I’m going to ask you to hang in with me because we’re going to try to work our way through two books together and see what God has for us: Jonah and Nahum, two Old Testament prophets connected by their focus. Jonah and Nahum, two tales of one city: Nineveh.
Nineveh, the capital city of the dominant Assyrian Empire. Assyria was famous for its terror tactics in war, brutally conquering nations around them with ruthless abandon. For instance, King Ashernasirpal II wrote the following about how he would impose obedience during rebellion.
“I flayed all the chief men who had revolted, and I covered the pillar with their skins…others I bound to stakes…I cut off the limbs of their officers…3,000 captives I burned with fire…”
I could go on and on with other examples. The Assyrians were brutal in war, and through their war and conquest, ended up building one of the greatest capital cities in history. Nineveh’s exact location was not discovered until 1845, when excavation revealed the metropolis. Nineveh at a glance would be this:
Nineveh,
“covering some 1,850 acres, contained famous hanging gardens, water dams, parks, a fifty-mile aqueduct to bring water from the mountains, great roads, a double wall protecting the city, and the palace boasted almost two square miles of carved stone reliefs.”
Additionally, it contained public parks, a zoo, and a library with thousands upon thousands of clay tablets. It was the most magnificent city of its day. Nineveh, the beautiful capital of the brutal Assyrian war machine.
Israel, God’s chosen people, felt the power of Assyria like many of the other conquered nations. God’s people were not immune to their invasions. So Jonah and Nahum, two tales of one city: Nineveh.
Now, obviously, we’re not in Nineveh. We’re not Ninevites. I don’t think many of us are Assyrians. We might actually have a couple of people here who are Jewish or Israeli, but there are even people here who don’t necessarily believe in God or follow Jesus. So a great question to ask right now is what impact could these two ancient books have on modern readers? Let’s survey both of them and see if we can answer that question. Let’s begin with Jonah.
Jonah is a unique book. It is a prophecy in story form rather than messages or visions. It’s satirical. It’s funny. It’s ridiculous. Jonah looks ridiculous in his own book, and it creates awkward questions for the reader. So let’s explore the book chapter by chapter and summarize throughout the whole thing.
Chapter 1, Land and Sea
God calls Jonah to go to Nineveh and preach against it, because “their evil has come up before me.” So the abundance of Nineveh’s evil has now reached the heavens.
Going to Nineveh back then would be like God sending one of us right now to Yemen to preach the gospel publicly. So Jonah quickly comes up with an alternate plan. He buys fare on a ship to the other side of the world, Tarshish. If Nineveh were Greer, Jonah decides to go to Vancouver. He’s headed out of here. He is running away from his calling and from God’s presence. But running from God’s presence is like playing a game of tag with a breeze. It’s hard to win.
To remind Jonah of his presence, God hurls a storm onto the ocean where he is sailing. It is such a bad storm that even experienced sailors are freaking out. They use every trick of their trade to try to stay afloat. They start hurling cargo into the ocean to lighten the ship, but it doesn’t help. Their next step, they decide they’re going to roll dice to see who’s responsible for this supernatural storm.
Meanwhile, Jonah is down in the bottom of the ship taking a nap. Apparently, running from God is exhausting for Jonah. So he’s sleeping. The captain, unimpressed with his sleeping prowess, goes down and says, “Wake up, you’re going to participate in the dice roll.” And when Jonah rolls, he comes up guilty.
The sailors freak out and start asking him questions. “Who are you? Where are you from? What have you done?”
This is Jonah’s response:
“I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”
And we run into our first awkward question: Does Jonah fear the Lord? Really? Are his choices revealing that he fears the Lord?
The sailors are more frightened of Jonah’s confession than the storm. The only way forward is to ask Jonah, “What do we do? How do we appease this God of yours?”
Jonah, the fleeing prophet, says, “Throw me overboard.” So Jonah, to escape God’s presence and God’s call, chooses suicide and asks the sailors to commit murder.
