The Targum
Like early Christian communities, early Jewish interpreters wrestled with how Nahum and JonahJonah son of Amittai was a rebellious prophet who fled from the Lord's command, only to be delivered by a big and fish and bring about the repentance of Nineveh. More present different accounts of Nineveh’s fate. The Targum, an Aramaic translation of the Hebrew Bible that came into use as Aramaic replaced Hebrew as the language of everyday life, harmonizes these accounts by situating the two prophets in different time periods, and explaining that the Ninevites relapsed after being spared in Jonah’s time. To the opening of the book in 1:1, the Targum adds, “previously, Jonah…prophesied against [Nineveh] and she repented of her sins; and when she sinned again there prophesied once more against her, Nahum […] as is recorded in this book” (Tg. Nahum 1:1). The Targum–whose name comes from the Aramaic root “to translate”–was needed to keep the Bible accessible, but in many cases it also provided homiletical or clarifying comments.
The Dead Sea Scrolls
A nearly complete version of the Book of Nahum can be pieced together from manuscripts among the Dead Sea ScrollsThe Dead Sea Scrolls are ancient scrolls discovered in the mid-20th century in caves near an archaeological site called Qumran More. The evidence from Qumran adds two insights to our understanding of the Book of Nahum. First, the manuscripts essentially agree with the Masoretic Text–the basis of the Hebrew text we read in our Bibles–wcounters a long tradition of proposing emendations to the first chapter of Nahum in particular (long assumed to be corrupt). Additionally, the scrolls show that even before the turn of the first millennium, the Minor Prophets, or “The Book of the Twelve,” were being read as a collection–because multiple books are preserved on single scrolls.
Also found among the Dead Sea Scrolls were an assortment of documents called pesharim. There are seventeen pesharim on the prophetic books among the Dead Sea Scrolls, one of which is a pesher on Nahum (4QpNah / 4Q169). The term pesher comes from the Hebrew root meaning “to interpret,” and this is what they did. In many cases, this is done explicitly, with biblical verses being followed by the phrase “its interpretation (is)…”. A pesher will often update historical references “updated” for the community’s immediate context and they also lend themselves to an alternate, more eschatological reading than the original books. Nahum’s focus on divine wrath and the defeat of one’s enemies lend it well to this genreA genre is a type or category of something, often literature. Form criticism (see) begins with sorting biblical literature into various genres. More of writing. In the text of the Nahum pesher, historical figures from the 1st century CE are connected with references from the biblical text which is several hundred years older. The enemy is no longer Assyria; the book has been recontextualized for the Qumran community, replacing references to Assyria with references to “the Kittim,” a Hebrew term for the Greeks but widely understood to be a code name for Rome. The Nahum pesher is the only one of the pesharim to include actual names of historical figures–Alexander Janneus and Demetrius III–kings who persecuted the Jewish population of Judea at the time. This is unusual because the genre more often uses nicknames to obscure its references. Elsewhere in the Dead Sea Scrolls, we see references to “RighteousA righteous person is one who is ethical and faithful to God's covenant. Righteousness in the Old Testament is an attitude of God; in the New Testament it is a gift of God through grace. In the New Testament righteousness is a relationship with God... More Teacher”, “The Wicked PriestA priest is a person who has the authority to perform religious rites. In New Testament times priests were responsible for daily offerings and sacrifices in the temple. More” and “The Man of the Lie.” Only those in the know would necessarily have been able to understand the references–this was intentional. One of the Nahum pesher’s favorite nicknames is dorshei hakhalaqot, “seekers-of-smooth-things,” a pun that plays on the Hebrew name of the Pharisees: dorshei hahalakot, “seekers-of-the-laws.” The document also associates the Pharisees with Nineveh and the Sadducees with Thebes (cf. 3:8), thus using the vengeance of the biblical book to fan the flames of sectarian disputes. Just as Nineveh was destroyed and JudahJudah was the name of Jacob's fourth son and one of the 12 tribes. More rejoiced, so will the Pharisees be destroyed and the Qumran community rejoice.
