It is human to wish for the fall of your foe, the painful punishment of our enemy.
It is also human to hope for forgiveness, and for their deep remorse - and ours. The prophets show us both faces and more - the human spectrum of response to life’s tragedies, and also the spectrum of divine attitudes - sometimes god/history is full of goodness and love, sometimes it’s a deity of rage and revenge. Sometimes a combination of both.
What happens when the bad guys who deserve punishment for terrible crimes get away with it, repent, and are forgiven?
How does the human desire and cruel capacity for revenge not become an ongoing cycle of oppression and suffering?
These questions are on our minds as the ongoing bloodshed between Israelis and Palestinians, and elsewhere in the world, continues to sow sorrow, capture the headlines, hurt our hearts, challenge our hopes.
These same questions are what’s on the mind of Nahum, 7th of the 12 minor-prophets, who lived somewhere in Judah during the latter part of the 7th century BCE, as a member of the small oppressed Judean minority, living under the mighty and cruel Assyrian Empire.
Assyria has been on top and in charge of the world as they all knew it for over a century - and has close to another century to go - but Nahum can already imagine the day after. That’s how badly he wants it.
He dares predict, in violent and vivid detail, his enemy’s ultimate fall from grace. His fantasy revenge is brutal.
It’s not hard to hear in his warring words the ethos of anti-empire sentiments from past and present as well as the violent yearning for how exactly empires should perish.
He begins his three-chapter book with a clear framing of his focus:
מַשָּׂ֖א נִֽינְוֵ֑ה סֵ֧פֶר חֲז֛וֹן נַח֖וּם הָאֶלְקֹשִֽׁי׃
A pronouncement on Nineveh: The Book of the Prophecy of Nahum the Elkoshite.
Nahum 1:1
That first word ‘Masa’, used previously be the prophets, is sometimes translated as ‘pronouncement’ or ‘message’ but also as ‘burden’. In other words, Nahum the Judean, whose name means ‘the one who brings consolation’ is shifting the blame on to the Assyrians for their cruel rule, and they will have to pay for it when the time comes - heavily. This too is a form of consolation.
Robert Alter comments:
“Unlike the other prophets, Nahum concentrates exclusively on the impending fate of Judah’s enemy and includes no rebuke of his own people. The focus on the imminent destruction of the capital city of Assyria would place these prophecies close to 616 B.C.E., when Nineveh was conquered by the Medes and the Babylonians.”
There is a link between Nahum and Jonah, the only two prophets to directly take on the Assyrians and address the empire and its fate, although most scholars assume that Jonah lived at least a century prior to Nahum.
The Aramaic Targum Yonatan, a Translation of the Prophets, composed around the 4-6th centuries CE, links Nahum to Jonah:
“Previously, Jonah ben Amitai, the prophet from Gat Hefer, prophesied about Nineveh and it repented of its sins. Now that it resumed sinning, it was addressed prophetically a second time by Nahum of the Elkosh family, as recorded in this book.”
Jonah’s lesson was that love and compassion will always win the day and even the bad guys are worthy of forgiveness. Nahum brings another human angle -- yes, love matters, but so does justice, and from the divine perspective, both will somehow have to balance each other out.
The bulk of Nahum’s words will be hurled at Assyria and imagine its defeat. It’s possible that by doing so he lets his people vent their rage, and also know, mid suffering, some helpful hints about the future of redemption. And it’s also possible that his poetry gives them concrete political advice. Some suggest that Nahum is cautioning Judah from continued allegiance to Assyria whose day will come - and suggesting a turn towards fidelity to the Babylonians, who are slowly rising on the horizon during his time. Or it’s possible that his words disguised a message to King Josiah of Jerusalem, supporting his national-religious revival and backing up his anti-Assyrian attempts. Relief will come to Judah when Assyria is no more -- but relief is coming - Nahum comforts the people with future promises of peace that will outlive the war.
Whatever his intention, what’s striking is his strong vengeful language, imagining just how YHWH will punish the empire for its evil ways.
What do we do with these vengeful verses?
Jewish tradition has treaded gently here, not using Nahum’s words in any of the liturgical settings - he’s thus lesser known and his message not a highlight of prophetic teachings. In more modern times these types of vengeful words were not popular with Christian scholars either:
G. A. Smith, Scottish theologian and biblical scholar who also served as Britain’s Royal Chaplain wrote in 1903, representing his perspective of the ‘Christian West’:
“Such is the sheer religion of…the Book of Nahum – thoroughly Oriental in its sense of God’s method and resources of destruction; very Jewish…in the bursting of its long pent up hopes of revenge…we should not attribute so much personal passion to the Avenger."
Reading Smith commenting on Nahum, a century later, brings up its own questions of morality and hypocrisy, partial understanding or an impartial context. It’s worthwhile to remember that for Nahum the future is in God’s hands, as will be the justice - it’s not human hands who will execute the punishment of Assyria or other enemies - but it is the human hopes for deliverance that will nourish these narratives throughout the ages.
Elizabeth Achtemeier, an American Christian theologian responds to Smith by suggesting that the focus is on how we humans can better handle hurts and hopes for vengeance, even as it is ultimately history’s choice:
“The book of Nahum is not primarily a book about human beings, not about human vengeance and hatred and military conquest, but a book about God. And it has been our failure to let Nahum be a book about God that has distorted the value of this prophecy…”
Nahum knows that God/history will work in ways that he cannot understand, and he does not question God regarding Nineveh’s eventual horrific downfall. Instead, Nahum focuses on proclaiming God’s righteousness and justice at a time when his despondent listeners refused to believe that salvation from Assyria was even possible. In this way he is the comforter -- he gives his people a future to look forward to, beyond the wars.
Nahum’s thin volume of verses is also a reminder to us, beyond vengeful fantasies and yearning for universal love and forgiveness - that wars are terrible and empires are doomed to fall.
Charles E. Taylor, another prominent American theologian summed up Nahum’s contribution to culture with these helpful words:
“ ..it is one of the world’s classic rebukes of militarism…. All tyrants are doomed.”
Image: Jim LePage: Nahum.
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