NINEVEH, THE CITY Part Three

Please forgive me for ramblin when I write. That is the same way I talk. It seems my mind just can't store all the information and thoughts in my brain all in the same place. You may think all this history is unimportant but please take a minute and think about what was written about the New Jerusalem coming down. These are places and people we will be talking to and walking with for eternity. Thank you, LJG

Two of the Prophets had to do with Nineveh, Jonah, about 785 B.C. and Nahum, about 630 B. C.; about 150 years apart. Jonah's was a message of Mercy; Nahum's, a message of Doom. Together they show God's way of dealing with nations: prolonging the day of grace, in the end bringing punishment for sins.

This is another Prophet that little is known about his personal life. In Verse 1:1 he is called the "Elkoshite." His name is in the word "Capernaum," which means "village of Nahum." This may indicate that he was a resident, or founder of Capernaum, which was later made famous as the center of Jesus' ministry. I have found no mention of this in my Bible. Easton, Hitchcock and Smith Dictionaries says the same thing about "Capernaum" and the meaning of the name is the same. Elkosh, his birth city, was probably nearby. There is said to have been an Elkosh on the Tigris, 20 miles north of Nineveh, and that Nahum may have been among the Israelite captives. If Capernaum were his home then Nahum was of the same locality as Jonah and Jesus.

As for the date of the Book. The Book itself indicates the limits within which the book belongs in time. Thebes (No-Amon) had fallen (3:8-10, 63 B.C.). The doom of Nineveh was portrayed as pending. It took place 607 B.C. Therefore Nahum was between 663 and 607. Nineveh is pictured in the full swing of its glory, and as its troubles began with the Scythian invasion (626 B.C.,), it may be a good guess to place the prophecy shortly before the Scythian invasion, say around 630 B.C. this would Nahum a contemporary of Zephaniah, who also predicted the ruin of Nineveh in language of amazing vividness (Zephaniah 2:12-15).

Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian Empire, which had destroyed Israel. Founded shortly after the Flood and had been from the beginning been a rival of Babylon. Babylon in the south part of the Euphrates valley, Nineveh in the north part of the Euphrates valley; the two cities about 300 miles apart. Nineveh rose to world power about 900 B.C. Soon after that it began to cut off Israel. About 785 B.C. God had sent Jonah to Nineveh (with a stop over in the belly of the great fish) to try to get them to turn from its path of brutal conquest. During the next 60 years (by 721 B.C.), the Assyrian armies had completed the destruction of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Yet for another 100 years Nineveh continued to grow more and more powerful and arrogant.

Nineveh, was the queen city of the earth, at the time of Nahum prophecy, mighty and brutal beyond imagination head of a warrior state built on the loot of nations. Limitless wealth from the ends of the earth poured into its coffers. In Nahum 2:11-13 it is shown as a den of ravaging lions, feeding on the blood of nations.

The term Nineveh refers to the whole complex of associated villages served by one great irrigation system, and protected by the one network of fortifications based on the river defenses. The city proper is also called Nineveh. It is the great palace area in the heart of the greater system.

It was protected by 5 walls and 3 moats (canals) built by the forced labor of unnumbered thousands of foreign captives, Jonah's mention of 120,000 babes (Jonah 4:11), suggests it might have had a population of near a million. The inner city of Nineveh proper, about 3 miles long and one and a half miles wide, built at the junction of the Tigris and Kosher rivers, was protected by walls 100 feet high, and broad enough at the top to hold 4 chariots driven abreast, in an 8 mile circle.

About 20 years after Nahum's prediction an army of Babylonians and Medes closed in on Nineveh. After a 2 year siege a sudden rise of the river washed away part of the walls. Nahum had predicted that the "river gates would be opened" for the destroying army (2:6). It all came to pass exactly as Nahum had pictured it; and the bloody vile city passed into oblivion (2:3-4; 3:1-7).

Its destruction was so complete that even its site was forgotten. When Alexander the Great fought the famous battle of Arbela (331 B.C.), near the site of Nineveh, he did not even know there had ever been a city there.

God's blessing to each of you,
LJG

SOURCE: King James Bible, Halley's Bible Handbook