Day 210: Nahum 1-3 | Read The Bible In A Year | Bible Study with Commentary by Dr. Manny Arango

Hey Bible nerds, this is Dr. Manny Arango. Welcome to the Bible Department podcast powered by Arma. We are walking through the entire Bible in a year. You can go to the description or thebibledepartment.com to download a reading plan and join the journey. Family, welcome to day 210. We are in the book of Nahum today. Nahum chapters one, two, and three. Nahum is only three chapters, so it will only take us one day to study the entire book. Like always, I'm gonna give you context clues, I'm gonna give you some nerdy nuggets, and I'm always gonna leave you with a timeless truth. If you have done the reading today, if you read Nahum, you're probably a little thrown off guard. You're like, why's God angry? What is up with this guy? Okay, I'm gonna help make sense of the book of Nahum. At least I'm gonna try. If you haven't done the reading today, you're missing out. Let's stop the video, pause the audio, go do the reading, read Nahum chapter one, two, and three, and then I will provide context to help you make sense of what you read. So let's dive in. What a good, fascinating little book Nahum is, all right? So out of the gate, what is the book even about? Let me give context. The prophet Nahum prophesying the destruction of Nineveh.

Nineveh is the capital of the Assyrian empire. So this entire book is dedicated to prophesying the destruction of Assyria, the destruction of Nineveh, the capital of Assyria. I wanna give you two big thoughts. Okay, here's the first. Coming out of Isaiah, which is where we just were, like literally yesterday we finished the book of Isaiah. Here's what I want you to be mindful of is that Isaiah covers so much time that we're probably a little disoriented now that we're gonna go back in time, all right? So if you kind of think about it, okay, Isaiah chapters one to 39, when we end off in chapter 39, we're kind of picking up there, okay? So imagine Nahum kind of fits right in between chapter 39 and chapter 40 of the book of Isaiah, all right? But because obviously we studied the whole book of Isaiah and we went from chapter 40 all the way to chapter 66, then we're already through the exile and back into the land. And so the book of Isaiah covers pre-exilic, exilic, and post-exilic time periods. And right now we're back into the pre-exilic period, okay? So Northern Kingdom of Israel, already gone. Southern Kingdom of Judah is what continues to exist. And Nahum is a Southern Kingdom prophet, most likely prophesying in Judah, okay? So next thing that you need to know is that Nahum and Jonah are opposites.

So let's think about it this way. The book of Jonah is God commissioning a prophet by the name of Jonah to go where? To go to Nineveh, the great city of Nineveh, Israel's enemy, okay, Israel's arch enemy. To go to the enemy and to prophesy that if y'all repent, God won't bring judgment. Now, what you probably need to be aware of is that Jonah prophesied during the reign of Jeroboam II. Jeroboam reigned from 793 to 753 BC in the Northern Kingdom of Israel. This can be found in 2 Kings 14, verse 25. This places Jonah in the 8th century BC, likely somewhere around 760 BC when he was sent to Nineveh. So Jonah is sent to Nineveh in 760 BC. And when he's sent to Nineveh, he preaches, hey, if y'all repent, God won't judge you. But if you don't repent, God's gonna judge you. And he does a really shabby job of preaching that, but he does what he needs to do. He says what God wants him to say. And what happens? Nineveh repents and God then relents of his judgment. So during this time, Assyria was not in its peak of power, but was still a significant threat in the region. Nahum is now gonna be prophesying 150 years later. So if we place Jonah somewhere around 760 BC, Nahum is prophesying around 630 BC. Some scholars would maybe even say 620 BC, okay?

