Monday, December 7
Read Nahum 3
Think About It:
- In reading about the great sinfulness of Ninevah, we can take comfort in knowing that the judgments of the LORD are faithful and true. We don’t need to envy the unrighteous or seek vengeance against them ourselves.
- Interesting Facts: Archaeologists document the burning of Nineveh. “The excavators of Nineveh have remarked on the large deposits of ash, which are evidence of a gigantic fire” (Boice). (verse 13)
The ancient Greek historian Diodorus Siculus wrote of the destruction of Nineveh: “So great was the multitude of the slain that the flowing stream, mingled with their blood, changed its color for a considerable distance… They plundered the spoil of the city, a quantity beyond counting” (Boice).
Adam Clarke, writing before the discovery of the ruins in Nineveh in 1840, quotes an author commenting on the disappearance of the city: “What probability was there that the capital city of a great kingdom, a city which was sixty miles in compass, a city which contained so many thousand inhabitants, a city which had walls a hundred feet high… And yet so totally was it destroyed that the place is hardly known where it was situated… Great as it was formerly, so little of it is remaining, that authors are not agreed even about its situation.”
Do these kinds of facts build your faith?
Family Time:
The judgment upon Nineveh is for utter destruction because the very foundation of the city was evil (bloody city). God will repay evil oppression. Throughout scripture God declares He will have vengeance on those who purposely shed innocent blood.
