Nahum 1

¹ A revelation about Nineveh. The book of the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite.

² The LORD is a jealous God and avenges. The LORD avenges and is full of wrath. The LORD takes vengeance on his adversaries, and he maintains wrath against his enemies.

³ The LORD is slow to anger, and great in power, and will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. The LORD has his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet.

⁴ He rebukes the sea and makes it dry, and dries up all the rivers. Bashan and Carmel languish. The flower of Lebanon languishes.

⁵ The mountains quake before him, and the hills melt away. The earth trembles at his presence, yes, the world, and all who dwell in it.

⁶ Who can stand before his indignation? Who can endure the fierceness of his anger? His wrath is poured out like fire, and the rocks are broken apart by him.

⁷ The LORD is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; and he knows those who take refuge in him.

⁸ But with an overflowing flood, he will make a full end of her place, and will pursue his enemies into darkness.

⁹ What do you plot against the LORD? He will make a full end. Affliction won’t rise up the second time.

¹⁰ For entangled like thorns, and drunken as with their drink, they are consumed utterly like dry stubble.

¹¹ One has gone out of you who devises evil against the LORD, who counsels wickedness.

¹² The LORD says: “Though they are in full strength and likewise many, even so they will be cut down and pass away. Though I have afflicted you, I will afflict you no more.

¹³ Now I will break his yoke from off you, and will burst your bonds apart.”

¹⁴ The LORD has commanded concerning you: “No more descendants will bear your name. Out of the house of your gods, I will cut off the engraved image and the molten image. I will make your grave, for you are vile.”

¹⁵ Behold, on the mountains the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace! Keep your feasts, Judah! Perform your vows, for the wicked one will no more pass through you. He is utterly cut off.

Around Nahum 1

Context

Context for this book is being written. A note appears here only once it names its sources.

AI explanation

About Nahum as a whole · Written by an AI model · Not reviewed by a theological reader

This explanation was written by an AI model to help you get started. It names no sources and can contain mistakes. Scripture comes first, and context with sources is shown separately on this page.

What this book is about

News is coming over the mountains. “Behold, on the mountains the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace!” For the peoples that Assyria crushed, it is the news they have waited for: the oppressor will not rise again.

Nahum announces the fall of Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian empire. He begins with who God is: “The LORD is slow to anger, and great in power,” he says. Then, in vivid poetry, he lets the reader hear the city fall: the noise of the whip, the rattling wheels, horsemen charging, bodies without end. Its fortresses are like fig trees whose fruit drops into the mouth of the eater. Its defenses fail.

The city’s own cruelty is coming back upon it. The book ends on a question aimed at Nineveh: “who hasn’t felt your endless cruelty?”

Background

The book was written between the fall of Thebes, an Egyptian city, in 663 before Christ, which it mentions, and the fall of Nineveh in 612. Assyria was known for the brutality of its conquests, and it had destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel a century earlier. Nahum himself is called the Elkoshite in the opening line.

How Christians read it

Nahum is often read beside Jonah. In Jonah Nineveh repents and is spared. In Nahum, generations later, it faces judgment. Together they show God as both patient and just. The tone is harsh, and readers do well to remember who is speaking: the victims of an empire, hearing that its violence will end. Read that way, even its harshest lines belong to people who had suffered long and wanted to hear that it would end.

About this explanation

Written by Claude Sonnet 5.5, an AI model, on 21 October 2026. It draws on the WEB text and general knowledge and was not checked against sources by a person. Every quotation from Scripture is checked automatically against the WEB text.

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