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The Bible Year

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 20, 1916

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 93, No. 36.

Read the full edition

The Bible Year

By Sell

Assignment for July 23 to 29

July 23: Nahum.
July 24: Zephaniah.
July 25: Jeremiah 1 to 3.
July 26: Jeremiah 4 to 7.

To Think about as You Read

July 23: Sin that is not forgiven will be punished.
July 24: The need of seeking God before the day of his vengeance.
July 25: “I am with thee to deliver thee.”
July 26: Results of forsaking God.
July 27: “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.”
July 28: “Give glory to the Lord your God.”
July 29: God is our strength and refuge.

Nahum

The personal history of this prophet is veiled in obscurity. “Some think that he was an inhabitant of Galilee, and others that he was the son of one of the captives in Assyria.” His prophecy, the burden of Nineveh, is dated one hundred and fifty years after the warning delivered to that city by the reluctant Jonah. During this period Nineveh had returned to her evil ways, and become a “bloody city . . . full of lies and robbery.” In three distinct predictions Nahum foretells the overthrow and scattering of Assyria.
“This book has but a single theme, the destruction of Nineveh. The Assyrian empire stood in the eyes of the Jews as the most brutal type of heathen abominations. The monuments have confirmed their opinion. The kings of Assyria boasted of their cruelty. Asurnazirpal (B. C. 884) tells us how he ‘dyed the mountains of Nairi with blood like wool; how he flayed captive kings alive, and walled up others while still living, and impaled them on stakes; how he burned boys and girls in the fire, put out eyes, cut off hands, feet, noses, and ears.’ Asurbanipal, who captured Thebes in Egypt (chapter 3:8, 9) tells us how ‘he tore off the lips and hands of kings, and compelled a prince to wear round his neck the decapitated head of his king, and all this they profess to do at the command of Asur, their god.’ One writer says, ‘No power more useless, more savage, more terrible, ever cast its gigantic shadow on the page of history.’ This power is mentioned as early as the sixteenth century B. C. In the very height of its glory and just after it had humbled Egypt, its great rival, Nahum the prophet predicts its utter ruin. He proclaims the truth that kingdoms built on fraud, force, and cruelty must fall before God’s kingdom, reared on the foundation of truth and righteousness. The book forcibly brings before us God’s moral government of the world.”
“As a poet, Nahum occupies a high place in the first rank of Hebrew literature. His style is clear and uninvolved, though pregnant and forcible; his diction sonorous and rhythmical, the words reechoing to the sense.”

Zephaniah

“Zephaniah, son of Cushi, prophesied in the days of Josiah, king of Judah, 640–608 B. C. Two corrupt and idolatrous kings, Manasseh and Amon, preceded Josiah on the throne. Jerusalem became a hotbed of evil. The abuses in church and state seem to have continued during the early years of the reign of Josiah. The book of Zephaniah reflects as in a mirror the character of the times. The prophet was a preacher of righteousness, and denounced the evils of his age in unsparing terms. By this preaching it is believed that both people and king were moved to better things; so that when the book of the law of the Lord was found in the temple (2 Kings 22:8), matters were ready for the great reformation which followed. This return to law, order, righteousness, and spirituality stayed for a while the threatened judgment. Many scholars place this prophecy in 630 B. C. In the world at large at this time or a little later, the Scythians, the barbarous hordes from the north, pillaged and burned many cities and towns of Assyria and Syria. They penetrated to the confines of Egypt, but were bribed by great presents of the king not to invade his country. Many think that the prophet, foreseeing the havoc to be wrought by the Scythians, refers to them, and looking beyond them sees a judgment which cannot be averted. Egypt will not be able to buy her freedom from her enemies as she did from the Scythians (chapter 1:18); Nineveh will fall and be a desolation (chapter 2:13).” —Sell

The Prophet of Sorrows

Jeremiah was very young when he received the call (626 B. C.) that placed him among the prophets, to which position he had been consecrated by God himself before his birth. “I cannot speak: for I am a child,” said the youth; but God did not excuse him because of his tender years. Wonderful indeed was the ordination of the young prophet, and the solemn charge laid upon him; wonderful, also, the life of service that followed. He began to prophesy in the reign of the good king Josiah, continuing his ministry through the reigns of Jehoiakim and Zedekiah. Even after the captivity his voice was raised in faithful warning and reproof. “Like a fenced wall,” he performed the duty that was laid upon him, for forty-two years steadfastly giving the word of the Lord to kings, nobles, and people.
King Josiah, himself a young man, worked with Jeremiah for the abolishment of idol worship and the carrying out of other reforms; but after his death the people reverted to their sinful practices, and the life of the prophet was filled with sorrow.
When Jeremiah was born, Assyria and Egypt were disputing the sovereignty of the world. Before Jerusalem was destroyed, Assyria’s power had been shattered by Babylon. Egypt under Pharaoh Necho II, daring to dispute the might of this new world power, suffered a disastrous defeat at the battle of Carchemish in 604 B. C. Babylon under King Nebuchadnezzar was now mistress of the world. Jeremiah, whose message was to the nations, foresaw these changes and looked even beyond them; he predicted that even great Babylon after seventy years should fall, and a new power take its place. It seems to him the very height of folly for Judah, who would not trust in God, to attempt to contend with a world empire. He looked beyond the present great nations; beyond the present Judah, disobedient and ungrateful, and saw the rise of a kingdom greater than all, under a King who should sit upon the throne of David, and execute judgment and justice. He saw the bringing in of a new covenant where there should be no outward temple, but the righteous law should be written on the hearts of men.”
The character of Jeremiah “is most interesting,” says Canon Cook. “We find him sensitive to a painful degree, timid, shy, hopeless, desponding, but never flinching from duty. . . . Timid in resolve, he was unflinching in execution; as fearless when he had to face the whole world as he was dispirited and prone to murmuring when alone with God. Judged by his own estimate of himself, he was feeble, and his mission a failure: really, in the hour of action and when duty called him, he was in very truth ‘a defended city, and an iron pillar, and brazen walls against the whole land.’ He was a noble example of the triumph of the moral over the physical nature.”