Josephus
At the end of the 1st century, a Jewish historian named Flavius Josephus wrote a history of the Jewish people under Roman patronage. This work, Antiquities of the Jews was written in Greek so as to be accessible to a wider audience. In it, he sought to present a broad narrative of the Jewish people as noble and not a threat to the empire, an important project in the wake of the Jewish-Roman War of 67 C.E. Along with his more famous work about that conflict (The Jewish War), his Antiquities of the Jews provides a valuable insight into the context of the 1st century and into how Jewish communities were perceived. Antiquities is a twenty-volume work recounting the entire span of biblical history through the Hellenistic period and into the reign of the Roman Emperor Nero. It is, at turns, apologetic and self-deprecating in tone. As for Nahum, Josephus reconciles the book’s events with the account in Jonah, as do so many other pre-modern interpreters, by explaining that Nineveh was spared after Jonah’s prophesying, but relapsed and was destroyed in Nahum’s time, “one hundred and fifteen years later” (Ant. 9.11.3).
The New Testament
Nahum is only possibly referenced a handful of times in the New Testament. Even then, the references are vague or fragmented. One possibility is Nah 1:15a [Hebrew 2:1a]: “Look, on the mountains, the feet of one who brings good tidings / who proclaims peace.” Two appearances in the NT of the phrase “preaching peace” (euangelizo + eirene) in Acts 10:36 and Eph 6:15 may be recalling Nahum’s phrase mashmia shalom, “one proclaiming peace”. (The SeptuagintThe Septuagint is a pre-Christian (third to first century BCE) Greek translation of the Jewish Scriptures. It is believed that the term Septuagint derives from the number of scholars-seventy (or seventy-two)-who reputedly did the work of translation. More uses the same Greek verb euangelizo in its translation here of Nah 1:15.) This may echo in the familiar passage from Rom 10:15, “as it is written ‘how beautiful are the feet of those who bring the good news.’” This sounds a lot like Nahum 1:15, and indeed it has been misattributed as such. But it is, in fact, a citation of Isaiah 52:7. Arguments about the direction of dependence among biblical texts are complex and frequently conjectural, so it is difficult to say whether Nahum is borrowing IsaiahIsaiah, son of Amoz, who prophesied in Jerusalem, is included among the prophets of the eighth century BCE (along with Amos, Hosea, and Micah)--preachers who boldly proclaimed God's word of judgment against the economic, social, and religious disorders of their time. More or the other way around, but the latter seems more likely. If so, Isaiah added a reference to “beauty”/”timeliness” to Nahum 1:15 (both meanings of the Hebrew root n-ʾ-h are possible), and this addition was then preserved by New Testament authors. Another allusion to Nahum in the NT may be Luke 19:44’s use of the term “dashing” (Hb: r-ṭ-sh; Gk: edaphitso), a possible allusion to Nahum 3:10 but also likely to Psalm 137:9.
