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Showing posts with label Search The Scriptures —Study 0 — Introduction to Nahum. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Search The Scriptures —Study 0 — Introduction to Nahum. Show all posts

23 February, 2017

Search The Scriptures —Study 0 — Introduction to Nahum

Study 0 From the Book of Nahum is: The Introduction of the Book of Nahum
In the prophet, Nahum God found a man who, with flaming conviction, proclaimed the astonishing message that great Nineveh, still at the height of her power and glory, must fall and disappear. Nahum concentrates on this seemingly incredible event to the exclusion of all else. With great poetic skill and vivid realism, he portrays the attack upon the city and her final end.  We can almost see the battle, the capture, the looting, and hear the noise of her fall and the silence of her desolation. Nahum’s purpose in writing, however, is not to gloat over the downfall of the great enemy of his people. It is to magnify the God of Israel, to declaim that He is, on the one hand, faithful to His promises and strong to save those who put their trust in Him, and on the other hand, the Holy One, who is adversary and Judge of the wicked.  It is because the Assyrian Empire was built with ruthless cruelty upon the principle that might is right that God, as the moral Governor of the world, rises up to smite it to the dust.

Nahum prophesied between the overthrow of Thebes in Egypt, about 663 BC (to which he makes reference in 3:8), and the fall of Nineveh in 612. There is no certain clue as to a more exact date, but the most likely period for his ministry seems to be in the early years of King Josiah. If so, he preceded Jeremiah by only a few years.