Nahumchapter 1
15 verses · Nahum · 663 to 612 BC · The Twelve
Key verse
Behold upon the mountains the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace! O Judah, keep thy solemn feasts, perform thy vows: for the wicked shall no more pass through thee; he is utterly cut off.
It stands in On the mountains, the feet of him who brings good news, verses 12 to 15.
The chapter
Chapter summary
'The burden of Nineveh': a century after Jonah, the verdict Jonah feared has come due. The chapter opens with a partial acrostic hymn on the character of God, holding both hands open at once: 'Jehovah is a jealous God and avengeth… Jehovah is slow to anger, and great in power, and will by no means clear the guilty.' His way is in the whirlwind and the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet; the mountains quake, the hills melt. 'Who can stand before his indignation?' And inside the storm, the shelter: 'Jehovah is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; and he knoweth them that take refuge in him' (1:7). Then feet on the mountains, publishing peace.
Context
Prophecy · Nahum · Nahum overview
The world behind this chapter
Nahum 1The history
Assyria had run the Near East for the better part of three centuries by the time Nahum spoke. It had wiped the northern kingdom of Israel off the map in 722 BC and deported its population, and Sennacherib's army had stripped Judah's fortified towns in 701 BC. Judah survived as a tribute-paying vassal.
The rest of the history, and what it meant to them
The opening of the book is a partial alphabet poem, the lines begin with successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet through part of the chapter. Grief and praise were both written that way; the form gave enormous weight to short lines.
The theology comes first and it is uncomfortable on purpose: the LORD is jealous and takes vengeance, slow to anger and great in power, and will not at all acquit the wicked. Then, in the same breath, He is a stronghold in the day of trouble and knows those who trust Him. Nahum will not separate those two.
The imagery is drawn from the land itself. Bashan, Carmel, and Lebanon were the three most fertile regions people knew, and the poem has all three withering.
The chapter closes with a direct address to Judah: keep your feasts, perform your vows, for the wicked shall no more pass through you, he is utterly cut off. The tribute was going to stop.
What it meant to them
For Judeans, this said the Assyrian machine was not permanent and not beyond accounting. Nineveh had done what it did to real towns with real names, and there was a court that had noticed.
But the chapter refuses to make it merely political. The same God who is a stronghold to those who trust Him is the one dismantling an empire. Comfort and terror in this book come from the same source.
Sources cited
- D. J. Wiseman, Chronicles of Chaldaean Kings (626–556 B.C.) in the British Museum
- John Calvin, Commentaries on the Twelve Minor Prophets
Where the chapter sits
Nahum 1 falls in The LORD's character and Nineveh's fall announced (chapters 1). ‘The LORD is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble’ (1:7); yet a God of vengeance against his enemies (1:2).
The LORD's character. Jealous, avenging, slow to anger, good to them that trust him.
After it: Nineveh's siege and destruction, chapters 2–3.
The whole shape of Nahum→The structure of this chapter
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
A. A jealous God, slow to anger, whose way is in the whirlwind
1. (v. 1)
Nahum 1:1
“The burden - Jerome: “The word משׂא mas's'â', ‘burden’ is never placed in the title, except when the vision is heavy and full of burden and toil.” Of Nineveh - The prophecy of Nahum again is very stern and awful. Nineveh, after having “repented at the preaching of Jonah,” again fell back into the sins whereof it had repented, and added this, that, being employed by God to chasten Israel, it set itself, not to inflict the measure of God’s displeasure, but to uproot the chosen people, in whom was promised the birth of Christ .”
The burden of Nineveh: Burden is the prophets' own word for a doom oracle, a weight of judgment laid on the nation named. Nahum's home, Elkosh, is not fixed with certainty, and the bench names the readings without settling one, a village in Galilee, a site in Assyria proper where later Jewish tradition placed his tomb, or a location in Judah lost to memory. The title sets the whole book's target in four words before a line of poetry begins.
