Nahum 3:2-3: Stumbling Over the Dead

Okay, so you see, Nahum, many slain, a mass of bodies, and countless dead. What a wonderful way to start a Bible study. Alright, so we're going to read the end of chapter 2 and up to verse 7 in chapter 3.

Nahum’s Vision of Judgment Against Nineveh

Here now, God's inspired word. Behold, I am against you, declares the Lord of hosts. I will burn up her chariots in smoke. A sword will devour your young lions. I will cut off your prey from the land and no longer will the voice of your messengers be heard.

Woe to the bloody city, completely full of lies and pillages. Her prey never departs. And here's the verse we're going to go over today. The noise of the whip, the noise of the rattling of the wheel, galloping horses and bounding chariots, horsemen charging, swords flashing, spears gleaming.

Many slain, a mass of corpses and countless dead bodies. They stumble over the dead bodies. All because of the many holotrees of the harlot, the charming one, the mistress of sorceries, who sells nations by her holotrees and families by her sorceries.

Behold, I am against you. That's the second time, declares the Lord of hosts. And I will lift up your skirts over your face and show to the nations your nakedness and to the kingdoms your disgrace. I will throw filth on you and make you vile and set you up as a spectacle.

And it will come about that all who see you will shrink from you and say, Nineveh is devastated. Who will grieve for her? Where will I seek comforters for you? Again, heavy words from Nahum the prophet.

So let's just do a quick recap of where we were last week. God pronounces a woe on Assyria and it's the first woe. As you see today, we got to verse four. There's a second woe. And sandwiched between those two verses are the verses that we're going to go through today.

The nation of Assyria is full of blood. In other words, they're murderous. They're full of lies. They're untrustworthy. And they're always a violent predator. They always seek to attack the nations around them, to assume them and make them part of Assyria.

But just like Satan, Assyria is a defeated foe. God has sealed their doom. And we went through the verses last week about Satan being judged already. He's been cast out. The ruler of this world has been judged.

He's bound. He can't do everything that he wants to do, although he does have limited power. Assyria in the same way would have limited power and then ultimately be destroyed. Nineveh broke the sixth, eighth, and ninth commandments.

They murdered viciously, stole mercilessly, and lied continually on a multinational scale. Yet even wicked Nineveh, along with Sodom, will stand at the judgment and condemn the Israelites who rejected Jesus, their Messiah, and who would not repent at his teaching.

Think about that. Sodom and Gomorrah, Nineveh is gonna stand and point their finger at the Israelites and say, you should have known. God pronounces a second woe on his enemies and blessings, which we learned last week, was wheels on his people.

So let's get into the first verse. The noise of the whip, the noise of the rattling of the wheel, galloping horses and bounding chariots. The description of Nineveh in verse one and its woeful reputation is abruptly followed by a sensory vision of preparation to stage an attack, the attack itself and the resultant carnage.

The sounds and sensations carry the listener to the scene of preparation for battle. Crack, clatter, gallop, jolt. These sounds of the mobilization of troops will be familiar to the many witnesses of Nineveh's aggression.

They've heard these sounds before, only they were causing them. Now the attacking enemy is making those sounds that is gonna attack them. The sights of the attack then transport the hero to the battle itself.

Charging calvary, flashing swords, glittering spears. Finally, the carnage appears, its magnitude reinforced by a repetitive fourfold description. Many casualties, piles of dead, bodies without number, people stumbling over the corpses.

When you get an image of this in your mind and you hear the sounds as he goes through this and then you visualize it, my goodness, what a ugly scene, what a horrific scene this would be for the Assyrians.

Verses two and three propel the reader and hearer into the streets of Nineveh with its chaos and panic. The phrases are brief but descriptive of the events that would one day occur in the heart of Assyria itself.

There is no transitional statement between the woe oracle and the short vision connected to it. So God says, woe unto Assyria and then starts listing the things that are gonna happen. God has allowed Nahum to witness the fall of Nineveh through vision, even though its years, perhaps even decades away.

