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presented by
David E. Pratte

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 The
Prophecy of
Nahum
Thanks to Christians in
the Hillcrest church for
their participation.

© Copyright David E. Pratte,

2022
Scripture quotations are generally from the New King James Version (NKJV),
copyright 1982, 1988 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. used by permission. All rights
reserved.
 Questions from
Bible Study
Questions on
Jonah, Micah,
Nahum,
Habakkuk

Available at
www.biblestudylessons.com/classbook
s
 Understanding Old Testament
Prophecy
* The prophets are part of Scripture, and all Scripture
is profitable to equip us in our service to God today
– 2 Timothy 3:16,17; Romans 15:4; 1 Corinthians 10:6,11.
* Old Testament history may help us understand the
background behind prophets’ teachings.
* The prophets often used symbolic teaching. But that
does not give us the right to assign a meaning to the
symbols according to our own imagination.
* The prophets often included predictions about the
Messiah, His Kingdom, and His message.
* Often New Testament writers give us an inspired
 Periods of Bible history
1. Before the Flood (Creation to the flood)
2. After the Flood (the flood to the call of Abraham)
3. Patriarchs (the call of Abraham to the death of Joseph)
4. Egyptian Bondage (Joseph’s death to crossing Red
Sea)
5. Wilderness Wandering (Red Sea to crossing the
Jordan)
6. Conquest of Canaan (crossing Jordan to Joshua’s
death)
7. Judges (death of Joshua to crowning of King Saul)
8. United Kingdom (crowning of Saul to death of
Solomon)
9. Divided Kingdom (death of Solomon to the fall of
Israel)
10. Judah Alone (the fall of Israel to the fall of Judah)
 Prophets by Period
Period of History Prophets
Israel: Judah:
Jonah Obadiah (?)
Divided Kingdom Amos Joel (?)
Hosea Isaiah
Micah
Jeremiah (Lamentations)
Zephaniah
Judah Alone
Nahum (?)
Habakkuk (?)
Babylonian Ezekiel
Captivity Daniel
Haggai
Return from
Zechariah
Captivity
Malachi
Prophets and Kings of Judah Alone
Prophets
Jeremiah ------>(Lamentations)
Zephaniah
Nahum (?)
Habakkuk (?)

Kings
 Themes of the Minor Prophets
Hosea – Israel’s unfaithfulness compared to Hosea’s
wife
Joel – Locust plague shows Israel’s need to repent
Amos – Israel would go into captivity because of sins like
those of the surrounding nations
Obadiah – Fall of Edom for rejoicing in Judah’s affliction
Jonah – God uses a fish and a plant to teach Jonah His
concern for the salvation of Nineveh and all people
Micah – God puts Israel and Judah on trial for their sins.
Nahum – Prophecy of the fall of Nineveh
Habakkuk – Habakkuk questions God’s punishments
Zephaniah – God’s wrath is coming against Jerusalem
and surrounding nations, but a remnant will be spared.
Haggai – Returning Jews should rebuild the temple
Zechariah – The future glory of God’s people
 Significant Rulers of Assyria
Founded by Nimrod (Genesis 10:11,12)
745-727 BC – Tiglath Pileser III began world conquest
727-722 BC – Shalmaneser V began siege of Samaria
(but died before it was captured)
722-705 BC – Sargon II captured Samaria in 721 BC
705-681 BC – Sennacherib besieged Jerusalem
681-668 BC – Esarhaddon
668-625 BC – Ashurbanipal captured No-Amon in 663
BC (Nahum 3:8)
612 BC – Nineveh fell to Babylon
 Nineveh at the Height of Power

“Thus Nineveh was protected on its most

vulnerable side [the east side], … by five walls and
three broad and deep moats; toward the north by a
wall, a moat, [a river] and a strong outpost; towards
the south by two moats and three lines of rampart.
The entire fortification on the eastern side is two
thousand two hundred feet, or nearly a half a mile
wide” (Standard History of the World, via Waldron,
page 32)
 The Palace of Sennacherib
“Marble stairs led up on all four sides to magnificent
entrances decorated with colossal stone figures, such as
human-headed bulls and winged sphinxes. The palace
itself was an enormous building. It had two large halls 40
feet wide and 180 feet long which led into its interior
made up of a number of large courts and more than
seventy spacious rooms. Its walls were beautifully adorned
with sculptured slabs; it has been estimated that it
contained 9,880 feet of decorated walls. Further, the
winged bulls of ten to thirty tons each and large lion
sphinxes were a prominent aspect of the decor. In one part
of the palace these bulls and sphinxes framed or guarded
at least twenty-seven portals. In these and other respects
 Theme and Major Divisions of
Nahum
Theme: Prophecy of the fall of Nineveh
Major divisions
Chapter 1 – The character of God and the destruction
of Nineveh
1:1-8 – God’s character described
1:9-15 – God’s determination to destroy Nineveh
Chapter 2 – Description of the fall of Nineveh: she is
besieged, defeated, deserted, spoiled, and
annihilated
Chapter 3 – Assurance of Nineveh’s fall and reasons
why her destruction was deserved
 Chapter 1:1- God’s Character and the
8 Fall of Nineveh

People who wish to understand the will and

conduct of God must begin by understanding His
character.
God is jealous, bringing vengeance and wrath on His
enemies.
God is powerful but slow to anger.
God also cares for those who trust Him.
 Chapter 1:9- God Would Destroy
15 Nineveh

God will make a complete end of their plots.

