THE MINOR PROPHETS
NAHUM
THE Ninevite was the first great man of the earth in the
age of the kingdom, as I may speak; as Nimrod, the ancestor, as to territory,
of the Ninevite, had been the great man of the earth in the earlier age of the
fathers. Nimrod had affected dominion and empire then, when as yet things were
in simpler, and primitive condition. Now that kingdoms have been formed, and
nations rather than families overspread the earth, the king of Nineveh, in
Nimrod-pride and worldliness, affects dominion and empire in the midst of them.
He is not one of the great imperial powers that are looked at in
Daniel. He is neither the head of gold, nor the breast of silver, nor the
thighs of brass, nor the legs of iron. Such an image had not begun to be formed
in the day of Nineveh, when the king of Assyria was supreme in the world. But
among the kingdoms which were then formed, in days preceding the day of the
Chaldean head of gold, he was eminent. Asshur had carried away captive many of
them. Amalek was then gone from the scene, and the Kenites had been wasted
until their full removal was accomplished by the Assyrians (Num. 24: 20-22) And
further, the Assyrians had insulted and reduced that people whom the Lord God
of heaven and earth had chosen as the lot of His inheritance, and formed for
Himself.
The Lord, in that action, had used him as a rod upon His
disobedient, rebellious Israel; but "he meant not so." He purposed "to prey the
prey, and to spoil the spoil." Pride gives him his only language, "Are not my
princes altogether kings," he says - "as my hand hath formed the kingdoms of
the idols, and whose graven images did excel those of Jerusalem and of Samaria,
shall I not, as I have done unto Samaria and her idols, so do to Jerusalem and
her idols?" (Isa. 10) The Lord God was angry. He pronounces a burthen upon him,
and Nahum delivers it. "The Lord is a jealous God and a revenger."
The
ministry of Jonah, as well as of Nahum, had respect to Nineveh. We have
considered that already in our chapter on Jonah's prophecy. Jonah preceded
Nahum, it may be, about 120 years. Under the word of Jonah, Nineveh had
repented; but the word which now follows by Nahum is a notice of judgment,
final judgment, judgment that is to make an utter end. "Affliction," says the
prophet, "shall not rise up the second time."
What are we to say then
of Nineveh's repentance in the day of Jonah? Was it, as the morning cloud, or
early dew, a goodness that passed away? It may have been such. Or, it may have
been reformation, and a genuine work like that in another Gentile world, the
Christendom of this present age. It worked its fruit and had its blessing at
the time, and it would seem, left its witness behind it, even in this distant
day of Nahum (see Nahum 1: 7) There may have been a remnant in Nineveh! I say
not otherwise. But at the most it was but a blessing in the cluster. "My
leanness, my leanness," Nineveh surely had to say. The repentance in the day of
Jonah, like the Reformation in Christendom, secured nothing it did not
prepare Nineveh for glory, or for a place in the kingdom of God. Whatever may
have been the moral fruit of it in a remnant in this distant day of Nahum,
Nineveh, as a city or kingdom, had returned, like a sow that was washed, to her
wallowing in the mire, and ripened herself for the cutting off of the land.
This is a figure for us to study, a voice for us to bear.
What
did Jehoshaphat-days, or Hezekiah-days, or Josiah-days, for Jerusalem? Did
judgment after such days enter by the hand of the Chaldean, though they were
very fair and promising? We know it did. Did Nineveh want the day of the Lord,
though once upon a time the king there descended from his throne and sat in
ashes, and man and beast were clothed in sackcloth, and neither did eat nor
drink? Yes, we know this also. And I may ask again, What has Reformation done
for Christendom? Coming judgments, and not the Reformation, or progress, or
education for the million, will prepare the world for the glory and kingdom of
the Lord. But further. The earlier history of God's dealing with Nineveh by the
hand of Jonah may, in this day of judgment announced by Nahum, witness to us
that He is "slow to anger" - for He sent a preacher then to warn, and turn them
to that repentance which He received, and spared them. But He that is slow to
anger, does not "acquit the wicked" (see Nahum 1: 3). There is a separating
between the precious and the vile. "He knows them that trust in Him," even the
remnant in Nineveh if there be such, as we said before (Nahum 1: 7); but the
Judge of all the earth, like the Judge of Sodom who stood of old before
Abraham, "will do right."
"I doubt not," says another, "that the
invasion of Sennacherib was the occasion of this prophecy; but most evidently
it goes much beyond that event, and the judgment is final. And this is another
instance of that which we so frequently observe in the prophets - a partial
judgment serving as a warning or an encouragement to the people of God, while
it was only a forerunner of a future judgment in which all the dealings of God
would be summed up and manifested." Surely the Assyrian is a mystic or
representative person, as well as a real individual. Isaiah so looks at him.
And this was easy and natural: for the Assyrian began the captivities of God's
people, and in his day represented the enmity of the earth, the enmity of the
Gentile world, to God and His people. The Spirit, therefore, in the prophets,
sees the Gentile in him, and looks along the vista which then opened, to the
very end of the earth's history under the Gentile or the man of the world, when
the full-measured and ripened iniquity of man shall call forth the closing,
clearing judgments of God.
But does judgment close the story? That
never has been, nor could it be. It only makes way for the purpose of God. The
judgment of this "present evil world" will introduce the millennium or "the
world to come." And Israel will be received as the seal and pledge of that
bright and happy age - as our prophet says, "though I have afflicted thee, I
will afflict thee no more; and now will I break his yoke from off thee, and
will burst thy bonds asunder. O Judah, keep thy solemn feasts, perform thy
vows, for the wicked shall no more pass through thee, he is utterly cut off"
(see Nahum 1: 12-15). Or, in the words of one of ourselves, the saints of God
in this day, "the vengeance of God is the deliverance of the world from the
oppression and misery of the yoke of the enemy and of lust, that it may
flourish under the peaceful eye of its Deliverer."
Come, Lord Jesus!
Do not present doings of the Spirit show a rapid gathering in of the elect unto
the hastening of that hour?