The Terrible Comfort of God Text: Nahum 1:2-6
Introduction: The God We'd Rather Not Know
We live in a soft age, an age that has domesticated God. Our modern conception of God is that of a celestial grandfather, endlessly indulgent, whose only job is to forgive and to affirm. We have made Him respectable, safe, and, frankly, boring. We have taken the consuming fire of Sinai and turned it into a decorative candle on the mantlepiece. We want a God who is all mercy and no majesty, all grace and no government, all love and no wrath. But such a God is an idol, a fabrication of our own sentimentalities, and he cannot save.
The prophet Nahum will not allow us this comfort. His name means "comfort," but the comfort he brings is a terrible one. It is the comfort that comes from knowing that the holy God who rules the universe is not indifferent to evil. It is the comfort that comes from knowing that the blood-soaked empire of Assyria, which had terrorized the known world, would face a final, definitive, and cataclysmic judgment. For Judah, who had suffered under the Assyrian boot, this was good news. For Nineveh, it was a death sentence. And for us, it is a necessary corrective to our theological malpractice.
The book of Nahum is a poetic masterpiece, an acrostic poem that lays out the character of God as the foundation for the coming judgment. It is raw, majestic, and terrifying. It forces us to confront the aspects of God's character that our generation has tried so hard to edit out of the Bible. We want to talk about God's love, and so we should. But we cannot understand the height of His love displayed at the cross until we understand the depth of the wrath that was poured out there. Nahum gives us the black velvet background against which the diamond of the gospel shines most brightly. If we do not tremble before the God of Nahum, we cannot truly rejoice in the grace of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
This passage is not just about an ancient empire. It is a revelation of the unchanging character of God. This is who He is. He is jealous, He is avenging, He is wrathful, and He is also slow to anger and a stronghold for those who trust in Him. These are not contradictions; they are the glorious complexities of a holy God. And we must grapple with all of it, not just the parts that make us feel cozy.
The Text
A jealous and avenging God is Yahweh; Yahweh is avenging and wrathful. Yahweh is avenging against His adversaries, And He keeps His anger for His enemies. Yahweh is slow to anger and great in power, And Yahweh will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. In whirlwind and storm is His way, And clouds are the dust beneath His feet. He rebukes the sea and makes it dry; He dries up all the rivers. Bashan and Carmel languish; The blossoms of Lebanon languish. Mountains quake because of Him, And the hills melt; Indeed the earth is upheaved by His presence, The world and all the inhabitants in it. Who can stand before His indignation? Who can endure the burning of His anger? His wrath is poured out like fire, And the rocks are torn down by Him.
(Nahum 1:2-6 LSB)
The Holy Violence of God (v. 2)
We begin with a threefold declaration of God's judicial fury. This is not a hesitant God.
"A jealous and avenging God is Yahweh; Yahweh is avenging and wrathful. Yahweh is avenging against His adversaries, And He keeps His anger for His enemies." (Nahum 1:2)
The first attribute Nahum gives us is God's jealousy. In our culture, jealousy is a petty, green-eyed monster, born of insecurity and envy. But God's jealousy is nothing of the sort. It is a holy, righteous, and zealous love for His own honor and for His covenant people. God is jealous in the way a faithful husband is jealous for his wife. He has an exclusive claim on the worship and affection of His people, and when that affection is given to idols, His jealousy is aroused. It is not the sign of a deficiency in Him, but rather the sign of the infinite value of what is being threatened: His glory and our good. Assyria had not just oppressed Judah; it had blasphemed the God of Judah. And God will not share His glory with another.
Three times in this one verse, Nahum says that Yahweh is an avenging God. Vengeance, for us, is usually sinful retaliation, getting even. But for God, vengeance is the perfect and impartial administration of justice. It is not a temper tantrum; it is the necessary consequence of His holiness. A God who did not hate evil would not be a good God. A judge who let murderers and rapists go free would be a corrupt judge. God's vengeance is the outworking of His perfect justice. He will repay. This is a promise that should terrify the wicked and deeply comfort the righteous. We are commanded not to avenge ourselves precisely because God has promised that He will handle it, and He will do a far more thorough job than we ever could (Romans 12:19).
Notice the objects of this vengeance: "His adversaries" and "His enemies." This is covenantal language. God is not an equal-opportunity destroyer. He has a people, and those who set themselves against His people set themselves against Him. The Assyrians were not just a geopolitical problem for Judah; they were enemies of Yahweh, and He was storing up wrath for them. This is a settled, determined anger, not a fleeting passion.
The Terrible Tandem: Patience and Power (v. 3a)
Lest we think this wrath is capricious or hasty, Nahum immediately balances the portrait with two more of God's attributes.