So Nahum has the vision of what's going to happen, relays it to the Israelites, even though that wouldn't happen for several years later. Here we have a moving, graphic, prophetic description of the Medes and the Babylonians' onslaught against the city of Nineveh in 612 BC.

These verses read like an eyewitness account that give an unexcelled picture of the storming of an ancient city. And when you hear those words again, the noise of the whip, the noise of the rattling, the galloping of horses, I was thinking, have you ever pictured or heard like a blacksmith hitting an iron on an anvil?

Boom, boom, boom, boom.

This is what the Ninevites would hear, but it would be the boom of the attacking army against their city.

And it won't stop, boom, boom, boom,.

Until they're annihilated. The graphic staccato phrases of verses one through three evoke the picture of a ruthless, grinding military machine. Nineveh's brutal subjugation and plundering of other cities is likened to the rapaciousness and the greed of a harlot.

Cruel yet seductive, Assyria enslaved other nations, gaining permanent advantage for herself by offering temporary benefits to others. So they would assume you in, give you protection, and continue to attack the nations around them.

To comment on these verses is to detract from their artistic excellence. All that we need to do is read these verses, allowing our imaginations to have full reign, and we are in the midst of one of history's greatest battles.

Note the number of the slain, many bodies, right? So what he's saying is, as you listen to these words, close your eyes, draw the picture in your head, listen to the sounds that he's repeating to us. These are the sounds of war.

Job 39 gives us a picture, and part of what Nahum does is drawn from this. He, meaning the horse, laughs at fear and is not dismayed. He does not turn back from the sword. Upon him rattled the quiver, the flashing spear, and the javelin.

With fierceness and rage, he swallows the ground. He cannot stand still at the sound of the trumpet. When the trumpet sounds, he says, aha, he smells the battle from afar, the thunder of the captains and the shouting.

You remember what God told Israel about amassing horses and weapons? Not to, right? And this is what is gonna come against Assyria, because what did they do? They amassed horses and weapons to destroy the nations around them.

So this is just a little glimpse into how the Bible talks about horses, right? They're a weapon of war. What used to be a description of Assyria is now a poetic description of their enemies attacking them.

Jeremiah, at the noise of the stamping of the hoofs of his stallions, at the crushing of his chariots, at the rumbling of the wheels. Do you see how he's repeating those phrases? The rushing, the rumbling, the hoofs, get your sense of hearing involved in this.

And the father's look, not back to their children, so feeble are their hands, because of the day that is coming to destroy all the Philistines. To cut off from Tyre and Sidon every helper that remains, for the Lord is destroying the Philistines, the remnant of the coastland of Caphter.

Caphter.

Now, again, this is not about Assyria, but it's about another enemy coming in against the Philistines, okay? I wanted you to get that noise in your mind of what Nahum is trying to capture with the galloping and the rumbling and the horses.

You could listen to that, form an audio of it in your mind to see what the Assyrians are gonna go through. The sounds Nineveh used to make and cause their enemy to tremble would now be used to make them tremble.

They know what these sounds mean, only they used to be the aggressor, now they're the prey. It must have been a terrifying experience to be in a city under siege, but how much more to have seen the enemy break through and charge after you, intent on delivering pain and almost certain death.

How ghastly this is in verses two and three, in all its vivid description of the death throes of Nineveh. As Raymond Brown notes about the whole of Nahum, the word of the prophet here seems harsh and pitiless, but one must remember the agony caused throughout the Near Eastern world by the Assyrian invaders.

They have been described as the most brutal empire which has ever suffered to roll its forces across the world. We talked about that last week. The book is about the utter justice of God, and as such, it has the essential place in the Bible.

Men must be reminded not only of the goodness, but also the severity of God, right? We know Romans 11, note then the kindness and the severity of God, severity towards those who have fallen, but God's kindness to you provided you continue in his kindness.

It's a reminder to us who've received God's mercy, who've received the grace of God to remain kind, not look down our nose, not be arrogant, not look to hurt other people when they need our help. Otherwise, we too would be cut off.