Another awkward question: How is that good?
Ironically, the sailors act with more spiritual integrity than Jonah. Instead of immediately doing what Jonah says, they go back to work. They try to sail their way out of it. But in the end, nothing they can do can get them through the storm. So they decide to do what Jonah says. But before they throw him overboard, they say to the Lord, “Please don’t hold us accountable for this.”
As soon as Jonah cannonballs into the ocean, the sea goes calm. And the sailors? They have a quick church service. They offer sacrifices, they make vows to the God who hurled the storm onto the sea.
Chapter 2, the Fish’s Belly
God appoints a great fish to swallow Jonah. What kind of fish? Nobody knows. Is it a wild story? It really is. Is it impossible? No. If God made the whole world, he can motivate a fish to swallow a fleeing prophet.
Jonah ends up camping out in stomach acid and fish parts for about three days. All of chapter two is a recording of Jonah’s prayer, and Jonah’s prayer are these fragments of the psalms strung together. It’s like the panicked prayer of a prophet, just saying whatever he remembers out of the scriptures, but that prayer leads us to another awkward question: Did Jonah repent in his prayer?
Again, he’s quoting scripture. He says many right things about God, he tells God that he’s going to do good, but Jonah never says anything about his running, anything about his choices. So we’re left wondering, did Jonah repent?
God speaks to the fish, Jonah gets barfed up on land, now headed in the correct direction towards Nineveh, and God once again says to Jonah, “Hey, go tell Nineveh the message that I’m going to give you.”
Chapter 3, Inside Nineveh
If this stage is Nineveh and its suburbs, it would take three days to travel. Jonah goes in one day’s worth and he preaches this rousing message: “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” He says six Hebrew words. Unlike most of God’s messages, his message has no mention of God, the sin, how to repent, or even what being overthrown will look like.
And we run into another awkward question: Is Jonah really obeying and giving the whole message? He went to Nineveh, but he only traveled one day of it. He he gave a message, but it seems minimal and unlike every other message God gives to people to repent. Jonah still seems unenthused about his prophetic role. And the reader is once again left questioning the prophet.
Miraculously and ironically, the people of Nineveh believe, from young to old, rich to poor. Even the king, when he hears about it, repents and declares a national day of prayer for God’s mercy. He’s so enthusiastic, he is so moved to respond to God that he says this, Jonah 3:7-8,
“Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands” (Jonah 3:7-8).
This king doesn’t know how the Hebrew God works. So he figures, “Hey, here’s what we’re going to do: Man and beast, we’re all fasting and covering ourselves with sack cloth. Maybe a little animal help will let this God not destroy us.”
It’s fascinating that he knew what to repent from. Remember, Jonah didn’t tell them what to repent from, but here God reveals to him, “We’ve got to turn from our evil. We have to stop our violence and receive the mercy of this God.”
The king concludes this:
“Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish” (Jonah 3:9).
The king realized the severe justice of God and God, in great mercy, responds to the repenting of Nineveh and saves the people and saves the beautiful capital of the brutal Assyrian Empire.
Chapter 4, Outside Nineveh
Here’s Jonah’s response, Jonah 4:1-2,
“But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. And he prayed to the Lord and said, ‘O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster” (Jonah 4:1-2).
“I knew it, Yahweh. I knew if I came here and even just preached a six word message that you, because you love people, would save those people. Those kinds of people. The wrong people. The Ninevite people.” Jonah—the rebellious, running, suicidal prophet—possesses no mercy for Nineveh, which hits the hardest awkward question: How can a messenger of God hate people God loves?
Jonah is so angry that in this moment, death is his only cure. “God, if you’re going to be merciful to these types of people, just go ahead and kill me.” And this begins an exchange between God and Jonah, God repeatedly asking Jonah, “Do you do well to be angry?” Jonah, is your anger right and is it well placed?
