August, floods from the Khasr River and other streams caused the foundations of the walls to give way. The city’s defenses dissolved just as Nahum had predicted. Nineveh’s fall was well documented by the Babylonian king Nabopolassar, father of Nebuchadnezzar. His records indicate that after Nineveh was plundered and sacked, it quickly fell into ruin (compare Nah. 2:10; 3:7; Zeph. 2:13–15). Later writers report that within two hundred years, Nineveh had become nothing but a forgotten mound of dirt.
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As Nahum pronounced woe on the “bloody city” of Nineveh, he denounced the entire Assyrian culture for its sins against God and crimes against humanity, including horrific acts of violence designed to terrify and humiliate victims.
Evidence of these atrocities comes from Assyria’s own kings. Ashurnasirpal II (883–859 B.C.) boasted of dyeing mountain peaks red with the blood of slaughtered enemies. He was known to flay his captives—possibly while they were still alive—and spread their skins on the walls of conquered cities. Ashurnasirpal and his successor Shalmaneser II (859–824 B.C.) cut off the heads of slain enemy warriors and stacked them into pillars in front of defeated cities. Assyrian forces threw captured boys and girls into bonfires.
Sennacherib (705–681 B.C.), who sent an army against Judah and Jerusalem during Hezekiah’s reign (2 Kin. 18:13—19:36), took grotesque pleasure in eviscerating his captives. He reports slitting his enemies’ throats like lambs.
While Assyrian descriptions of these cruelties may have been exaggerated, some of their claims are also documented by murals and other artwork surviving from the period, which seem to verify the Assyrians’ thirst for violence. A frieze depicting the capture of a city shows enemy bodies impaled and hanging from long stakes, likely a precursor to the Roman practice of crucifixion (see “A Grim Method of Execution” at Esth. 2:23 and “Crucifixion” at Luke 23:33).
More: The Assyrians were infamous for their cruelty, but they were not ignorant or uncultivated. Their highly advanced civilization excelled in science, medicine, mathematics, and law. See Nineveh’s profile at Jon. 1:2.
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Nineveh was labeled a “harlot” for hiring out its powerful military to other nations, “seducing” foreign rulers into depending on them for military aid. Nineveh was also a center for idol worship, earning it the name “mistress of sorceries.” The city was home to temples to Ishtar, goddess of sexual love and war, and to Nabu, god of wisdom. Magical arts such as omens, spells, incantations, fortune-telling, and reading animal entrails were all part of Assyrian religion—practices strongly condemned in Scripture (see “The Seduction of Spirits” at Deut. 18:9–14).
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