Although the book of Nahum is nestled among the writings of the Old Testament prophets, Nahum was a poet, not a prophet. In the book of Nahum the author writes of a particular battle, the fall of the city of Ninevah, the capital of Assyria, to the Babylonians. The author is Nahum, except for the first chapter, which is different in style and content to the rest of the book, and generally attributed to a later and anonymous writer.

1. The author says that God is jealous, avenging, filled with wrath, slow to anger, great in power, and that he will put an end to the ‘vile’ city of Ninevah.

2-3. Nahum describes in poetic form and graphic detail an army advancing toward Ninevah. He describes the flashing swords, charging cavalry, the ‘piles of dead bodies without number’, and the people and treasures of the city being carried away. Nahum says that the city was ‘full of lies’, and engaged in prostitution and witchcraft. He says that no-one will mourn for Ninevah, and that when the people of neighboring cities hear that the Assyrian king is dead they are relived, because ‘who had not felt his endless cruelty’.

Overjoyed at the downfall of the Assyrian capital and his peoples’ enemy, Nahum’s poem is an ode of vengeance, an expression of joy at the destruction of an ‘evil city’ and the death of its inhabitants.

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