Nahum 1:4, commentary and pictures

He rebukes the sea and makes it dry, and dries up all the rivers, displaying absolute control over nature and the reach of judgment over waters. Even the most fertile regions wither before Him, Bashan languishing, and Carmel, and the flower of Lebanon languishing. This power belongs to a Lord who is slow to anger but will by no means acquit the wicked. He has His way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of His feet. These images describe the overwhelming effect of His judgment when divine patience ends and His wrath begins.

The drying of sea and rivers and the withering of fruitful lands are joined to wider convulsions of nature, quaking mountains and melting hills and burning earth. His fury is poured out and the rocks are broken, with fire and water and earth serving as instruments of His judgment. These displays of power are designed to make the people of the earth tremble before Him. They silence proud defiance that asks who the Lord is, and show His judgment against the wicked. They bring terror even to the stouthearted, so that men acknowledge His sovereignty.

The same power points to greater destructive upheavals shortly before Christ's coming. At the second advent the earth will be convulsed, with earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and rivers will dry up. In the day of the Lord just before Christ comes, whole rivers will be literally dried up. Lightnings from heaven in God's wrath will unite with fire in the earth, and mountains will burn like a furnace. They will pour forth lava and torrents of molten ore and rocks and heated mud into the rivers, causing them to boil like a pot and to dry up amid convulsions and eruptions and earthquakes. These plagues will fall upon the wicked until they are destroyed from the earth, while the saints are preserved on earth in the midst of the commotion, as Noah was preserved in the ark at the flood.