2. (vv. 2-3)
Nahum 1:2
“God is jealous - For his own glory. And - revengeth - His justice; by the destruction of his enemies. And is furious - So powerful in the manifestations of his judgments, that nothing can stand before him. He reserveth wrath - Though they seem to prosper for a time, and God appears to have passed by their crimes without notice, yet he reserveth - treasureth up - wrath for them, which shall burst forth in due time.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Nahum 1:3
“His long-suffering is not from want of power to punish (Ex 34:6, 7). not at all acquit--literally, "will not acquitting acquit," or treat as innocent. Lord hath his way in the whirlwind--From this to Na 1:5, inclusive, is a description of His power exhibited in the phenomena of nature, especially when He is wroth.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 more voice on this verse
Nahum 1:3
“The Lord is slow to anger - Nahum takes up the words of Jonah Jon 4:2 as he spoke of God’s attributes toward Nineveh, but only to show the opposite side of them. Jonah declares how God is “slow to anger,” giving men time of repentance, and if they do repent, “repenting Him also of the evil;” Nahum, that the long-suffering of God is not “slackness,” that “He is long-suffering to usward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” And strong in power - Divine long-suffering gees along with Divine power.”
God is jealous: The chapter opens on a couplet the bench reads as the whole book's theology in miniature, a jealous and revenging God set beside one slow to anger and great in power, wrath and patience both true of the same Lord. Commentators note that these opening verses carry the remains of an alphabetic acrostic, letters aleph through roughly kaph traceable in the Hebrew before the pattern breaks off, a feature the readings discuss without agreement on how much of it survives intact. The whirlwind and the storm as his way, and the clouds as the dust of his feet, borrow the same travelling-in-tempest language the Psalms and Job use of the Lord's approach.
3. (vv. 4-6)
Nahum 1:4
“He rebuketh the sea - The Red Sea and the rivers: probably an allusion to the passage of the Red Sea and Jordan. The description of the coming of Jehovah, from the third to the sixth verse, is dreadfully majestic. He is represented as controlling universal nature. The sea and the rivers are dried up, the mountains tremble, the hills melt, and the earth is burnt at his presence. Bashan, Carmel, and Lebanon are withered and languish: streams of fire are poured out, and the rocks are cast down to make him a passage.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Nahum 1:4
“As Bashan was famed for its pastures, Carmel for its corn fields and vineyards, so Lebanon for its forests (Isa 33:9). There is nothing in the world so blooming that God cannot change it when He is wroth.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Nahum 1:5
“The mountains quaked at Him, and the hills melted - As of their own accord. The words are a renewal of those of Amos Amo 9:13. Inanimate nature is pictured as endowed with the terror, which guilt feels at the presence of God.”
Nahum 1:6
“Who can stand before His indignation? - This question appeals to our own consciences, that we cannot . It anticipates the self-conviction at every day of God’s visitation, the forerunners of the lust.”
1 more voice on this verse
Nahum 1:6
“Who can stand before his indignation?....”
He rebuketh the sea: The sea dried and the rivers drained recall the Red Sea and the Jordan both stopped at the Lord's rebuke, the same verb of command the Exodus and Joshua narratives use, and the bench reads the memory as deliberate. Bashan, Carmel and Lebanon were the most fertile ground the land had, cattle country, orchard country, forest country, and naming all three languishing together is a merism for the whole earth withering before him. The mountains quaking and the hills melting lead to the question no one in the chapter answers until the next verse gives the Lord's own people their exception.
B. A stronghold in trouble, and an utter end for his enemies
1. (vv. 7-8)
Nahum 1:7
“The Lord is good: a stronghold in the day of trouble - “Good and doing good,” and full of sweetness; alike good and mighty; good in giving Himself and imparting His goodness to His own; yea “none is good, save God” Luk 18:19; Himself the stronghold wherein His own amy take refuge; both in the troubles of this life, in which “He will not suffer us to be tempted above that we are able” 1Co 10:13, and in that Day, which shall hem them in on every side, and leave no place of escape except Himself.”