The Talmud
The Book of Nahum is cited 11 times in the TalmudThe Talmud is one of the most important texts of Judaism. More. The vast majority of these citations (10) refer to verses from chapter 1; there is a single reference to 2:13 and none to chapter 3. In these citations, the rabbis call on verse from Nahum to inform their debates over big theological questions such as whether the presentation of God’s wrath and indignation are consistent with other texts in the Bible (b. Avodah Zarah 4a; cf Nah 1:2 and 1:6), how references to the cosmic dust around God’s feet shed light on other texts where God’s body is discussed, such as JacobThe son of Isaac and Rebekah, renamed Israel, became the father of the twelve tribal families. More wrestling with the angel in Genesis 32 (b. Chullin 91a; cf. Nah 1:3); the restoration of the TempleThe Jerusalem temple, unlike the tabernacle, was a permanent structure, although (like the tabernacle) it was a place of worship and religious activity. On one occasion Jesus felt such activity was unacceptable and, as reported in all four Gospels, drove from the temple those engaged... More (b. Yoma 21b and 39b; cf. Nah 1:4); the fullness of God’s control over creationCreation, in biblical terms, is the universe as we know or perceive it. Genesis says that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. In the book of Revelation (which speaks of end times) the author declares that God created all things and... More (b. Chagigah 12a; cf. Nah 1:4b). They reflect on the limits of human discernment (b. Sanhedrin 87a; cf. Nah 1:11); the fullness of the expectation of giving to charity (b. Gittin 7b; cf. Nah 1:12). They also take up legal questions such as the responsibility of the owner of a lion who destroys another’s property, as if a continuation of Exodus 21’s discussion of a goring ox (b. Bava Kamma 16b). Answer: it depends on how vicious the attack was. While it may seem strange to readers who wonder if this means that people commonly owned lions at the time, it appears to be drawn from a literalist reading of Nah 2:11-13’s metaphorical references to lions (read: Assyria). Finally, they tackle smaller, more technical questions, such as what verses like Nah 1:9 teach us about gale force winds (b. Berakhot 59a).
Church Fathers
As referenced in the evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls, early Christianity also shows evidence of reading the Minor Prophets as a collection of “twelve prophets in one book,” according to Eusebius [Hist. eccl. 4.26; enter p. 392 into the search bar]. The commentary tradition of the church fathers on Nahum is smaller than the other Minor Prophets. Still, several significant patristic authors did write commentaries on Nahum, or included it in their work on the Minor Prophets.These include Cyril of Alexandria, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret of CyrusPersian leader who allowed Jewish exiles to return home. More and the Venerable Bede.
Early Medieval Christian Interpretation
From early in the Common Era, Christian interpreters were reading the Bible as though it contained multiple forms of meaning. Eventually, this developed into a “fourfold method” of interpretation, which was formalized by Jerome in the 4th century C.E. In this way of reading, a biblical text has a historical meaning, a moral meaning, an allegorical meaning, and an anagogical (or mystical) meaning. A good example of this with Nahum appears in a commentary by a commentary from the 7th century C.E. that was once (but is no longer) attributed to Julian of Toledo. See how the commentator reads the book with a multiplicity of meaning:
The prophet Nahum is set in the kingdom of the Assyrians. According to the historical sense, he speaks of the destruction of Nineveh, its capital; in the allegorical sense, of the world’s being laid waste; in the mystical sense, of the restoration of the human race through Christ; in the moral sense, in the restoring to his first dignified state, or to yet greater glory of the sinner fallen into wickedness.
In a commentary on Nahum by Haimo of Auxerre, a Benedictine monk from the St. Germain d’Auxerre community in central France, the mystical and allegorical readings take center stage. Though he died in 865 CE and relatively little is known about him, his writings were widely read throughout the next two centuries. He begins with the historical reading, but then suggests that the call for Judah to rejoice (“celebrate your festivals, O Judah!”) in Nah 1:15 is,
…in the mystical sense predicated of the Church, which the devil was oppressing with the crushing yoke of idolatry, that when set free by the Lord’s passionPassion is the theological term used to describe Jesus' suffering prior to and including his crucifixion. The Passion Narrative (the portions of the Gospels that tell of the Last Supper, trial, and crucifixion of Jesus) are often read in church during Holy Week. More, it should celebrate its festivals. Conversely, in the mystical sense, Nineveh symbolizes the world. Everything said to Nineveh is going to happen in the judgment on the devil and his associates.
Over time, the literal meaning of Scripture would assume pride of place, but these medieval writings preserve evidence of a rather flexible and imaginative way of reading. For more on these commentaries and the wider context of medieval Christian interpretation, see Beryl Smalley’s The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1983) or Ian Levy’s Introducing Medieval Biblical Interpretation (Baker Academic, 2018).
