YHWH's Name Secretly Encoded—Hidden in Hebrew, Invisible in Every Translation | Nahum 1:1-6

We're going to open the first chapter of Nahum today. And last time we met was the introduction to Nahum in which we spent quite a long time on technical matters about this complex book. And we we talked about the structure of the book which is hidden from view unless read in the Hebrew language. Even then for modern folks, including the most scholarly the way it's written, the way it's constructed is quite unique and and encrypted. It's written primarily in Hebrew poetry. But also it employs several strange to us literary features such as acrostics, telestichs, base 60 math and more. I'm not going to review our introduction about these technical but important features of this book, but it would be a mistake to skip over it and to go right to our exegetical study of chapter 1. However I will mention a couple of things about the author and the backdrop of the times he lived that that that we did cover briefly in the introduction. The first verse of chapter 1 is this is a prophecy about Nineveh the book of the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite. This is the one and only time we'll hear Nahum's name in the entire book. And like most books of the Old Testament, this first verse is a superscription. Okay, a superscription is a brief introduction that usually reveals the author and a summarizes from a 30,000 foot view what this book's about. Now no matter what you might hear or read from commentaries or from Bible teachers, the reality is we get no other information about the author than what is contained in the superscription. Here we read that he's an Elkoshite or an Elkoshite. And we don't know whether this is speaking of his family heritage or the place he's from. We don't know what he did or who he was prior to receiving and passing along this prophecy given to him by God. The way his book is structured says that either he is supremely knowledgeable and talented in writing or he is given the oracle as he received it from God to describe to structure and and write down. And again, there is no way to know. Most biblical prophets were just ordinary men who were farmers, shepherds, craftsmen or the like. They had no formal training in in literature and were but mildly literate. So those other prophets no doubt used the services of a professional scribe to one degree or another to have their prophecies documented. Now the meaning of his name, Nahum is only generally understood as something like full of consolation or full of comfort. And he lived in a time around the mid-600s BC when the Assyrian Empire had peaked in its power and scope and influence and and likely had begun its descent. The name Assyria is a play on the word Asher. And Asher is the name of the chief god of Assyria which was a polytheistic culture of several gods and and and goddesses each with their own temple own priesthood and we read of places in the Bible many places about the trouble that Assyria caused for Israel. The worst being when late in the 8th century BC they overran the northern kingdom of Ephraim Israel and exiled and scattered those 10 tribes of Israel that had lived there to places all over the Asian continent and even into northern Africa. Now to help us get a handle on where Nahum fits in a time frame of the various prophets he must be very close to the time of Isaiah and Micah. And both of these prophets may still have been alive when Nahum was around. This means Nahum was living when King Hezekiah of Judah was reigning. Now there are a number of close resemblances between sections of Nahum and Isaiah. Most likely Nahum borrowing directly from Isaiah's words. This is not uncommon among the prophets. Nahum has a single topic. The end of the capital city of Assyria which was Nineveh. However, when talking about a foreign nation invading and conquering another nation's capital that represents the conquering of a nation as a whole. So this is about the downfall of the Assyrian Empire. This downfall is described as being something God did as an act of divine wrath upon them for their terrible treatment of Israel. In a word, it was an act of vengeance. And vengeance in the sense of justice. So let's read the first chapter of Nahum. Open your Bibles to chapter 1 of Nahum. This is a prophecy about Nineveh the book of the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite. Adonai is a jealous and vengeful God. Adonai avenges. He knows how to be angry. Adonai takes vengeance on his foes and stores up wrath for his enemies. Adonai is slow to anger but great in power and he does not leave the guilty unpunished. Adonai's path is in the whirlwind and storm and the clouds are the dust of his feet. He rebukes the sea and leaves it dry. He dries up all the rivers. Bashan and the Carmel languish. The flower of Lebanon withers. The mountains quake before him. The hills dissolve. The earth collapses in his presence, the world and everyone living in it. Who can withstand his fury? Who can endure his fierce anger? His wrath is poured out like fire. The rocks broken to pieces before him. Adonai is good. He's a stronghold in time of trouble. He takes care of those who take refuge in him. But with an overwhelming flood he will make an end of Nineveh's place and darkness will pursue his enemies. What are you plotting against Adonai? He's making an end of it. Trouble will not rise a second time. For like men drunk with liquor they will be burned up like tangled thorns, like straw completely dry. Out of you, Nineveh, he came one who plots evil against