1 more voice on this verse
Nahum 1:7
“HAVE you read this chapter through? It is a very terrible one—it is like the rushing of a mighty river when it is nearing a waterfall. It boils, seethes and flows with overwhelming force, bearing everything before it, yet, right in the middle of the surging flood, there stands out, like a green island, this most cheering, comforting and delightful text! Listen a minute to the Prophet's words of terror.”
Charles Spurgeon· written before 1892· The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 2555: “The Stronghold” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition)Particular Baptist
Nahum 1:8
“But with an overrunning flood - Bishop Newcome thinks this may refer to the manner in which Nineveh was taken. The Euphrates overflowed its banks, deluged a part of the city, and overturned twenty stadia of the wall; in consequence of which the desponding king burnt himself, and his palace, with his treasures. - Diodor. Sic., Edit. Wessel., p. 140, lib. ii., s. 27. Darkness shall pursue - Calamity. All kinds of calamity shall pursue them till they are destroyed.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
The Lord is good: The couplet turns the same storm two directions at once, a strong hold for them that trust him and an overrunning flood for everyone else, the one Lord acting as shelter and as judgment in consecutive verses. The bench notes the flood language as an early hint of how Nineveh actually fell, since the historical accounts behind chapter 2 record the river itself breaching the city's defenses. He knoweth them that trust in him is the verse Judah is meant to hold onto through everything the chapter says next about her enemy.
2. (vv. 9-11)
Nahum 1:9
“Parallel to Isa 37:23-29; compare Ps 1:1. he will make an utter end--The utter overthrow of Sennacherib's host, soon about to take place, is an earnest of the "utter end" of Nineveh itself. affliction shall not rise up the second time--Judah's "affliction" caused by the invasion shall never rise again.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 more voice on this verse
Nahum 1:9
“The prophet had in few words summed up the close of Nineveh; he now upbraids them with the sin, which should bring it upon them, and foretells the destruction of Sennacherib. Nineveh had, before this, been the instrument of chastising Israel and Judah. Now, the capture of Samaria, which had cast off God, deceived and emboldened it.”
Nahum 1:10
“The Hebrew is "soaked," or "drunken as with their own wine." Their drunken revelries are perhaps alluded to, during which the foe (according to DIODORUS SICULUS [2]) broke into their city, and Sardanapalus burned his palace; though the main and ultimate destruction of Nineveh referred to by Nahum was long subsequent to that under Sardanapalus.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Nahum 1:11
“There is one come out of thee - that is, Nineveh, “that imagineth” deviseth, , “evil, Lord, Sennacherib, against the the rod of God’s anger” Isa 10:5-7, yet who “meant not so,” as God meant. “And this was his counsel,” as is every counsel of Satan, “that they could not resist him, and so should withdraw themselves from the land of God, “into a land like their own” Isa 36:16-17, but whose joy and sweetness, its vines and its fig-trees, should not be from God, but from the Assyrian, i. e., from Satan.”
1 more voice on this verse
Nahum 1:11
“There is one come out of thee,.... That is, out of Nineveh, as the Targum explains it; meaning Sennacherib, who had his royal seat and palace there; or Rabshakeh that was sent from hence by him with a railing and blaspheming letter to the king of Judah, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem.”
What do ye imagine against the Lord?: The question is put directly to Nineveh's own plotters, and the answer follows in the same breath, he will make an utter end, no second affliction needed. Folded together as thorns and drunken as drunkards pictures a tangled, stupefied mass consumed as fast as dry stubble catches fire, an image of how quickly the apparent strength collapses. The one come out of thee, a wicked counsellor against the Lord, is read by much of the bench as Sennacherib or the Rabshakeh who mocked the Lord's power before the walls of Jerusalem in Hezekiah's day, though the verse names no one and the reading is held as a reading.