Jonah doesn’t answer God the first time. Instead, he leaves the city. He goes out to a vantage point and builds a lean to for shade from the sun and sits down to see if God will still overthrow Nineveh. Jonah’s version of “overthrown” seems to be Nineveh’s disaster. He wanted a front row seat, hoping the city was still going to be destroyed.
I think this is the saddest moment in the book. Jonah doesn’t recognize God already overthrew Nineveh. He overthrew them through salvation and repentance rather than destruction. A kingdom of people like the Ninevites repenting, that is a kingdom overthrown. This little short message, God actually made it happen, and Jonah missed it.
God starts trying to teach Jonah. So God, once again, using nature, calls on a plant to quickly grow up over Jonah’s lean to to give him more shade. And Jonah loved it. The merciless prophet received more comfort from God.
God then called on a worm to kill the plant overnight. Then Jonah was just destroyed because God called on the wind to amplify the heat. So Jonah, in his vantage point waiting for destruction, now experiencing severe heat, once again wants to die, waiting for Nineveh to be overthrown. For the third time in the book, Jonah wants to die. This is God’s response to Jonah at the close of the book:
“And the Lord said, ‘You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?” (Jonah 4:10-11)
“Jonah, you pity a plant you didn’t make. I made all of these people. I made all of these children who don’t know which hand is which. Shouldn’t I pity them and rescue them?”
It’s like shade mattered more to Jonah than an Assyrian child. And oddly, the word “cattle” ends the book. And we’re left with another question: What happens? What happens next to Jonah? And the book gives us not a clue.
Nahum
150 years pass, around 150 years, and the repentance of Nineveh is now a thing of the past. Nineveh did not forever escape the Assyrian identity of brutality. So God sends Nahum with а more specific message than Jonah.
If I wanted to be a cool modern pastor who was a social media influencer, I’m never preaching the book of of Nahum. We’re not touching it with a ten foot pole. Nahum, like Jonah, is unique.
Nahum is a verbal recording of a prophetic vision. Nahum, if you read the book (especially if you consider it in the original where we’re not given some clues), it’s purposely vague. It’s full of pronouns, and you never know who God’s talking to. Is he talking to Judah or is he talking to Nineveh here? And Nahum is full of vivid and violent imagery.
Jonah is regularly taught to children and there are even children’s songs about Jonah. Nahum, never brought up in Sunday school and never makes the cut for the album. No, it’s not going to do it. So, friends, I want us to hear from Nahum as much as possible, more of his words than my words.
Nahum is one of the least read and searched books of the Bible, right up there with Obadiah. So the way we’re going to work through Nahum is I’m going to ask Nahum questions, and then I’m going to let his words answer those questions.
Question #1: Nahum, what is God like?
Nahum 1:2-8,
“The Lord is a jealous and avenging God; the Lord is avenging and wrathful; the Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies” (Nahum 1:2).
That’s verse two of the book.
“The Lord is slow to anger and great in power, and the Lord will by no means clear the guilty. His way is in whirlwind and storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet. He rebukes the sea and makes it dry; he dries up all the rivers; Bashan and Carmel wither; the bloom of Lebanon withers [every place that’s beautiful, at God’s word, could wither]. The mountains quake before him; the hills melt; the earth heaves before him, the world and all who dwell in it. Who can stand before his indignation? Who can endure the heat of his anger? His wrath is poured out like fire, and the rocks are broken into pieces by him. The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; he knows those who take refuge in him. But with an overflowing flood he will make a complete end of the adversaries, and will pursue his enemies into darkness” (Nahum 1:3-8).
Two short hopeful statements within a description of God rendering cataclysmic, definitive, and thorough justice to his enemies. A description of God rendering cataclysmic, definitive, and thorough justice to his enemies.
Nahum, why is God doing that? Why is God judging Nineveh? What is his justice about? Nahum gives us two reasons.
First, God is specifically avenging the wrong done to his people. Nahum 1:12-13,
“Thus says the Lord, ‘Though they [Nineveh] are at full strength and many, they will be cut down and pass away. Though I have afflicted you [Judah], I will afflict you no more. And now I will break his yoke from off you and will burst your bonds apart” (Nahum 1:12-13).