So what Nahum is gonna prophesy, he's gonna prophesy the end of the Assyrian empire. Now what? When does the Assyrian Empire end? It ends in 612 BC. So Nahum is prophesying before 612, which means there's about 150 years in between when Jonah is sent to Nineveh to warn them to repent. And when Nahum is prophesying that Nineveh's doomed, it's over. God is going to end the empire. So if you're wondering, wait a second, how does God give them an opportunity to repent in the book of Jonah? But then we get to Nahum, and I mean, God is just really ticked off in Nahum, okay? Like chapter one, verse two. The Lord is a jealous and a venging God. The Lord takes vengeance and is filled with wrath. The Lord takes vengeance on his foes and vents his wrath against his enemies. The Lord is slow to anger, but great in power. The Lord will not leave the guilty unpunished. His way is the whirlwind and the storm, and clouds are the dust of his feet. And then if you go all the way down to verse eight, but with an overwhelming flood, he will make an end of Nineveh. He will pursue his foes into the realm of darkness. It's like, bro, how do we got the book of Jonah,

which is like, hey, if you guys repent, everything's good. But then we get the book of Nahum, that is the exact opposite. God is like, nah, y'all gonna die. I'm gonna kill y'all. I'm gonna send the Babylonians to ruin you. I'm gonna empty the cup of my wrath out on Nineveh. Well, the reality is that there's about 150 year difference between those two. And that is why God can say right here in verse, I just read it and then I feel like I lost it. There we go, verse three. Yahweh is slow to anger. Yeah, dude, God had wrath ready for the Ninevites back when Jonah was prophesying. This also kind of helps us. Like I'm stealing thunder from my timeless truth, okay? Cause I wish I could go back in time and say to Jonah, who's really upset. Like Jonah wants the Ninevites to be destroyed. Jonah wants the Assyrians to be leveled. Like he wants God to come through and with vengeance. I wish I could go back in time and say to Jonah, bruh, in 150 years, that's exactly what God's gonna do. That's just not your message. And I think a lot of times we just don't have the scope of time to be able to realize in humility, it's not my right to judge. I have no idea what God's gonna do in 150 years. So I may as well just be obedient

to say what God wants me to say. Jonah wishes he was Nahum, okay? I guess that's the easiest way I could put it. Jonah wanted to preach Nahum's message, which is you're gonna be destroyed. You're gonna be utterly defeated. I'm gonna smash you. Like I'm gonna Hulk smash Nineveh. That's what Jonah wanted to preach. But that wasn't Jonah's message. That was Nahum's message. And we can't want another person's message. And we can't want God to do what we want God to do in our timing. God has his perfect time. Family, the wait is over. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos, is out now and available everywhere books are sold. Literally today, I walked into a Barnes and Noble and I signed a bunch of copies at a physical location. So you can grab this book at a physical Barnes and Noble, or you can go to a Books A Million or Amazon or anywhere. Books are sold and grab a copy. If you enjoy reading the Bible from an ancient perspective, if you understand that the beauty of scripture is actually knowing it in context, then you'll love this book. And if there's any chaos in your personal life, I think that reading the Bible from an ancient perspective can actually help to crush the chaos in your life.

I think this book is gonna be a New York Times bestseller. I really do. I think we wrote a good one. I think you should get a copy today. All right, back to the episode. That's the context for the Book of Nahum. Now, first nerdy nugget right out of the gate. Verse two, chapter one says this, "'The Lord,' or Yahweh," by the way, nerdy nugget, extra nerdy nugget. Every time you see capital L-O-R-D in your Bible, the Lord, that means the word Yahweh is actually the Hebrew word that is there. All right, Yahweh is a jealous and avenging God. So let's deal with that word jealous. Why is it okay for Yahweh to be jealous? I think a lot of times we mistake jealousy for envy. So we think that those words are synonymous. We think that jealousy and envy mean the same thing, but jealousy and envy, although related ideas, I could maybe, I could see, they're not the same. Envy is desiring what does not belong to you. That's what envy is. I want something that does not belong to me. I'm coveting, okay? That is, you know, Andrew's car. I want it to be my car. I'm now envious that it's Andrew's car. I really want it to be my car, okay? So I'm envious of Andrew, and I'm now coveting what belongs to him.