Adonai, who counsels wickedness. Here's what Adonai says, "Though they be many and strong, they will be cut down. They will pass. And though I have made you suffer I will make you suffer no more. Now I will break his yoke from your necks and snap the chains that bind you. Adonai gave this order concerning you. You will have no descendants to bear your name. From the house of your god, I will cut off carved image and cast metal image. I'll prepare your grave because you are worthless. When the first verse refers to the book that Nahum received from God, the Hebrew word is sepher. This term refers to a written document written down on any sort of material in most any format. In Nahum's day the way we think of books with bound pages didn't exist. Rather it was characters scratched onto clay tablets, inscribed onto stone stelas, inked onto various types of animal skins or as in Egypt inked onto papyrus which was then rolled up as a scroll. What we think of as a book is called a codex. And that form of documentation was in its early stages around the time of Paul. But not in the Hebrew world. So, in the end at Nahum's stage of history, sefer was just a general term that meant it was now written down in some manner. In fact, while those books that came earlier than Nahum were almost always at first handed down orally, very likely this meant that Nahum was immediately written down. That is the era of everything being handed down orally prior to eventually becoming written was inching towards a close. Now, Nahum says that the means he acquired his prophecy was a vision. At least that's how it's usually translated into English. The Hebrew word is hazon. And hazon is nearly exclusively used in relation to prophecy. And it does not necessarily mean that the prophet saw something with his eyes. Rather, it is divine truth that came to that prophet by means of some inspired revelation in his mind. Further, in times when hazon more meant something that produced a visual image, those images were nearly always of something in heaven. So, that means the eyes were not involved. The further we go back in time to the earliest books, we find that hazon, vision, came at night in the condition of sleep. Later on, hazon just came to mean a divinely given prophecy, however it might have occurred. That is nearly certainly how it was by Nahum's day. Now, before we move on to verse two, I'm going to alert you to something we'll soon see that I spoke about in the introduction to Nahum. The final word to this superscription begins a telestich that will ultimately spell out God's name. A telestich takes the final letter of a series of words to form a name or a phrase. And we're going to see this particular telestich develop by taking the final letters of the final words of Nahum chapter 1 verses 1 2A, 2B, and 3A. Here's the thing to understand. We can only see this in Hebrew. Second, we can only see this within the Hebrew poetic structure of the original. See, that is while in English and other language translations, we number things by verses. We tend to write out the scriptures in full sentences. All right? Um involving full margin-to-margin lines of print in our Bibles. That is far from how it was written down in Hebrew. Some Bibles attempt to write it out in a poetic style with shortened lines, like the Complete Jewish Bible does. But it doesn't always hit the mark. So, they typically use the wrong criteria to determine what a line of poetry amounts to. That is where it begins, where it ends, and then goes on to the next line. This again is because while in Western literature, poems are almost always based on rhyming, that is not how Hebrew poetry was created. The Hebrews used a few different methods, therefore, to determine the beginning and ending of a line of poetry. Only quite recently, 21st century, has a better understanding of this emerged. Now, for the sake of being able to explain this poetic literary structure, scholars will some will speak sometimes of verses by using both a number and a letter. Okay? So, like as in verse 1A and verse 1B. It 1A simply means the first words of verse one. 1B means the later or perhaps final words of verse one. At least it's used this way as it pertains to how it's written down in English. And in the way we traditionally number and order verses. That can be a bit difficult to comprehend, but you know, it operates very much like Hebrew months as they relate to our modern Gregorian calendar months. See, in other words, the two calendar systems don't line up. Okay? Rather, they overlap. For instance, we cannot say that the Hebrew month of Tishri corresponds to September. Because in reality, Tishri overlaps two parts overlaps parts of the months of September and October. Now, so let's now move on to verse two. We're going to look at two different versions to give us a better view of the content. In the Complete Jewish Bible, Yahweh is a jealous and vengeful God. Yahweh avenges. He knows how to be angry. Yahweh takes vengeance on his foes and stores up wrath for his enemies. Young's Literal Translation. A God zealous and avenging is Jehovah. An avenger is Jehovah. And possessing fury. An avenger is Jehovah on his adversaries, and he is watching from his enemies. So, please notice that as in some earlier books I commented on, when when quoting the Complete Jewish Bible, I will often substitute the word Yahweh where the Complete Jewish Bible has written in all caps Adonai. This is because Yahweh is what is actually there in the holy scriptures. The word Adonai is used by Jews because of a tradition dating back to the 4th