Chapter 9.

Nahum.

The Fall of Nineveh.

        The whole prophecy of Nahum revolves around the one thought of the coming downfall of Nineveh “the bloody city.” It consists of a triumphal ode describing the power of Jehovah (ch. 1), followed by two pictures of the capture of Nineveh (ch. 2 and ch. 3).

        The date of the prophecy can be fixed within fairly narrow limits. It must be after the sack of Thebes (No-amon; 3:8) by the Assyrians in 663 B.C., and it must be before the actual fall of Nineveh in 612 B.C. The general religions situation in Judah hardly justifies our assuming a date earlier than Zephaniah (c. 627 B.C.), as does Kirkpatrick (Kirkpatrick, p. 245ff.). On the other hand 1:13-15 suggest that Assyria was still dominant in the West. Her power crumbled immediately after the death of Ashur-banipal in 627 B.C. We feel that the general tendency of moderns to place Nahum even nearer the fall of the city is based less on the internal evidence than on a widespread dislike to admitting more dear prophecy of the future than is absolutely necessary. The failure to mention the identity of the at­tackers in itself supports a date round 625 B.C.

        Already in 626 B.C. Nineveh had been attacked by the Medes, but it was saved by the intervention of the Scythians. Some years later Babylon, which had become independent in 626 B.C. under the Chaldean Nabopolassar, joined hands with the Medes; they parcelled out Assyria’s empire between them and attacked Nineveh, which feU in 612 B.C. Four years later the last vestiges of Assyria vanished unlamented, never to be revived.

        The very vividness of Nahum’s language and the splendour of his descriptions tend to hide from us his almost barbarous exultation over the doomed oppressor with never a word or suspicion of sympathy. It has its affinities with passages like Isa. 14:4-21; Ps. 137:7f; Rev. 19:Iff. They reveal to us the awful lengths that man’s cruelty and wrongdoing can reach; finally they dry up all compassion for the sinner in the deep satisfaction that God’s justice has been finally vindicated. Nahum is so dominated by the sin of Nineveh that he makes no reference to the sin of his own people—the only other prophet of which this is true is Obadiah, and his is a special case (see ch. XII).