That's envy, okay? Envy is when I desire something that belongs to someone else. That is envy. Well, what's jealousy? Jealousy is quite different. Jealousy is the desire to not lose that which already belongs to me, okay? Jealousy means that I don't want to lose something I'm willing to defend, or I'm upset at the risk of losing something that is mine. So the reason that God is not envious, but he is jealous, is because the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. You belong to God. I belong to God. Every human being on the planet belongs to God. However, the people of Israel are in a covenant relationship with God. So if somebody were flirting with my wife, I'm not envious. I'm jealous because that woman is mine, and vice versa. I belong to her. She belongs to me. I belong to her. Now, can human jealousy be taken to extremes where it's abused and there's paranoia and there's controlling behavior and there's possessiveness that's terrible and bad? Yes, of course. Does God exhibit any of those qualities? No. And so our job is not to make God in our image. Our job is to see what God's jealousy looks like and say, all right, I'll emulate the jealousy that I see in God. And his jealousy is saying, no, you should fight to protect and defend that which I've entrusted to you in the same way

that I will fight to protect and defend that which belongs to me. All right, so jealousy. Jealousy is not envy. For some, that may be a mind-blowing concept. This may be the first time you've heard that. For some, you may go, oh, duh, I already knew that. Whether you're hearing this for the first time or the 150th time, here's what we all need to take away is that human jealousy is a thing and it always has to be held or understood or filtered through the lens of God's jealousy. The question I'm always asking is, I can't be jealous in a way that God's not jealous, but I am allowed to be jealous in the ways that God is jealous. So I have to temper my own human emotions based on the character and the nature of God, because the goal for all of us is to be holy like God is holy. All right, next nerdy nugget. What does his jealousy have to do with Assyria? Okay, I'm going to say this word for the millionth time. I think it's the word that Christians probably are unaware of that's very, very, very important if you're going to understand the Old Testament, that Assyria has claimed to be the suzerain over the vassal of the nation of Israel. And Yahweh goes, I am their suzerain, actually. So I am jealous because Assyria is claiming as hers that which belongs to me. Israel is mine. Therefore, I am going to judge Assyria. I'm going to send the Babylonians to wipe them off the face of the earth.

So also, I don't know if anybody's curious about this, where Assyria even is. Well, it's modern day Iraq, parts of Turkey. Like if you're looking on a map, actually southern Iraq would have been the Babylonian Empire. And then northern Iraq is actually the kingdom of Assyria. Anyway, the borders changed on and off because as empires do, they conquer more territory. So you can Google a map of the Assyrian Empire and you can kind of get a sense of where it was. All that to say, God is jealous and avenging the name and the reputation and the justice of his bride, Israel. Next thing, not only is he suzerain, but he's husband. So the language that we find here in the book of Nahum is of judgment. and anger because Assyria has done something that's reprehensible, violent. I mean, the Assyrian empire was insanely cruel, unjust, violent, debauched, and just gruesome, okay? So God goes, yeah, I raised you guys up to judge my people Israel, but I didn't give you the green light to totally impale people and do all kinds of just gruesome, inhumane things. So not only am I gonna be a jealous God, but I'm gonna be an avenging God because not only am I their suzerain, I am their husband. So in the book of Nahum, we kind of get this almost like Jonah meets Hosea, okay?

It's Jonah vibes because it's Nineveh again, only 150 years later, but there's also like, I'm your husband. So we kind of need to understand Deuteronomy to understand that Yahweh is suzerain. We need to understand Hosea to know that Yahweh is their husband. So not only is he suzerain, but he's also husband. And then, man, this ain't the first time God's dealt with Nineveh. And so we kind of get a merge of all those ideas. All right, those are all the things I think we need in order to understand the book of Nahum. That's all of the nerdy nuggets that I've got for you. And it's just intense. If you haven't done the reading yet, just brace yourself for intense language, right? Chapter three, woe to the city of blood, full of lies, full of plunder, never without victims, the crack of whips, the clatter of wheels, galloping horses and jolting chariots, charging cavalry, flashing swords and glittering spears. There's also like a style that Nahum has, but he's giving the reason of like, why is he going to attack them? Many casualties, piles of dead, bodies without number, people stumbling over the corpses, all because of the wanton lust of a prostitute, alluring the mistress of sorceries who enslaved nations by her prostitution