Medieval Jewish Interpretation
Several of the important medieval Jewish interpreters produced commentaries on the Book of Nahum in the 11th and 12th centuries C.E., including Rashi (available in English), Ibn Ezra , and Radak.
Nahum and the Reformers
The theologians of the Protestant Reformation read Nahum and Jonah in tandem. Like centuries of predecessors, they were bothered by the tension between the two books’ depictions of Nineveh’s repentance. Luther understood Jonah as preceding Nahum, and the city as repenting but returning to their old ways, writing in the Preface to his Lectures on Nahum, “but such are the hearts of men that when the punishment ceased, so did the repentance.” John Calvin chose to read the tension as a delay in the planned punishment–not canceled but merely postponed. And so, in his view, when the Ninevites returned to their old ways, God had become “less disposed to spare them.” More broadly, Luther understood the book’s message as an exhortation to trust God even when despair overwhelms: “…the Lord stands by those who are His, shields His own against all attacks of the enemy, be they ever so powerful.”
Art & Architecture
Nahum appears in religious artwork from many different places during this time period. He appears in a wide variety of illuminated manuscripts of the Bible, such as this 15th century French manuscript which depicts a seated prophet Nahum before a crumbling city. While digital archiving of these manuscripts is extensive, they can be challenging to navigate. For a relatively accessible example, see the 15th century Great Bible commissioned by King Henry VIII. In an illumination, Nahum watches God send a storm of huge boulders (cf. Nah 1:6: “his wrath is poured out like fire / by him the rocks are broken in pieces”) Select folio 234.r in the drop-down menu. In other forms of visual art, a notable appearance of the book of Nahum is the mezzotint engraving by British artist John Martin, whose “The Fall of Nineveh” (1829) presents a dark, eerily-lit scene of bodies fainting and falling against the backdrop of a massive city and a stormy sky. Although there is no explicit reference to the Book of Nahum in it, the French painter Eugène Delacroix provides scenes from the final hours of the last king of Nineveh in his 1844 painting “The Death of Sardanapalus” (1844). He drew on Lord Byron’s play Sardanapalus (1821) for inspiration. For paintings of the prophet Nahum himself, see the portrait of Nahum by James Tissot (1900).
In religious architecture, Nahum most often appears with the other Minor Prophets, though he is not among the seven prophets depicted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. But Nahum and several snapshots from his book are carved into the extensive reliefs along the facade of the Amiens Cathedral, a masterpiece of Gothic architecture in northern France. A Byzantine style mosaic of Nahum is well-preserved in the Santa Maria Nuova Cathedral in Monreale, Sicily. He appears among other prophets in stained glass in the North Rose Window of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. Nahum also appears in the North Rose Window of the Chartres Cathedral along with the rest of the twelve; perhaps more interesting is the Jesse Tree Window along the Western facade, where Nahum is included among fourteen Old Testament figures who pointed to the coming of Christ. Jonah and Jeremiah–elsewhere heavily favored by artists–do not appear here.
Contemporary Interpretation: A Feminist Reading
The presentation of soon-to-be-destroyed Nineveh as a female body (3:4-7, 13) is far from unique ancient Near Eastern representations and descriptions of war. The personification of a city as female–as a possession of a male deity–was common. The violation of a city is presented as a humiliation of its deity. Little to no regard is shown for the experience of the one whose body is violated. Even if the original assumed audience was gendered male, we might wonder–with womanist biblical scholar Renita Weems–what it might have done to ancient Hebrew women to hear prophets crying out in language like this about bodies like theirs in public spaces? Though it is clear that Judah feels they have suffered violation and humiliation at Assyria’s hands, when the time comes for Nineveh to fall , the Book of Nahum does not challenge the aggressive, patriarchal paradigm that provides a foundation for this imagery. Rather, it turns Assyria’s violent past back onto it as the victim with a sense of comeuppance, participating in the abuse and perpetuating it. Any text that presents violence against a female body–whether real or metaphorical, individual or collective–as a form of justice requires careful interrogation before it can be used for any faithful purpose which must seek a way beyond violence. For more on this approach to Nahum and/or gender imagery in the Prophets as a whole, see The Women’s Bible Commentary (edited by Newsom, Ringe and Lapsley, 3rd ed., 2012), The Wisdom Commentary series volume on Nahum, Habakkuk and Zephaniah by Wilda C. Gafney (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2002) and Renita Weems, Battered Love: Marriage, Sex and Violence in the Hebrew Prophets (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995).
