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After giving a message on Nahum tonight, I was asked whether I could post anything I had written down on the history. I did take notes as I was studying the context of Nahum, so I'll just post the thoughts I had as I was preparing the talk:
The book of Nahum was written to the Hebrew people who were, at the time suffering oppression at the hands of Assyria. It foretells the destruction of the city Nineveh which took place in 612 BC, roughly forty years after Nahum was written. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, so the prophecy essentially concerns God’s plan for the Assyrian Empire.
Israel’s Scary Circumstances
In order to understand the nature of the oppression the Hebrew people were experiencing, it helps to know about the historical context because this was a fearful time for the Hebrew people in little Israel. They were surrounded by warring nations and empires; Assyria, Aram, Egypt, and Babylon were viciously grappling for power all around them. They were bigger than Israel, and on paper they were stronger. They were power hungry and insatiably ambitious. It’s probably worth noting, though, that these were the countries from which God had saved the Hebrew people and had driven out of the promised land to make Israel a nation.
The Voluntary Servitude of King Ahaz
The story leading up to Nahum’s prophecy begins about seventy years before the book was written with king Ahaz. At the time of Ahaz’s rule Israel had split into two kingdoms: the northern kingdom called Israel, and southern kingdom, Judah. Ahaz was the king of Judah and was besieged by a coalition of the northern kingdom of Israel and Aram, the country just north of Israel. In response to this siege he asked the Assyrian empire for help, and this is what he said to the king of Assyria:
“I am your servant and vassal. Come up and save me out of the hand of the king of Aram and the king of Israel who are attacking me.” 2 Kings 16:7
Remember Israel here just means the northern kingdom, and Ahaz, a king of God’s people in Judah, the southern kingdom, made himself a servant out of fear because he wanted protection. The king of Assyria, of course, obliged and invaded the kingdom of Israel, the northern half of God’s people.
Assyria’s Power: An Empire of Slaves
Invasion by the Assyrians was a pretty horrifying thing. They loved it, and they were very good at it. In recent archaeological excavations of ancient Assyrian cities, a number of stone reliefs were unearthed that typify what Assyrian kings considered art. The majority depict gruesome battle scenes, and if they don’t depict some kind of violent carnage, then they show a member of the royal house luxuriating in the fruits of battle (e.g. slaves, livestock, etc. . .). Assyria existed for ambitious conquest, at least as far as its kings were concerned, and over time they learned how to do it well: they garnered and capitalized on a reputation for brutality and used intimidation to demoralize the cities they attacked. Soldiers they captured were publicly tortured as their families, wives and children, were paraded away to slavery in front of them.
This is how Assyria accumulated its empire: it intimidated the nations around it, and enslaved all the people in countries that it had conquered or had voluntarily yielded to it. The thing is, though, slavery in the Assyrian culture wasn’t a horrible thing. Almost every household, even the humblest, included slaves. And while they were bought and sold as property, they were protected by law and treated relatively humanely. Slaves were a big component of the Assyrian economy, but they weren’t just taken for their valuable labor—it’s also how Assyria maintained control of its empire. It would take whole populations captive and remove them from their homelands. Their freedom was taken away, and their lives were governed by the laws created for slaves. This, then, was the fate of the captured Hebrews from the northern kingdom. They were scattered and absorbed into their time’s vast system of slavery instituted and maintained by the Assyrian Empire.
In the southern kingdom of Judah, the country became a vassal state. Assyrian gods and forms of worship were imported, and each king subsequent to Ahaz paid tribute to Assyria, giving up all the treasure in the royal palaces and even scavenging from God’s temple. They not only paid tribute to and obeyed the kings in Nineveh, they also followed their religious practices, worshipping and sacrificing to the Assyrian gods and even going so far as to sacrifice their own children.
King Hezekiah's Resistance
One king, though, stood out: King Hezekiah resisted, refused to pay tribute, and brought on Judah the wrath of the Assyrian Empire. But when all of Judah had been invaded, save Jerusalem where Hezekiah was, the king of Assyria sent a messenger who said this:
“This is what the king of Assyria says: Make peace with me and come out to me. Then every one of you will eat from his own vine and fig tree and drink water from his own cistern, until I come and take you to a land like your own, a land of grain and new wine. A land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive trees and honey. Choose life and not death!” 2 Kings 18:28
That’s an attractive offer! This messenger was a soldier who had come from the recently conquered city of Lachish where the Hebrews who resisted were impaled naked on tall poles and put on display. If anyone in the world could claim to have the power of life and death over Jerusalem’s inhabitants, it would be him. Jerusalem’s administrators even asked him to speak in Aramaic rather than Hebrew so the people of the city wouldn’t hear him.
God did deliver Hezekiah and Jerusalem from the following Assyrian siege, but after Hezekiah’s death it wasn’t long before resistance in Judah dissolved. Hezekiah’s son, the king Manasseh, became a vassal, of the Assyrian king and resumed Jerusalem’s tribute to Assyria. He worshipped and sacrificed his sons to the Assyrian gods. It was, after all, too late for them to claim freedom. King Ahaz had submitted the Hebrews to the existing power’s system of slavery and made Judah a servant in exchange for protection. Assyria had already become their comfort and their safety.
Summary
So at the time of Nahum’s prophecy, all of God’s people were effectively enslaved to a foreign empire whether they were among the scattered people or the remnant in Israel and Judah. The Israelites Nahum wrote to were frightened and servile; they had, on the threat of death, sold themselves into slavery. Their value and protection were determined by the laws governing slaves in Assyria, and they were surrounded by the worship of Assyrian gods, gods that demanded human sacrifice. It’s into this context that the subversive book of Nahum was disseminated. It was a transcription of God’s message of encouragement to his oppressed people. |