"Yahweh is slow to anger and great in power, And Yahweh will by no means leave the guilty unpunished." (Nahum 1:3a LSB)
This phrase, "slow to anger," is part of God's own self-description from Exodus 34:6, one of the most quoted verses in the Old Testament. God's patience is not a sign of weakness or indifference. It is a sign of His immense power and control. It takes far more strength to restrain wrath than to unleash it. For generations, God had been patient with Assyria. He even sent the prophet Jonah to Nineveh a century earlier, and they repented for a time. God gave them space to repent. His slowness to anger is what makes His final judgment so terrifyingly just. No one will be able to stand before Him on the last day and say, "You didn't give me enough time."
But this patience is coupled with His great power. His slowness to act is not inability to act. He is holding back a flood of cosmic power. And that patience has a limit. The final clause is the necessary conclusion: "Yahweh will by no means leave the guilty unpunished." His mercy is not a sentimental slush that cancels out His justice. He is both merciful and just. He is slow to anger, but the bill always comes due. For those who are in Christ, that bill was paid in full at the cross. For those who, like Assyria, persist in their rebellion, they will pay it themselves, for eternity. God's books will be balanced. Every sin will be accounted for, either at Calvary or in Hell.
The God Who Marches on the World (v. 3b-5)
Nahum now moves from describing God's character to describing His actions. He paints a picture of a divine warrior on the march, and all of creation convulses before Him.
"In whirlwind and storm is His way, And clouds are the dust beneath His feet. He rebukes the sea and makes it dry; He dries up all the rivers. Bashan and Carmel languish; The blossoms of Lebanon languish. Mountains quake because of Him, And the hills melt; Indeed the earth is upheaved by His presence, The world and all the inhabitants in it." (Nahum 1:3b-5 LSB)
This is the language of theophany, a manifestation of God. When God shows up, the natural order is shaken to its foundations. The whirlwind and storm are not just weather patterns; they are the wake of His passing. The clouds are not meteorological phenomena; they are the dust kicked up by His marching feet. This is a polemic against every pagan nature god. The storm god, the sea god, the fertility god, they are all unmasked as impotent nothings before the one true Creator.
He rebukes the sea and it dries up. This is a direct echo of the Exodus, where God parted the Red Sea to save His people and destroy their enemies. He is the same God. What He did to Egypt, He can and will do to Assyria. He dries up the rivers, the sources of life and commerce. The most fertile and lush places in the region, Bashan, Carmel, and Lebanon, known for their mighty oaks and cedars, wither before Him. His judgment is a de-creation. He turns fruitful plains into desert.
The very foundations of the earth, the mountains and hills, which seem so permanent and immovable to us, quake and melt like wax before Him. The entire created order is thrown into chaos by His mere presence. This is not a metaphor for a big army. This is the Creator of the universe coming to call one of His rebellious provinces to account. The Assyrians thought they were the ones who made the earth tremble. Nahum is here to tell them that they are nothing. They are inhabitants on a planet that is about to be upheaved by the very presence of the God they have mocked.
The Unanswerable Question (v. 6)
This majestic and terrifying description of God's power leads to a devastating rhetorical question.
"Who can stand before His indignation? Who can endure the burning of His anger? His wrath is poured out like fire, And the rocks are torn down by Him." (Nahum 1:6 LSB)
The answer, of course, is no one. If mountains melt and rocks are torn down, what hope does a man have? What hope does an empire have? The Assyrian army, with its iron chariots and brutal siege tactics, was the most feared military machine of its day. But before the indignation of Yahweh, they are less than nothing. His wrath is not just a hot temper; it is poured out like fire, like lava, consuming everything in its path.
This question hangs in the air, not just for Nineveh, but for every generation. "Who can stand?" The Apostle John sees a vision of the final judgment, and the kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals hide in caves and among the rocks of the mountains, crying out, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?" (Revelation 6:15-17). The answer is still the same: no one.
The Comfort of the Cross
This is a terrifying picture. So where is the comfort that Nahum's name promises? The comfort is this: this jealous, avenging, and wrathful God is for us. For those who have taken refuge in Him, this terrible power is our protection. His wrath against His enemies is our salvation. The same fire that consumes the wicked purifies the righteous. The same storm that shipwrecks the rebellious brings the elect safely to shore.
But there is a deeper comfort still. The question, "Who can stand?" finds its ultimate answer in a man hanging on a Roman cross. On that cross, the Son of God stood in the place of His people. On that cross, the whirlwind and the storm of God's fury against our sin were gathered together and unleashed upon one man. The burning anger, the indignation, the wrath poured out like fire, all of it was absorbed by Jesus Christ.
He endured it so that we would not have to. He drank the cup of God's wrath down to the dregs so that it might pass from us. The mountains quaked and the rocks were torn when He died, because the full force of the Father's holy violence against sin was being executed. And because He stood, because He endured it and came out the other side in resurrection, we who are united to Him by faith can now stand. We can stand before the throne of God, not in terror, but in confidence, clothed not in our own righteousness, but in His.
The God of Nahum is the God of the gospel. His terrible justice is what makes His grace so astonishing. Do not be afraid of this God, but fear Him rightly. Flee from your sin and run to the only one who could ever stand before this consuming fire, the Lord Jesus Christ. For in Him, and in Him alone, the terrible wrath of God becomes our eternal comfort.