Tue 9 Dec 2008
Reserve Reading – Toward a Theology of Nahum
Posted by S.G.R. Webster under An Introduction to the Old Testament
[32] Comments
-
Archived Entry
- Post Date :
- Tuesday, Dec 9th, 2008 at 9:17 pm
- Category :
- An Introduction to the Old Testament
- Tags :
- Do More :
- You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
-
Im a little confused about the whole breaking of the yoke thing. and the it confused me when it went into the conquest metaphor, and then the spin into gods retributive justice. If you can just explain that a little more that would be great! page 6
I understand that the Assyrians were very wicked people and God did not judge them arbitrarily, but the Israelites were not perfect by any means. So why does it seem that God has more patience with the Israelites than with the Assyrians?
I was a little confused about how exactly the message of Nahum is rooted in the Siniatic revelation of God to the nation of Israel. pg. 2
Why does God choose to use the Assyrians to be “the rod of his anger”… when it says He holds them responsible for the excesses of fulfilling this role it seems like he set them up for destruction, which is obviously not true, but why couldn’t He use someone who at least had some knowledge of Him so they wouldn’t do such horrible things in the process.
Pg. 5
Jonah hated the Assyrians, possibly with good reason, but why would God send someone like that to preach to the people? Wouldn’t Jonah be doing it with the wrong motive, and therefore sinning as he follows Gods orders? Isn’t God kind of baiting Jonah? page 2
Page 1 says that “Nahum signals the end of God’s patience with the universe.” How does it do that?
My question build on Seth Harter’s, if Assyria was the rod of God’s anger, why are they being punished for what they did?
Is it because they attributed their success to their own military prowess or is it because of their brutality toward conquered nations?
nahum and isaiah were contemporaries, right? so if they wrote at the same time, were they aware of each other? page 11 says nahum makes allusions to isaiah, but how is that possible if they were writing around the same time?
Throughout the paper I really appreciated how God’s grace and justice were displayed. I also liked that when God’s justice was discussed it was made clear that it wasn’t because He is cruel and just did these things because He felt like it. He was gracious by being slow to anger, but the continued sin and lack of repentance of the people brought about His judgment.
i think it is cool how the books of jonah and nahum do not show a contradiction in Gods nature, but rather that his will and disign remain the same for eternity. God did not change his mind about his treatment of the assyrians, the assyrians changed their behavior. God was using the assyrians to acomplish his will but that does not excuse them of their atrocious war crimes against Gods people in the prosses.
Page six makes an effort to explain whether the oracle was written as a look toward the future destruction of Nineveh or as a celebration of its previous occurence, but I was not able to discern any clear answer. Wich was it?
On page 6 when it says “breaking the yoke” i’m really confused on what you mean by that. Could you please explain it?
my question was actually the exact same as annie’s. If Assyria was “the rod of my (Yahweh’s) anger, was his patience not already lost.
Also i found it very interesting that the destruction of one nation was the great hope of another. And how with that in mind instead of calling it an “unmitiagted hymn of hate”, we could call it a hym of hope.
Why does Assyria receive so much attention (and not in a good way) from God, when there were nations just as evil?
In Nahum, why are there so many allusions to the book of Isaiah? and what’s the significance of relating them to Isaiah? (I understand the diff. connections to each & how they tie to Nahum like “chariots like the whirlwind” and “like a dove..” etc etc but why Isaiah.. why not some other book?) pg 11
On page one, second paragraph it says “Because of its singulr message of Nineveh’s destruction, Nahum signals the end of God’s patience with the universe.” I don’t understand this. Could you please explain?
When God showed mercy to the Ninevites, was he delaying a promise he made with the Israelites to “destroy the Assyrians”- in Isaiah. Can we assume that if God were to make a promise with us now, He could show mercy to our enemies before He kept His promise with us?
(page
It says that the judgment of Assyria demonstrated the faithfulness of God, and that whatever one sows, that will he also reap. I understand this concept, but if God used them earlier to bring about his destruction, couldn’t he just save a lot of time and not have them be used for destruction?
sorry i don’t know how a smiley face got there. its on page 8
On page 5, It said that the Assyrians were God’s rod of anger against godless nations…So how did those nations know that they were fighting people with God behind them, wouldn’t they just assume they were like any other nation out for the same ruthless fighting?
On page 14, how does Yahweh use the Assyrian idols as weapons against them?
I don’t quite understand how Nahum can describe Yahweh as a God of vengeance, whose anger annihilates everything in his path and then go on to say that He is slow to anger. Those two things just don’t go together in my mind. Page 5.
Why was Nahum exulted at the suffering and destruction of Neneveh? (page 3)
In the original context of Nahum it says that it is a prophecy against Ninevah, but in the commentary it seems like it’s a prophecy against the entire nation. which is it?
Page 4
What do you mean by ” nahum is the ironic fulfillment of what jonah apparently wanted”?
Is this talking about Jonah’s want for the disobedient nation to be punished?
My question comes from page 2. Since God is loving and compassionate and slow to anger, why would he be angry at and punish all the way to the 4th generation of people for crimes their forefathers committed? This seems strange to me because they obviously cannot choose what family they were born into. Unless they committed the same crimes, why would God punish them?
Pg 4 says “What changed is the behavior of the Assyrians.” How did it change? Weren’t they always known for their tyranny? When did any behavior other than synnical behavior occur?
Why are the Assyrians looked so bad upon and why is God punishing them so much, when other countries were sinful as well. Did God really believe they were too far gone to save?
Does the degree of severity or the mode of punishment ever correlate with the crime committed?
who was someone who has gone as far as to say that Naham is an unmitigated hymn of hate?
I don’t understand what the reference to breaking the “yoke” of the Assyrians means? and the rest of that paragraph. pg 6