Three Voices Before Disaster

by L.B. Horne, Hamilton, Ontario | Category: The Minor Prophets | Jul 1969

The voice against Nineveh

Nahum's prophecy is very short and specific. It is easy to put a date to it because it refers back to the sack of Thebes and looks forward to the sack of Nineveh. Thebes fell in 661 B.C. The fortunes of Egypt had waxed and waned for many years, and power had shifted from city to city, from one dynasty to another. The Nubian empire was the last period of grandeur and the centre of power was the capital of the Upper Kingdom, famous for its temples of Amon. Egypt was rich in copper mines, but the rise of Assyria was coincidental with the growing use of a new metal, the coming of the iron age. Iron weapons were superior to bronze and there was little iron in Egypt. After long years of intermittent warfare, the armies of Ashur-bani-pal entered Egypt in 663, and in 661 B.C. the city of Thebes was sacked.

The fall of Nineveh, at the hands of an army of Medes and Babylonians, occurred in 612 B.C. All the horrors of Assyrian conquest were returned upon the heads of the people who had perpetrated them. Nahum describes graphically the terrible results of defeat to the inhabitants of a captured city.

Assyrian capitals, like those of Egypt, changed from king to king. Sargon, the destroyer of Samaria, lived at Chorsabad. Ashur-bani-pal and Sennacherib lived at Nineveh. In the British Museum it is possible to see the gigantic bulls of stone that flanked the royal gates. The great gods of Babylon, Marduk and Ashur, were physically dragged across hundreds of miles to stand in the proud city.

"Woe to the bloody city! it is all full of lies and rapine; the prey departeth not" (Nahum 3.1).

The prophecy is a solemn warning to those who make an adversary of God, but also a promise to those who put their trust in Him. It stresses the patience and longsuffering with which God deals with people, the patience expressed to Jonah, "and should not I have pity on Nineveh?"

Into the life of a nation, or an individual, God puts crises of choice, and the choice lies between obedience and friendship or disobedience and enmity. Nineveh was God's instrument of vengeance, just as Babylon later became, but the nation made the choice to become God's adversary. Opportunities for repentance and a change of course that might have changed history were refused. The refusal brought them into God's wrath and

"He will make a full end of the place thereof

and will pursue His enemies into darkness" (Nahum 1.8).

Nahum demonstrates a sensitive understanding of the movement of God among the nations. His message is not an angry cry for vengeance but an inspired statement of divine presence in history. The God he speaks for is the God that keeps promises, the same God who "is slow to anger" that Moses knew, but who "will by no means clear the guilty."

Habakkuk

Habakkuk grew up in good times for Judah, in the years when Nahum was prophesying, in the days of Josiah's reforms. Later Josiah tried to thwart the Pharaoh, Neccho, and died in battle at Megiddo, and evil days came with his son. Political and social perversion brought disaster that was emphasised by the contrast with better days.

Nobody can rest upon past achievements. Each day, with God, is a fresh day. The old glories were no help in a day when men had turned away to idols and the Chaldean invaders were marching "through the breadth of the earth, to possess dwelling places that are not theirs".

Habakkuk wrote some time between the surrender of Jerusalem in 596 B.C. and the sack of the Temple in 586. Things were in a desperate condition in Judah and, instead of turning the nation to God, it had split and divided, both socially and politically and people were largely concerned in saving their own skins by whatever compromise or device they could make.

Habakkuk is a very beautiful book to read. There are statements about God's nature and on His dealing with people that are so profound and essential that we often quote them without realising that they come from an obscure prophet whose birthplace is not known, who wrote very little, and is not named by any other writer. The battle cry of the Reformation, the theme of Paul's letter to the Romans, is a quotation from Habakkuk, "but the just shall live by his faith" (Habakkuk 2.4).

The great vision of an earth "filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea," comes from Habakkuk 2.14. If this series does not attract you to read or re-read any other prophet, at least read this one. He finishes with a wonderful sung prayer that speaks of the prophet's vision of God and his response to it.

"When I heard, my belly trembled;

My lips quivered at the voice:

Rottenness entered into my bones, and I trembled in myself,

That I might rest in the day of trouble." (3.16 A.V.).

Through his experience, Habakkuk learned to wait quietly, despite tragedy, in the security of the knowledge that, no matter what happened, God, the LORD, would be his strength and would lift him up.

The shield of faith quenches all the fiery darts for Habakkuk. Nothing can touch him because he knows, in the middle of chaos and defeat, that the light has not gone out and that disaster cannot reach God.

"But the LORD is in His holy temple:

Let all the earth keep silence before Him".

That is the knowledge that a man needs today, a knowledge that will preserve his integrity when it seems so necessary to come to terms and make compromise with a social system that confuses and demands so much. It was the knowledge that, a few years after this prophecy, preserved the integrity of Daniel and his friends when it would have been so easy to give up altogether.

Everything is changing. Nothing that our fathers knew, or that we learned as children, appears to be particularly relevant in the world that is falling to pieces around us; yet we are living in an unchanging reality. The reality is God, the God who has intervened in our lives in the person of Jesus Christ. This faith will preserve us from the ruin of life, whatever happens, and from the fate of Jehoiakim.

Zephaniah

This book was written, probably, just prior to the great reforms of Josiah, before 621 B.C. About this time in history the Scythian armies invaded western Asia and may be referred to in some of the passages, although not by name.

Zephaniah saw the same evils that the other prophets had seen, but he made no gentle plea for reform and repentance. The fate of Judah was decided, as God had said, "I will remove Judah also out of My sight, as I have removed Israel" (2 Kings 23,27). Zephaniah's message was one of judgement, of the approaching intervention of God in the story of Judah and her neighbours, and the end of an epoch.

In the eighteenth year of Josiah the housecleaning began. There is an old Russian proverb that says, "Do not blame the mirror if your face is cracked," and Josiah looked into the mirror of God's word and saw the cracks in the nation:

"Because thine heart was tender, and thou hast humbled

thyself before the LORD ... I also have heard thee,

saith the LORD" (2 Kings 22.19).

The story of the minor prophets should bring us great hope. The word of God is a powerful force and has been demonstrably so in history. Hezekiah listened to Isaiah and Micah. Nineveh listened to Jonah. Josiah heard Jeremiah and Zephaniah. The result, in each case, was a period of blessing and security for the repentant people.

Zephaniah prophesied about the effect of God's intervention, His word is forthright and foretells wrath and judgement. All through the messages that roll up like black clouds, there are tiny glimpses of the sun, and suddenly, in the last chapter, the sun breaks out.

The full meaning of that final chapter will not be realised until God's purposes in human history have been accomplished. It has not happened yet but carries all the authority and hope of the ultimate phrase, "saith the LORD". It has been a long time, from man's standpoint, since Zephaniah spoke his message. The people he spoke to saw disaster, and their children have seen disaster. It would be natural for human weakness to give up on the promise and to fear that defeat and failure were to be the end of the story, except that God has spoken and His world will be fulfilled.

"Therefore wait ye for Me, saith the LORD, until the day

that I rise up to the prey" (Zephaniah 3.8).

We are very conscious that God is working out His purposes in our century. The whole Middle East, which lay dormant, has come to violent life. All the developments are part of the picture that the prophets gave us. The role of the people who put their trust in Him is to wait.

L.B. Horne, Hamilton, Ontario | Jul 1969
The Minor Prophets