The Fall of Nineveh

The crack of whips. The rumble of chariot wheels. Horses rearing, swords flashing. For a hundred years, this was the sound of Assyria coming. And then a prophet stands up and says: that sound is about to come to Nineveh's own streets.

Remember Nineveh, the great city where Jonah preached? Its people turned to God, and God spared them. But that change did not last. In the century that followed, Assyria became the most feared empire in the world. Its armies destroyed Samaria, the capital of Israel, and carried its people away. They besieged Jerusalem. Assyrian kings boasted in their own carved inscriptions of the cities they burned and the people they made suffer. All around the region, nations lived in fear. Into that world comes a prophet called Nahum, from a village called Elkosh. His name means comfort. And his whole short book is a message about Nineveh.

Nahum begins by describing who God is. God is jealous for his people, and he will not let evil win in the end. “The LORD is slow to anger, and great in power, and will not at all acquit the wicked.” Slow to anger. He had been patient with Nineveh for a long time. But patience is not the same as not caring. “The LORD hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet.” When he speaks, the sea dries up. The great forests of Lebanon wilt. Mountains shake, and hills melt. “Who can stand before his indignation?” No empire, however mighty, is stronger than him.

And then, right in the middle of all that thunder, comes a quiet verse, like a hand reaching down in a storm. “The LORD is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble; and he knoweth them that trust in him.” A stronghold is a fortress, a safe place high on the rocks where people ran when enemies came. For all the small nations crushed by Assyria, for the people of Judah living in fear, this was the message: God sees you. He knows you. He is your safe place. The same power that will bring Nineveh down is the power that protects those who trust him. But for Nineveh, Nahum says, God will make an end of it, as with an overflowing flood.

Later in the book, Nahum describes the attack on Nineveh as if he is watching it happen. “Woe to the bloody city! it is all full of lies and robbery.” A city that never stopped taking. Now the sounds of war come to its gates: the crack of the whip, the rumble of wheels, galloping horses and bouncing chariots, flashing swords and glittering spears. Then come heaps of the slain, dead bodies without end, so many that people stumble over them. The city that had done this to so many others now sees it at its own walls. And God says to Nineveh, “Behold, I am against thee.” I will lift your skirts over your face, and show the nations your nakedness and the kingdoms your shame. I will throw filth on you, treat you with contempt, and make you a spectacle. The proud city that shamed so many will be shamed in front of the world. And everyone who sees it will run from you and say, “Nineveh is laid waste: who will bemoan her?” Who will mourn for you? Where can I find anyone to comfort you? The book ends by saying that everyone who hears the news claps their hands, because who has not suffered from Nineveh's cruelty?

Nahum's words came true. In six hundred and twelve before Christ, the armies of Babylon and the Medes besieged Nineveh and captured it. A clay tablet now in the British Museum, part of the Babylonian Chronicles, records the siege in the Babylonian king's own annals, and says the city was turned into ruin heaps. The great capital of Assyria was never rebuilt.

You'll find Nahum's message in Nahum chapter one, verses one to eight, and chapter three, verses one to seven. A cruel empire that fell, and a God who is slow to anger, but just, and a stronghold for all who trust him. So here is a question to carry with you. When the world seems unfair, how does it help to know that God is a safe place and that evil will not have the last word?