century BC that forbids the formal name of God to be written or spoken. Okay? I will continue to do that from time to time in our study of Nahum. Now, many Bible scholars have recently noticed that because of the structure of Nahum's book, verses 1 through 10 are very much a psalm about God's vengeance on Nineveh. The Complete Jewish Bible, as does other major Bible versions, they reorder the words of verse two for the sake of English. The Young's Literal Translation version comes closer to keeping them in the same order as we find them in the Hebrew. Notice how in the YLT, the first words are a God. Better would be if the participle a was left out. This is because the Hebrew begins with the word El. El is a very ancient word that most literally indicates the chief god of many gods. I find it odd to find that word used here. So, a lot of scholars say that this was a redaction by some editor when this book was copied. El or Il in Canaanite mostly referred to Baal. Now, it does not actually properly or literally mean God, even though nearly all Bible versions will use the word God. So, by the time we reach the later prophets, the use of the word El as referring to Yahweh had greatly diminished, often never appearing at all. So, why do we find it used here? In Nahum, who is one of the later prophets. Simply, it has to do with the amount. Follow me, please. It has to do with the amount of Hebrew letters and the accents used to form a line of poetry. One element of Hebrew poetry uses the amount of letters in a word. At other times, the amount and place of accented syllables in a series of words to determine what constitutes a line of poetry because the Hebrew letters were assigned number values. So, when a set of poetic words were added up according to the number value assigned to each letter, it had much to do with when a line of poetry began and ended. Therefore, it was necessary in Nahum's mind and his way to create a poetic structure to use the ancient term L to refer to God rather than something else, otherwise it would have interfered with the structure. See, bottom line, while a studied Bible student might find it strange to use the term L used here and wonder why, this is not mysterious. Nor is it about precision of meaning. It's about precision of word count used to form a complete line of poetry. So, this is where my explanation for the need of eye discipline in our introduction to Nahum begins to appear. See, we must not try to ponder very much on or let our eye too much notice what's regarding Nahum's strange choice of of words sometimes by God, like for using L. Rather, it just has to do with making it work within his poetic literary structure than using a more common and precise word for the God of Israel. So, in verse two now, God is said to be jealous. Now, thankfully, the YLT says zealous. See, the Hebrew is qanna. And indeed, it can mean jealous. See, the problem is what the term jealous means to Westerners, especially over the last couple of hundred years. See, we are not to think of it in human psychological terms of something's pretty negative, if not petty. In our modern way of speaking, the word zealous comes much closer to the sense of qanna. It's a word of intensity, not envy. It's not about the green-eyed monster. Biblically, this word is always in reference to God, never to people. In the next stanza that says, as it's usually translated, "Yahweh avenges avenges and is full of wrath," that is off the mark. I think that is because there is a word here that bothers both Jews and Christians, and that word is baal. What this verse actually says is "Yahweh avenges and is the baal of wrath." No wonder it's caused a lot of consternation. See, in Hebrew, this reads baal chama. And baal of wrath or lord of wrath is correct, since baal came to be used both as a proper name for the chief Canaanite god, also as a noun that means lord or master. Helpfully, we find the same Hebrew phrase used in Proverbs. So, we can get a better idea of what it means. We find in Proverbs 29:22, "An angry man stirreth up contention, a furious man is multiplying transgression." Once again, reticent scholars have rendered baal chama as a furious man to avoid dealing with the sensitive word baal. However, it turns out that we need not take this literally. Rather, baal chama is an idiom. It's a figure of speech. And as such, all it means in this verse in Proverbs and in Nahum is that Yahweh is capable of becoming quite angry. So, notice what we talked about a short time ago that earlier in this same verse, it opens with the word L. Thus, in typical Hebrew poetry, we find parallelism created by the author between the first half of the verse with L and the second half with baal. After all, L and baal had always been coupled together in the ancient days. Then add in the matter of the poetic word count, and then we understand why these words and this way of explaining was chosen. So, for the sake of helping to get this lodged in our minds, I'll be a bit repetitive. Okay? Nahum is complicated. And the super technical side, not only of Hebrew poetry, but also of the structure of this book, in a way to give us hidden meanings, is what's at play here. Okay? Much of this would have been noticed by the more literate people in Nahum's general era, but to us in the modern West, we've had no knowledge of this reality. And so, it can seem so difficult to grasp. And it certainly is, so don't get discouraged. So, in this verse, the Hebrew word naqam now is used three times. It means to avenge or to take vengeance. The first time it's used describes