“For the Lord is restoring the majesty of Jacob as the majesty of Israel, for plunderers have plundered them and ruined their branches [they’ve killed a generation]” (Nahum 2:2).
Secondly, God is avenging the wrong done to the nations, is generally avenging the wrong done to the nations.
“Woe to the bloody city, all full of lies and plunder—no end to the prey! The crack of the whip, and rumble of the wheel, galloping horse and bounding chariot! Horsemen charging, flashing sword and glittering spear, hosts of slain, heaps of corpses, dead bodies without end—they stumble over the bodies” (Nahum 3:1-3).
“And all who look at you will shrink from you and say, ‘Wasted is Nineveh; who will grieve for her?’ Where shall I seek comforters for you?” (Nahum 3:7)
“All who hear the news about you clap their hands over you. For upon whom has not come your unceasing evil?” (Nahum 3:19)
Like a standing ovation at the end of a beautiful concert, the other nations will clap when God delivers justice to Nineveh because everyone experienced their violence. God’s justice is avenging his people and the nations.
Nahum, what does God’s justice look like? This is the roughest part, Nahum 2:13. Imagine any statement worse to hear than this from God Almighty.
“Behold, I am against you, declares the Lord of hosts, and I will burn your chariots in smoke, and the sword shall devour your young lions. I will cut off your prey from the earth, and the voice of your messenger shall no longer be heard” (Nahum 2:13).
“Behold, I am against you, declares the Lord of hosts, [the God of the armies,] and I will lift up your skirts over your face; and I will make nations look at your nakedness and kingdoms at your shame. I will throw filth at you and treat you with contempt and make you a spectacle” (Nahum 3:5-6).
Nahum 3:14-17, God speaking to them, asking them to be ready for his justice.
“Draw water for the siege; strengthen your forts, go into the clay, tread the mortar; take hold of the brick mold! There will the fire devour you; the sword will cut you off. It will devour you like the locust…Your shepherds are asleep, O king of Assyria; your nobles slumber. Your people are scattered on the mountains with none to gather them. There is no easing your hurt; your wound is grievous” (Nahum 3:14-17).
God stands in direct opposition to Nineveh, Assyria, and what they represent. And when the God of the universe speaks to people and says, “I am against you,” they should quake.
Nahum provides a portrait of God delivering justice in such vivid and violent language that, by the end of the book, even the most devout Christian must feel a sense of fear. I think the purposeful vagueness of the book is meant to draw that fear out. As Jonah declared in his book, “This is who I am, and I fear the Lord,” and the awkward question is “sure doesn’t look like it, Jonah.” We read Nahum and find who God is. Fear the Lord.
Jonah and Nahum, two tales of one city. Jonah and Nahum reveal the sobering justice and surprising mercy of God. That’s what they do together. Both books work in tandem, revealing both realities while emphasizing one of them. Are you tracking with me? Both books reveal justice and mercy. They’re not pitted against each other, but each of the books does emphasize one of those realities.
Nahum emphasizes God’s sobering justice. Just the phrase “throw filth,” that war imagery is enough to just make us wonder, what’s going on? God declares himself against a people. God will thoroughly execute justice. The emphasis of Nahum is crystal clear, but even Nahum is not absent of mercy. Nahum 1:3,
“The Lord is slow to anger and great in power” (Nahum 1:3).
“The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; he knows those who take refuge in him.” (Nahum 1:7).
At one point in Jonah, remember Nineveh took refuge in God, they repented.
“For the Lord is restoring the majesty of Jacob as the majesty of Israel” (Nahum 2:2).
Nahum, justice and mercy.
Jonah emphasizes God’s surprising mercy. However, Jonah is not without sobering justice. Two times Jonah is told, “Go to Nineveh and preach this message to them.” The reader seems to assume that if Nineveh doesn’t repent, it’s not going to end well. There is something on the line when that message is delivered. There is justice. Justice is on the move in the book of Jonah.