They will be devoured like dry stubble.
He will break the yoke of Nineveh and cut off her
images.
 The Gods of Assyria
“Asshur, the great Lord, ruling supreme over the gods;
Bel the Lord, father of the gods, Lord of the world; Sin,
the leader, the Lord of empire; Shamus, the establisher
of heaven and earth; Vul, he who causes the tempest to
rage over hostile lands; Nin, the champion who subdues
evil spirits and enemies; and Ishtar, the source of the
gods, the queen of victory, she arranges battles”
(Standard History of the World).
“The sentence was duly fulfilled … The temple of Nabu,
a major deity at Nineveh, was razed to the ground and
buried with ash from the blaze. The statue of Ishtar was
discovered, prostrate and headless, amid the ruins of her
temple, which has stood at Nineveh for almost fifteen
 Chapter 1:9- God Would Destroy
15 Nineveh

God will make a complete end of their plots.

They will be devoured like dry stubble.
He will break the yoke of Nineveh and cut off her
images.
Judah will celebrate her feasts in peace for
Assyria will never again molest.
Chapter 2 Nineveh’s Fall

Besieged (verses 1-5)

Defeated (verses 6,7)
Deserted (verse 8)
Spoiled (verses 9,10)
 Booty Taken from Thebes by
Assyria
“Silver, gold, precious stones, the goods of his
palace, all there was, brightly colored and
linen garments, great horses, the people, male
and female, two tall obelisks...I removed from
their positions and carried them off to Assyria.
Heavy plunder, and countless, I carried away
from Ni’ [Thebes]” – (Luckenbill 1989, via
Franz).
Chapter 2 Nineveh’s Fall

Besieged (verses 1-5)

Defeated (verses 6,7)
Deserted (verse 8)
Spoiled (verses 9,10)
Annihilated (verses 11-13)
 Lion Hunting in Assyria

“Ashurbanipal also engaged in lion hunting as a sport. …

One relief that was found in Ashurbanipal’s palace at
Nineveh, apparently from a second floor, had three panels
depicting a lion hunt. … Ashurbanipal sneaks up and grabs
the lion by the tail as he rears to his hind legs. The
inscription above says, ‘I, Ashurbanipal, king of the
universe, king of Assyria, in my lordly sport I seized a lion of
the plain by his tail and at the command of Urta, Nergal, the
gods, my allies, I smashed his skull with the club of my
hand’ (Luckenbill 1989, 2:391, ¶ 1023; via Franz)
Lion Hunting in Assyria

Photo Credit: Sanjar

Alimov
(maxergon.com), CC
BY-SA 4.0
<https://creativecom
mons.org/licenses/by-
sa/4.0>, via
Wikimedia Commons
 Chapter 3 Why Nineveh Was Sure to
Fall

Nineveh was a bloody city full of lies and robbery.

She had seduced nations like a harlot.
 Cruelty of Assyria

“The city and the Assyrian Empire had a well-earned

reputation for being bloody. Just a casual glance at the
reliefs from the palaces of Sennacherib and Ashurbanipal
shows the ‘gory and bloodcurdling history as we know it’
(Bleibtreu. 1991:52). There are reliefs with people being
impaled, decapitated, flayed, and tongues pulled out. Other
reliefs show the Assyrians making people grind the bones of
their dead ancestors, and even vultures plucking out the
eyes of the dead!” (Franz)
“Assyrian annals … describe how the heads of enemies
would be heaped into large pyramids; the Assyrians often
impaled enemy corpses on stakes as well.” (Archaeology
 Why Nineveh Was Sure to Fall

Nineveh was a bloody city full of lies and robbery.

She had seduced nations like a harlot.
God would shame her and make her waste like No
Amon had been destroyed.
 Assyrian Defeat of No-Amon
(Thebes)
“On Ashurbanipal’s first campaign against Egypt he took 22 kings
from the seacoast, with their armies, to help fight the Egyptians.
Ashurbanipal claims that he ‘made those kings with their forces
(and) their ships accompany me by sea and by land’ (Rainey
1993:157). One of those kings was Nanassch, king of Judah, with his
army.
“On his second campaign in 663 BC, Ashurbanipal went to No-
Amon and defeated the city and razed it. There were Judeans in the
Assyrian army that saw this event. When they heard or read the
words of Nahum they would have been encouraged. The Assyrians
were able to defeat a strong and impregnable Thebes, and God
would now fulfill His Word and Nineveh would fall.
“Ashurbanipal commissioned a relief depicting the fall of No-Amon.
… The top of the relief has the Assyrians besieging the city the
ladders, soldiers undermining the walls and a soldier torching the
 Why Nineveh Was Sure to Fall

Nineveh was a bloody city full of lies and robbery.

She had seduced nations like a harlot.
God would shame her and make her waste like No
Amon had been destroyed.
No matter what preparations and fortifications she
makes, she will be devoured.
People will be scattered and there will be no healing
for her wound.
 The Fall of Nineveh

“In 1923, C. J. Gadd published a tablet from Babylon in

the possession of the British Museum. The tablet was
called the ‘Babylonian Chronicles’ and it covered the
years 616-609 BC, or the tenth to the 17th years of
Nabopolassar, king of Babylon. The annals place the fall
of Nineveh in the 14th year of his reign, the year 612 BC.
This event provides the student of history with an
absolute chronological peg for Biblical and Assyrian
history.” (Franz)
 Siege of Lachish: Review of prisoners
Relief Carvings from the Palace of King Sennacherib of Assyria

Photo credit: Mike

Peel
(www.mikepeel.ne
t)., CC BY-SA 4.0
<https://creativec
ommons.org/licen
ses/by-sa/4.0>,
via Wikimedia
Commons
 Booty from Lachish
Relief Carvings from the Palace of King Sennacherib of Assyria

Photo Credit:
Osama Shukir
Muhammed Amin
FRCP(Glasg), CC
BY-SA 4.0
<https://creativec
ommons.org/licen
ses/by-sa/4.0>,
via Wikimedia
Commons
 © Copyright David E. Pratte, 2021
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