Contemporary Interpretation: A Postcolonialist Reading
The reader’s perspective matters here, because this is a text rooted in the political dynamics of empires. If one is reading from a position akin to that of the original Judahite author and audience–relative powerlessness, surrounded by more brutal political entities–then the book may give voice to legitimate feelings about the downfall of an empire. If one is reading from a position of power, then uncritically appropriating the feelings of the oppressed can be deeply dangerous. At first glance, the Book of Nahum appears to be defiantly anti-empire. And it is in this vein that the 19th century English author Rudyard Kipling referred to the British Empire at the apex of its powers as in his poem “Recessional” (1897): “Lo, all our pomp of yesterday / Is one with Nineveh and Tyre.” But we should also ask how far-reaching the book’s criticism of imperial powers truly is. We should also note that Nahum offers no alternative vision, only a turning of the tables. Like the feminist reading, a postcolonialist reading of Nahum highlights how the book participates in and perpetuates disturbing power dynamics. A helpful exploration of this approach and how it relates to the Book of Nahum appears in the Oxford Handbook of Postcolonial Biblical Interpretation, in Safwat Marzouk’s essay, “The Neo-Assyrian Empire Through a Postcolonial Lens” (Oxford University Press, 2020).
Contemporary Interpretation: A Trauma-Informed Reading
In recent years, biblical studies has learned a great deal from contact with research into the experience of trauma, both on an individual level, but moreover on a communal scale. “Trauma” is both a meaningful category of human experience and a term that is is too casually tossed about in contemporary discourse. It is not merely the experience of adversity–it is a condition that results for it and is defined by its effect on the victim’s sense of self. Trauma disrupts the victim’s ability to construct a coherent narrative, even if only temporarily, about their experience. So, how does a shattering experience–one that rocks the foundations of the world as stable and/or intelligible–affect an individual or community’s understanding of history, identity, and God? How does this either show up in or remain absent from their texts? These interpretive questions are sharpened by what biblical scholars learn from trauma researchers and clinical practitioners. Thus, a trauma-informed reading of the Book of Nahum can encourage us to take the experience of violence, violation, suffering, and dislocation as seriously as they deserve, but it can also press us to read the book as a complex response to such experiences, thereby opening up possibilities for resistance.
Nahum in Popular Culture
In his 2022 movie, the writer and director Jordan Peele opens the film Nope with a title card featuring Nahum 3:6–I will cast abominable filth upon you, make you vile and make you a spectacle. Peele opts for the NKJV translation of the verse, setting the stage for his ominous, gory, darkly comic film. While the verse was likely selected because the film is an exploration of spectacle–our inability to separate the things that attract our gaze from genuine reality–the gruesome tone of the verse also works perfectly for the film.
The fast food chain In-N-Out prints various Bible verses on their cups and the wrappers of certain menu items. These verses include John 3:16, Prov 3:5, Rev 3:20, Prov 24:16, Luke 6:35 and more. Nahum 1:7 (“The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble, and he knoweth them that trust in him”) appears on the wrapper of their Double Double burger. The chain’s founder was a born-again Christian and began printing these discreet references to his faith on their products shortly before he died; his family continues this practice. You can read more and see photos of the citations in this Medium article.