But Jonah emphasizes God’s surprising mercy over and over and over, beginning with Jonah himself. How many times does the main character of the book get shown mercy?
“Jonah, I want you to go there and preach.”
“No, I’m not going to do that. I’m going to kill myself to take care of all this.”
God rescues him. God gives him another chance to go and preach again, and he kind of does. God gives him shade. God tries to reach to him over and over and over. It is mercy over the top to Jonah throughout the book.
The pagan sailors on the boat, their lives are transformed by the mercy they see in the middle of a storm. Nineveh itself, of all places, the beautiful capital of the brutal Assyrian Empire—from king to kid—repenting. And we quickly see that God’s mercy is actually extended to “those people,” the bad people, the wrong people.
Finally, God’s mercy to Nineveh’s cows. Did you catch that? The last word of the book is “cattle.” One of God’s arguments to Jonah is, “I have to value this place. There’s a lot of cattle in there.” Remember, the book is a satire. God made all of those cows. He actually cares about them. Hear this rightly: God’s mercy is displayed in a ridiculous way, and it’s beautiful. God’s merciful to cows. It’s everywhere in Jonah, God’s surprising mercy.
Jonah and Nahum reveal the sobering justice and surprising mercy of God. Taken in tandem, this reality reveals and clarifies to us who our God is and what he’s like. God is simultaneously and thoroughly justice and mercy. Simultaneously, God is—at the same time—justice and mercy. Thoroughly. God is completely both at the same time. God’s justice and mercy don’t fight. They don’t go toe-to-toe in a 1v1 to see who wins. Jonah and Nahum reveal both.
So, back to our original question: What impact could these two ancient books have on us as modern readers? I think it gives us two responses.
1. We must respect God for who he is.
What I mean by that is a couple things. We have to accept God as he’s described and displayed in the scriptures themselves. We don’t get to frame God in our own version. We don’t get to make up what he’s like, especially if it comes into conflict with God’s word. We don’t get to pick specifically a mercy God or a justice God. We don’t get to do that. We have to resist highlighting and hiding who God is.
Most people have used highlighters at some point, whether that’s a real one in your hand or I have it on my iPad. These fluorescent colors make text more prominent than in other places. We don’t get to go through the scriptures with a highlighter and find all the mercy and love passages and hit those.
It’s like if I were to go to the South Carolina State Fair and get my portrait done by one of those caricature artists. You could look at it and go, “Oh yeah, that’s Ferguson. I mean, the nose is way bigger than it really is. The hair’s way pinker than it actually is, but that’s him.” But it’s still not accurate. If we take away or highlight a part of God to the ignoring of another, we turn God into a caricature, and God isn’t accurate. God is not accurately God if he only possesses mercy.
We’re also tempted to hide God’s justice. What I mean by that is this: There’s a guy named John Mark Comer. I don’t agree with everything the way John Mark writes. He does some things really well. Here he writes about this notion of hiding part of who God is, and I think he writes brilliantly. He says this:
“A lot of people have abandoned the ‘God is angry’ narrative and simply replaced it with the exact opposite: ‘God is never angry at all.’ As followers of Jesus, when we read these stories [I inserted, “like Nahum”] about Yahweh’s anger or wrath or judgment, we feel like we need to apologize to our friends or explain it away or hide this socially unacceptable part of God away in the back room—”
Has anybody else ever felt that? Thank you for nodding, those four of you who are with me.
“… as if Yahweh needs a little PR help to survive in the modern world. The imagery of an angry God is passé. We’ve moved on, evolved to a more progressive world. It’s time that we update Yahweh for the twenty-first century. And with this move to recast God comes an even more disconcerting move to redefine love. For a lot of people, love has come to mean tolerance. Think of the common slang in our culture: ‘Hey, what’s good for you is good for you.’ ‘Who am I to judge?’ ‘Live and let live.’ I can’t help but think, Really? Would you say that about an ISIS bomber? A deranged killer sneaking into an elementary school with a machine gun? A pedophile? I’m guessing no.”