Therefore, all can understand God's reason for bringing an end to Nineveh. It is for justice, not only to be done, but also to be seen to be done. This is a visual for the Israelites and the nations around them, what true justice from God looks like.

Almighty God never has to explain himself, but graciously so that none can accuse him of being simply vindictive, he states why it is that Nineveh will be humbled, right? The things that they did are now gonna come back upon them.

It's gonna be an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. He's gonna punish them the way they punished the nations around them. Where's another verse in the Bible that God makes his power and his justice visible?

Can you think of any?

Okay.

Any Christians here? Can you think of another?

Yes, Maria.

Oh, you were fixing your hair?

Sorry.

Yes, Ryan.

The cross, sure.

Yeah, that's a good one.

Yes.

Paul's encounter with Jesus. Yep, those are all excellent. Excellent, that's a good one too. I was thinking of this one, Romans 9. You guys know this. For the scripture says to Pharaoh, for this very purpose, I have raised you up that I might show my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.

So then he has mercy on whomever he wills and he hardens whomever he wills, right? God raised Pharaoh up for that very purpose to destroy him in front of the objects of his mercy, his people, right? Now, some people get upset.

Oh, God hardened Pharaoh's heart. You know, that's wrong. God didn't instill fresh evil in Pharaoh's heart and get him to do this unwillingly. All God did was release his hand of restraint on his evil heart and allow him to do what he wanted to do from the beginning, okay?

So this isn't God saying, ha ha ha, I'm gonna take an innocent guy and watch what I do with him. All God did was release his grace from his heart and that should be a lesson to us. If God was to release the grace and the restraint on our hearts, what we could be capable of.

So never look down your nose at Pharaoh. We would be like Pharaoh had we not received mercy and grace. I have mercy on whomever I will and I will harden whomever I will. Thank goodness you weren't hardened.

Romans 9 .22, what if God desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? That's heavy. In order to make known the riches of his glory for the vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory.

Even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles, right? So God is doing this to make his power known to the objects of his mercy, okay? That would be us, the saints, even back then, right?

Chariots traveling swiftly, bounced, that word is kind of like skipping, right? Along uneven streets. All of the phrases emphasize the sights and sounds of warfare in the very streets of the city. Those who relish the terror struck in the hearts of others would now experience fear arising from chariots bounding through their own streets.

People on foot would panic at the swiftness of the chariot in the streets of the city, okay? Matthew 26, then Jesus said to them, put your sword back into its place for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.

Do you think that I cannot appeal to my father and he will at once send me more than 12 legions of angels, right? Assyria's, the way Assyria battled the nations around them was through physical force, violence.

We as saints do not wage warfare that way. Our battle is not against flesh and blood. Our battle is spiritual. We have to put on the armor of God, all right? We're in a spiritual battle. Our job is not to slay physical people.

Our job is to slay their arguments and open them up to the Holy Spirit who can change their hearts and renew their spirits. Nations that live by the sword die by the sword. Nineveh would experience a punishment in kind.

It lived by intimidation, lies, and bloodshed. Its streets would be filled with the corpses of its inhabitants. And again, how do we battle? Ephesians 6, finally be strong in the Lord in the strength of his might.

Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places.

Therefore, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand firm, all right? One of our most powerful weapons is prayer. We pray on Wednesday nights.

We pray Sunday mornings. We pray throughout the week. But corporately, we get together Wednesday to pray. Again, encourage you guys to come out and pray when you can, all right? We're doing spiritual warfare.

So continuing on with verse three, horsemen charging, swords flashing, spears gleaming, many slain, a mass of corpses and countless dead bodies. They stumble over the dead bodies. In verses two and three, Nahum returned to his vivid portrayal of the coming battle of Nineveh.

These two verses are inserted between verses one and four, both of which describe a serious wickedness. Apparently, the prophet sandwiched this gory scene here for effect as a warning about the wages of sin.

