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Nahum ii

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The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 28, 1866

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 28, No. 13.

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Nahum ii.

By Roswell Fenner Cottrell

VERSE 1. “He who dasheth in pieces is come up before thy face; keep the fortress, watch the way, make thy loins strong, fortify thy power mightily.
“2. For Jehovah hath turned away the excellency of Jacob, like the excellency of Israel; for the emptiers have emptied them out, and destroyed their vine-branches.
“3. The buckler of his mighty men is made red, the valiant men are in scarlet; the chariots shall be with flashing irons in the day of his preparation, and the lances shall quiver.
“4. The chariots shall rage in the streets, they shall run to and fro in the broad ways; they shall seem like torches, they shall run like lightnings.
“5. He shall recount his chiefs; they shall stumble in their walk; they shall make haste to the wall thereof, and the assault-covering shall be prepared.—Revision of the common version by “several Biblical scholars,” known as “Bernard’s Translation.”
The title of the book of Nahum is, “The burden of Nineveh.” “The book of the vision of Nahum the Elcoshite.” From its being the “burden of Nineveh,” it would seem that it was either a prophecy of the overthrow of ancient Nineveh, or, that “Nineveh of old” (chap. ii, 8) is taken as an example of the final dashing in pieces of the nations in the great day of the Lord, which is yet future. (Psa. ii, 9; Dan. ii, 35, 44; viii, 25. See the first verse of our text.) We think the latter is the truth. One principal reason for not believing it to be a prophecy of the destruction of ancient Nineveh is the fact that it was written more than a hundred years after the destruction of that city and the end of that kingdom. The date of this prophecy, as given in our Bibles, is B. C. 713; and in a Chronology published by John Bioren, in 1808, I find: “Nineveh taken by Arbaces and Belesis, which finishes that kingdom, B. C. 820.” The intelligent Bible student will see evidence in chap. i, 5-9 to satisfy him that it is a prophecy of the great day of the Lord, of which the lightning chariots are a sign, existing in “the day of his preparation.” This interpretation of the chariots is favored no less by this version than by the common. There can be no reasonable doubt that those chariots are the rail-road cars of the present day. Consequently it is now the day of preparation for the great battle in the day of the Lord.
But there is such a thing as pressing in testimony in support of the truth; and its tendency is only to weaken the argument. The only grammatical antecedent to the pronouns his and he in the expressions, “his mighty men,” “his preparation,” and “he shall recount his worthies,” or “gallants,” or “chiefs,” is Jehovah or the Lord, of verse 2, or, he that dasheth in pieces of verse 1. At least I can find no other. Hence it is the Lord’s mighty men, the Lord’s preparation, and the Lord’s chiefs or worthies; and it is the Lord that recounts these chiefs, which are the mighty men of war which are waked up in the day of his preparation, Joel iii, 9, and “stumble in their walk,” and fall and are broken, snared and taken, in the great day when all of “far countries” shall gird themselves and be “broken in pieces.” Isa. viii, 9, 15.
The Lord of hosts mustereth the host of the battle. He awakens the mighty men and recounts his chiefs. It seems puerile to apply this to a rail-road conductor, recounting the men, women, and children of all grades, that take passage in rail-road cars.
R. F. COTTRELL.