What happens if we lose justice? We can’t be embarrassed by God’s justice. We have to actually long for it. We actually have to recognize that justice isn’t just for those people.
I think everybody wants justice. I think it’s common among us all. Silly examples like who hasn’t watched the superhero movie and can’t wait for the villain to get it in the end? You have that feeling in you. When the movie or the story is set right, and we have that resolved feeling, that’s justice.
The problem is, we applaud justice that isn’t even accurate. Batman is not a hero. He’s just not as bad as some other people. His justice isn’t perfect. God’s justice is always perfect.
You don’t have to shy away from perfect justice. God loves justice. God’s justice is never off-target. It’s never a selfish justice like mine is. It never flies off the handle. The Lord, as Jonah said, is slow to anger. Jonah to Nahum, 150 years, God waited. Brothers and sisters, without God’s justice, we lose so much. As Derek Rishmawy writes,
“God is opposed to idolatry, to rape, to racism, to abuse, to theft, to murder, to bloodshed, and to exploiting the poor [and] will treat these atrocities as he promised he would. We can’t only tell the story of Jonah delighting in God’s surprising mercy. We must also tell the story of Nahum where God’s justice says, ‘enough is enough.’ We can’t highlight God’s mercy at the expense of his justice.”
2. We need to respond to God appropriately.
The sailors, the people of Nineveh, the king of Nineveh—upon hearing what God is like or seeing how God is displayed—they repented. They turned from the evil of their way to him, and we’re no different today. God’s justice still rules, and God’s mercy is still available. How does that work? Peter, a friend of Jesus, wrote this (1 Peter 2:21-25),
“For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls” (1 Peter 2:21-25).
How did Jesus survive? What did Jesus do when he was reviled and while he was suffering, and when he was threatened? What was his response in that moment? It was a trust in God’s justice. He endured by saying, “I will continue entrusting myself to him who judges justly. As this happens to me, I know God is a perfect judge who only judges justly.”
For Jesus, God’s sobering justice provided freedom, freedom from retaliation. Notice what Jesus accomplishes as he continues to trust him who judges justly:
“[Jesus] himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.”
Jesus died for the Ninevehites and for Americans.
“By his wounds you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.”
It’s all mercy. This whole section is all mercy. Jesus bore our sins, so we aren’t ruled by sin and can live rightly. The woundings of our lives are ultimately healed in his wounds. Instead of wandering around lost, we’re lovingly found. Mercy, mercy, mercy. God’s surprising mercy is still saving people. God’s sobering justice of Nahum, God’s surprising mercy in Jonah, meet in the person of Jesus.
In 1738, Jonathan Edwards wrote the following about justice and mercy:
“The strict justice of God, and even his revenging justice, and that against the sins of men, never was so gloriously manifested as in Christ…when he had a mind to save sinners, he was willing to undergo such extreme sufferings… And as he is the Judge of the world, he doth himself exercise strict justice, he will not clear the guilty, nor at all acquit the wicked in judgment. Yet how wonderfully is infinite mercy towards sinners displayed in him! And what glorious and ineffable grace and love have been and are exercised by him, towards sinful men! Though he be the just Judge of a sinful world, yet he is also the Savior of the world. Though he be a consuming fire to sin, yet he is the light and life of sinners.”
Jonah and Nahum reveal the sobering justice and surprising mercy of God. May we respect God for who he is and receive him, how he is described and displayed in the scriptures, and may we respond to God by turning from our evil to him and receiving the mercy found in Jesus Christ. Let’s pray.
Father, I asked for your help at the beginning, and I ask for your help now, that you would allow only healthy words that I said land on people’s ears. Take away anything that’s unhelpful, and only let land what is good. Allow your word to reveal to us who you are. Empower our hearts to respond rightly in your name, amen.