Verse two depicts the charioteers as they furiously plowed through the Ninevites. And verse three, the charging cavalry slashing the enemy with swords and brandishing spears. Corpses of fallen Ninevites would be piled so high the invaders would stumble over them.

Again, this is what they used to do after they destroyed a nation. They would pile their corpses outside the city gate so that as people came in, they would see all their slain enemies. Reading Nahum's graphic description, one can almost hear the sounds of battle.

In Babylonian historical documents, we find a reference to the barbaric manner in which residents of a suburb of Nineveh were slaughtered. And this is a thought by Gregory Cook. He's the only commentator out of all the commentators that I read putting this together that comes to this conclusion.

So I would say this is a speculation, but I think it's a speculation worth looking at because I think it holds true.

Gregory Cook says,.

I believe that Nahum used these verses to portray Nineveh as a city of the dead. He alluded to both biblical and Assyrian concepts of the underworld. Assyria shared a common culture with Babylon. Many of the mythic stories of Mesopotamia pertain to gods and goddesses common to both nations.

One uniquely Assyrian myth may perhaps help to explain why Nahum 3 -3 tells us about so many dead bodies. Here's what it says. The netherworld vision of an Assyrian crown prince, that's the name of the scroll, tells the oldest known visionary journey to hell by a human being.

It recounts the story of an Assyrian crown prince who voluntary visits the underworld after a period of personal crisis. The myth does not name this crown prince, but Ashurbanipal is the best candidate.

Negril, the chief god of the Mesopotamian underworld, does not appreciate the intrusion and is about to smash Ashurbanipal's skull with a scepter. The prince is understandably terrified. Then Negril's wise advisor counsels him to let the prince go in order to help Negril's public relations on earth.

The god concurs and lets the prince go after the prince vows to do so. So the prince and Negril, who represents a demonic force, kind of like are in covenant, and now he's gonna go back and declare him.

If this myth stemmed from Ashurbanipal, then Nineveh's emperor had a special association with the god of the dead. Okay, again, this is speculation, but this is what was taught in Assyria. They had similar gods in this respect.

So let's see what this looks like. The doctrine of hell finds much clearer expression because when he went down to the underworld, that would be considered hell, and we're gonna learn what that means.

It's not literally hell, but the doctrine of hell finds much clearer expression in the New Testament than in the Old. Much of what we do know about hell came directly from the lips of Jesus. The Old Testament does speak about the grave and Sheol.

One such passage from Isaiah helps us to understand Nahum's multiple references to Nineveh's voracious appetite for plunder, torn flesh, and dead bodies. According to Isaiah, Sheol has enlarged its appetite and opens its mouth beyond measure.

Nineveh keep, consumes, and keeps. It lets nothing leave. So Nineveh's constantly just taking on new nations and destroying them, not allowing them to leave. The reference to God's pursuing his enemies into darkness in Nahum earlier, in Nahum 1 .8, also uses the imagery of Sheol.

Several biblical passages use darkness as a description of Sheol. For example, are not my days few? Then cease and leave me alone that I may find a little cheer before I go, and I shall not return to the land of darkness and deep shadow, the land of gloom like thick darkness, like deep shadow without any order where light is as thick as darkness.

Okay, so the underworld, Sheol, is considered a place of darkness. Psalm 88 speaks many times of the land of the dead. The psalmist seems to despair from beginning to end. In verse six, he says, you have put me in the depths of the pit, in the regions of the dark and deep.

So in Sheol, like the realm of the dead, are gonna be many dead bodies. That's why Cook is making this disassociation. Nineveh's gates and bars also suggest Sheol, as Hezekiah's lament reveals. I said in the middle of my days, I must depart.

I am consigned to the gates of Sheol for the rest of my years. I said I shall not see the Lord, the Lord in the land of the living. I shall look on man no more among the inhabitants of the world. All right, so you have the land of the living that we're in, and then the place of Sheol where people are dead, they're disembodied.

Jonah also described his impending death in such a way. The waters closed in over me to take my life. The deep surrounded me. Weeds were wrapped around my head at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever.