and peoples by her witchcraft. I am against you, declares the Lord Almighty. I will lift your skirts over your face. I will show the nations your nakedness and the kingdoms your shame. I will pelt you with filth, human excrement, by the way, for anyone who was wondering. I will treat you with contempt and make you a spectacle. All who see you will flee from you and say, Nineveh is in ruins, who will mourn for her? By the way, Nineveh was one of the biggest cities of the ancient world and it has never been rebuilt. It was demolished in 612 BC and has never been rebuilt. It is currently in Iraq. All right. Oh, here's also how we date the book of Nahum. It says this in verse eight. Are you better than Thebes, situated on the Nile, which with water around her, the river was her defense, the waters her wall, Cush in Egypt were her boundless strength, Put in Libya were among her allies, yet she was taken captive and went into exile. Her infants were dashed to pieces at every street corner. So if infants being dashed to pieces bothers you, just brace yourself, okay? Cause that's the book of Nahum. It's just, it's tough language. So when was Thebes destroyed? That's a great question because for the author of Nahum,

well, for Nahum, the author of this book, they are talking about this event as if it is in the past and this event happened in 663 BC. So we know that Nahum couldn't have been written before 663 BC. And we know that it wasn't written after 612. Most scholars split the difference and they put the writing of this book at 630 BC. What is our timeless truth? Timeless truth for the day is that God is jealous. Why is he jealous? Because you are his. Like he has ownership of you and me. He has the right to be jealous. Actually, he's the only being on the planet that has full right, full authority, guilt-free jealousy because we belong to him. When you get into the book of Hosea, he doesn't just own you once, but he owns you twice. The Bible says that the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. So every single human being on the planet belongs to God because God is the author of life. He knit you together in your mother's womb, whether you're a Christian or a Buddhist or a Muslim or agnostic or atheist, he knit you together in your mother's womb. Whether or not you wanna acknowledge that truth or not, doesn't really matter, doesn't change the fact that he knit you together in your mother's womb.

You are a part of his creation. You are the handiwork of God. a work of his hands. You are. That's not a debate. That's just a true. That's just as true as gravity is true. Okay. So he owns you. You are his. There's no getting away from that. The truth of the book of Hosea is that although Hosea was married to a woman and she was his, when she went away, he still paid to get her back, which means not only are you mine, not only do I own you, but I'm then going to pay for you, which means I double own you like you are mine. So for any Christian out there, not only do you belong to God because you were born on this planet, which belongs to God and that he knit every child together in their mother's womb. Not only do you just belong to him because you were born, but you definitely belong to him because he paid the price of his son's blood to redeem you, to buy you back from Satan, to buy you back from sin, to buy you back from the penalty of sin, to buy you back from the kingdom of darkness. And so, yes, he is jealous. So when you flirt with sin, God is jealous. When you flirt with Satan, God is jealous and flirting with sin is flirting with Satan because Satan creates sin. When you flirt with your old lifestyle, he is jealous. When you have idols in your life, he is jealous, but not jealous because he's insecure, not jealous because he has a temper, not jealous because he's out of control. He's jealous because you are his. And we as humans flourish the most when we are actually in the care of the one who made us. So the timeless truth is that God is a jealous God. He was jealous yesterday. He's jealous today. He'll be jealous forever, which actually becomes the bedrock of our identity, that I don't find identity just in myself. I find identity in the one in whose image I've been made. I belong to God. There's this really cool moment in Toy Story where, you know, Andy's name is written on the bottom of Woody's shoe. And he goes, we're Andy's toys. And it's the name of his owner that gives him identity. It's the name of your owner that gives you identity. You're not your own. You belong to someone. You were bought at a price. And God is a jealous God. He has the right to be jealous because only he can actually care for us the way that we need to be cared for. That's a timeless truth for today. I'll see you right here tomorrow. Let's see what we got tomorrow. We're in the book of Zephaniah tomorrow. It's going to be amazing. Can't wait to dig into Zephaniah with you. I'll see you right here tomorrow.

God, you're on a streak. I'm so proud of you. Love you guys. Till tomorrow. Peace. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast. If this episode was helpful, how about you leave a comment, share with a friend and subscribe so that you never miss an episode. To learn more about the show, head to thebibledepartment.com. We'll see you right back here tomorrow.