C. On the mountains, the feet of him who brings good news
1. (vv. 12-13)
Nahum 1:12
“Though they be - many - Sennacherib invaded Judea with an army of nearly two hundred thousand men. Thus shall they be cut down - The angel of the Lord (a suffocating wind) slew of them in one night one hundred and eighty-five thousand 2Ki 19:35.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Nahum 1:12
“In the height of their pride and power, they shall be clean cut off. The same Hebrew stands for "likewise" and "yet thus." So many as they are, so many shall they perish. when he shall pass through--or, "and he shall pass away," namely, "the wicked counsellor" (Na 1:11), Sennacherib. The change of number to the singular distinguishes him from his host.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Nahum 1:13
“For now will I break his yoke from off thee - God, lest His own should despair, does not put them off altogether to a distant day, but saith, now. Historically, the beginning of the fall is the earnest of the end. By the destruction of Sennacherib, God declared His displeasure against Assyria; the rest was matter of time only.”
Though they be quiet, and likewise many: Nineveh's present quiet and her numbers count for nothing when the Lord passes through to cut her down, the security of an empire at its height set against its coming end in one sentence. The oracle turns directly to Judah with the comfort the prophet's own name means, I have afflicted thee, I will afflict thee no more, the yoke Assyria had laid on Judah under tribute now promised broken. Wesley and the older bench read the yoke and bonds as the literal Assyrian tribute Ahaz and Hezekiah's kingdom had carried, not a figure without a history behind it.
2. (v. 14)
Nahum 1:14
“No more of thy name be sown - No more of you shall be carried away into captivity. I will make thy grave; for thou art vile - I think this is an address to the Assyrians, and especially to Sennacherib. The text is no obscure intimation of the fact. The house of his gods is to be his grave: and we know that while he was worshipping in the house of his god Nisroch, his two sons, Adrammelech and Sharezer, smote him there that he died, 2Ki 19:37.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
no more of thy name be sown: The commandment concerning Nineveh reaches her royal line and her gods together, no more of thy name be sown ending the dynasty's continuance while the graven and molten images are cut out of the temple that housed them. I will make thy grave, for thou art vile denies the city even an honorable end, the disgrace the bench reads as complete rather than partial. Clarke and Barnes both note how literally this was kept, Nineveh's very site lost to memory for centuries until nineteenth century excavation uncovered it again.
3. (v. 15)
Nahum 1:15
“Behold upon the mountains, the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace - From mountain-top to mountain-top by beacon-fires they spread the glad tidings.”
2 more voices on this verse
Nahum 1:15
“These words are also quoted by the apostle, both from Isaiah and Nahum, and applied to the great redemption wrought out for us by our Lord Jesus, and the publishing of it to the world by the everlasting gospel, Rom. x. Christ's ministers are those messengers of good tidings, that preach peace by Jesus Christ. How beautiful are the feet of those messengers!”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Nahum 1:15
“A type of the far more glorious spiritual deliverance of God's people from Satan by Messiah, heralded by ministers of the Gospel (Ro 10:15). perform thy vows--which thou didst promise if God would deliver thee from the Assyrian. the wicked--literally, "Belial"; the same as the "counsellor of Belial" (Na 1:11, Margin); namely, Sennacherib.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
the feet of him that bringeth good tidings: The mountains and the feet of the messenger of good tidings and peace share their vocabulary with Isaiah 52:7, the same formula for news of deliverance, stated here as the shared phrase it is rather than a claim of direct quotation either way. For Judah the good tidings are Nineveh's fall itself, the wicked cut off and the solemn feasts safe to keep because the destroyer will no more pass through the land. The chapter that opened on a jealous and patient God closes on comfort, the last word before the siege poetry of chapter 2 begins in earnest.
This page carries no textual note on Nahum 1. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes, Notes on the Old Testament; Carl Friedrich Keil, The Twelve Minor Prophets; Edward Bouverie Pusey, The Minor Prophets: A Commentary; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.
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