Yet you brought my life up from the pit, oh Lord, my God. Once a human descends to the land of the dead, gates and bars lock behind him. Once you're dead, you can't come back until the last day at the resurrection.

Later in Nahum 3 .15, we're gonna read, their fire will consume you. The sword will cut you down. It will consume you as the locust does. Multiply yourself like the creeping locust. Multiply yourself like the swarming locust, right?

So when we hear about hell, what do you think of? We think of fire. We think of being consumed by the fire. Now, depending on your position, you may think we're eventually gonna die out or you hold to eternity in hell, eternal conscious torment.

Either way, it will be tormentuous, right? I saw something on Facebook where he was accusing God of torturing people in hell. And I responded back, I said, there's no verse in the scriptures that says that God tortures people.

People are in torment because they're cut off from the grace and the blessing of God. And they're in the presence of God receiving his justice.

Right?

So it's not God torturing somebody. It's the righteous result of their sin. God is giving them what they deserve. The words of Nahum 3 .15 fit even better with Jesus' description of hell in Mark 9 .48.

In this verse, Jesus quotes Isaiah 66 and teaches that where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched, referring to hell. Nineveh experienced literal fire and sword when the Babylonians took the city.

It experienced the onslaught of figurative locusts as the meads removed everything of value. Jesus applies these words to a more horrific end. He warns us to take any step necessary to avoid eternity in hell.

The doctrine of hell has fallen into disfavor, right? It doesn't, many evangelical churches don't talk about hell or don't tell anybody about hell, but it's loving to tell somebody or warn somebody not to go to that place and how to escape judgment from God.

Many preachers, churches, and denominations have chosen either to openly deny God's eternal judgment or to just ignore it. We do not have the option to change God's message to suit our culture. However, he has charged us to speak plainly.

We may make people angry, we may lose friends, we may lose church members, yet we do not have the option of dancing around or ignoring the issue of hell. We have been charged with a message to deliver.

We must deliver it. That message includes eternal punishment for all who will not submit to Christ as Lord. We do the world no favors by shirking this duty.

They may hate us,.

But they desperately need to know the truth, right? Hell is not an easy thing to talk about. It's not something that we want people to go to. We shouldn't want people to go there. It's a place of eternal conscious torment, right?

So we have the solution to their problem. It's called the gospel. Jesus is Lord. You will stand before him and give an account of your life one day, but he also provides the solution. This one whom you will make an account to had died on a cross, was buried, rose from the dead to pay the penalty for the consequences of sinners.

If you repent, change the way you think about your sin and trust in the Savior, he will save you from your sins. So the very one whom you're gonna stand before to give an account of your life is the very one who also made provision to bring you so that you could escape the judgment.

He will take the judgment upon himself. That's the good news. So what about hell? So this is something that, his name was Jesse Justin from the Cripplegate. I used his article to go through because he summarized it so succinctly.

So what is hell? And we have a couple of words in the New Testament that describe it. We have Sheol, Hades, Gehenna. They're all terms the Bible uses for the location people go to when they die. Do these terms all describe the same place?

Are they all hell? Well, if so, why use different words for them? Oh, there is Jesse Johnson, okay, from the Cripplegate. Sheol, let's define what this is. Sheol is the Old Testament word for the realm of the dead.

And this includes both the saved and the lost. Consider the patriarch Jacob, who thought of himself as going to Sheol when he died. And here's the verse. All his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted and said, no, I shall go down to Sheol to my son mourning.

So in the Old Testament, the term Sheol represented the realm of the dead. And everybody who died went to Sheol, righteous and unrighteous, people who had faith in God and people who rejected God. Sheol is not only where the patriarchs go, those who led Israel, but it is clearly spoken of as the realm to which those who die absent of saving faith also descend.

Moses declared that when people die who despised Yahweh, they descended into Sheol, and that's in Numbers. Sheol is also known as the realm of the fire of God's judgment. Number 1630 reads, but if the Lord creates something new and the ground opens its mouth and swallows them up with all their belongings to them, and they go down alive into Sheol, then you shall know that these men have despised the Lord.

So believers and unbelievers all went to the realm of the dead. It's best to understand Sheol as a term for the realm of the dead, where both the righteous and unrighteous went when they died, okay? So you both went to the realm of the dead.

You'll notice that we said went, right? It's past tense because for the righteous, Sheol was an Old Testament concept. It changes come the new covenant. Jesus is truly human, and under the old covenant, he experienced death like all humans do.

He too descended to Sheol and proclaimed victory over the grave by liberating the souls of the righteous and bringing them to heaven. Now when church-age believers die, they do not go to Sheol, but rather to heaven to be with the Lord forever, and that's Philippians 1 .23.

I am hard-pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better, but to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account, okay? Again, I spilled the beans. That extra piece wasn't supposed to be in there.

But anyway, so Sheol is still a place of the dead, but because Jesus fulfilled the old covenant, died on the cross, he's now seated at the right hand of the Father, ruling and reigning until his enemies are made afoot to his first feet, he went in to Sheol.

And when we recite the Apostles' Creed, we say he descended into hell. And there's that word hell, right? Translators use hell to describe Sheol, Hades, and Gehenna. And we have to discern what that word actually means.

We were watching a video in the mentoring group, and the interlocutor brought up the subject of hell. And if we don't know how to answer them correctly, we're not gonna represent our worldview correctly.

So I've had other people who oppose Christianity say, well, Jesus went to hell. And then I had to look it up and understand that it wasn't hell the way we understand the second death. It was the realm of the dead, because Jesus did die, right?

And we see in Acts and the Psalms that he will not let his body see corruption. So he went to hell and then brought the saints who died before into heaven. So what is Hades? Hades is a New Testament Greek term that is used to refer to Sheol.

That's the Hebrew word. Sheol is the Hebrew word. Hades is the Greek word for that. Hades Sheol refers to the same place, but there's a noticeable difference in the way the Old Testament and the New Testament speak of Sheol and Hades.

The Old Testament speaks of Sheol inclusively, where even the righteous dead descend to. So just and unjust both go to Sheol. But in the New Testament, because of Jesus' victory over death and the liberty he brings to the righteous in Sheol, Jesus does not teach that believers go to Hades, but rather that believers will be with him in heaven.

John 14 three. Hades is still a place for the dead, but not for the believers in the new covenant. Jesus says, and if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself that where I am, you may be also.

What does Jesus tell the thief on the cross? Today, you will be with me in paradise. Now, within the realm of the dead, if you go to Luke chapter 16, there's the rich man and Lazarus, right? The rich man is in torment.

He's dying for just a drop of water. And then he sees Abraham across a great gulf, which no one can span, right? So Abraham is in the, it's called the bosom of Abraham. He's, Lazarus is in the bosom of Abraham.

He's safe, he's in a place of peace, whereas the rich man is in torment, okay? So even in Sheol, there was a separation between the righteous and unrighteous, but it was still a place of the dead. For that reason, the New Testament emphasis on Hades is a place of suffering and judgment.

It's still the same location as Sheol and the same place where Old Testament saints went at their death. Peter says that Jesus descended into Hades, that's where we get it in the Apostles Creed, he descended into hell, he descended into Hades when he died.

While the Old Testament speaks of him descending to Sheol and not being left there, right? Matthew 11, 23, and you Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? No, you will be brought down to Hades. Luke 10, and you Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven?

No, you shall be brought down to Hades. Luke 16, the rich man also died and was buried, and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes, okay? So you understand that Sheol and Hades are a place of the dead.

Two different words, one Hebrew, one Greek, talking about the same place. Ultimately, Jesus has authority over Sheol and Hades. He has the keys to death in Hades, Revelation 1, 18, which is another way of saying he can bind or loose people from there as he pleases.

Of course, he frees all the saints there at his resurrection and then he uses the keys again to empty Sheol by casting the damned souls into the lake of fire. That's to come on the last day of the Lord.