something God can and will do, avenge. The second time it is used, it more describes his character as avenger. The third time explains who can expect his vengeance. It's his enemies. And in the final stanza of this verse, as it appears in English, we read, "He is watching for his enemies" or "He stores up wrath for his enemies" or something similar. However, it leaves out a Hebrew word in this passage, notser. Notser introduces the idea of something that is long-term. Okay? It lasts for a long time. So, God's wrath upon his enemies lasts for a long time. However, this idea is here because of what verse three opens with, that God is slow to anger. The intent is to say that God is greatly patient, but when justice eventually demands that he takes action, it is not only terrible, pick a last a long time. Okay. Nahum 1:3. "Yahweh is slow to anger, but great in power. And he does not leave the guilty unpunished. Yahweh's path is in the whirlwind and storm, the clouds are the dust of his feet." Okay. Here's some comfort for us all. See, generally speaking, in the Bible, we find that God's anger is mentioned in connection with his enemies three times more often than with his people. So, while the ending of verse two connects with the beginning of verse three in the sense that God can get terribly angry, but he is very slow to reach such a stage of deploying his wrathfulness, the beginning of verse three is also parallel with the next statement in verse three, which is, "But great in power." Okay? Great in power is gadol koach. Every use of this term in the Tanakh refers to God's grace. Even so, note the balancing act. Yes, Yahweh can become burning with anger, take awful vengeance, or even on his own people. On the other hand, it takes a lot to get him to that point. A person or a nation doesn't ping-pong back and forth by doing good one day, sliding into sin the next, and so God pounces on you for it. It could eventually get that way, but by his grace, he exhibits a exhibits a marvelous patience that none of us mere earthlings will ever be able to match or to deserve or merit. And yet, just because he doesn't pour out angry wrath on a person or a nation doesn't mean that punishment isn't coming. So, where's the balance point between his wrath and his grace? Hm? In comparison to how long he will show his grace by not destroying his by his anger, how long will he hold it against us? Keep on punishing us once he decides to do so. You know? That answer was given around seven centuries before Nahum's time. In Exodus 34, verses six and seven, Yahweh passed before him and proclaimed, "Yud Hey Vav Hey Yud Hey Vav Hey is God, merciful and compassionate, slow to anger, rich in grace and truth, showing grace to the thousandth generation, forgiving offenses, crimes, and sins, yet not exonerating the guilty, but causing the negative effects of the parents' offenses to be experienced to their by their children and grandchildren even by the third and fourth generations." What did we just hear? God will display his mercy, grace, and forgiveness to his people before a thousand generations. While he won't exonerate the guilty, his anger will be but for three or four generations. While we should not take such numbers as absolute and literal, the point is the weight of God's grace versus his vengeance falls way out of proportion to the side of mercy and compassion. So, just as it means that in Exodus, so does it mean that in Nahum. Even so, the extent of the wrath that God shows to his people as compared to his perennial enemies is also way out of proportion in favor of his people. So, Nineveh, Assyria, is going to be destroyed permanently as punishment. But as for Israel, well, it follows that cycle of sin pattern we looked at a few dozen times in Torah class. That is, God will not permanently destroy his people. After his wrath on his own people comes a promise of restoration. Not so for his wicked enemies. Israel never became God's wicked enemy. So, they are advancing steadily, kind of two steps forward, one back, towards a perfection of restoration and an end of the cycle of sin. Now, before we get to the final half of verse three, let's find that hidden telestich of poetic lines of 1, 2A, 2B, and 3A. Now, remember, do not confuse the beginning and ending of a Hebrew line of poetry with verses and verse numbers in the Bible. Those chapter and verse numbers only happened for the first time around a thousand AD. And remember that this hidden telestich can only be seen in Hebrew. So, here it goes. The last word of the first line is Ha Elkoshi, in Hebrew, the Elkoshite. The final letter is Yud. The last word of the second line is hemah, and in English, wrath. The final letter is Hey. The last word of the third line is lasarav, in English, his adversaries. The final letter is Vav. The last word of the fourth line is yenaqeh, in English, acquit. The final letter is a Hey. We wind up with Yud Hey Vav Hey, Yahweh, God's formal name. So, there is our first hidden meaning in Nahum that is only revealed by the way the words are poetically structured. I won't do this in every case, but I wanted you to see that once you understand how this works, suddenly these words start to pop out. And when English translations modify the original text, it disappears. Okay? So, now the first half of verse three speaks of God's path as being like the whirlwind and the storm. So, the picture here is of God as the divine warrior. He is marching onward, unstoppable, even invisibly, to battle with the evil forces. Here represented both literally and symbolically as Assyria. This is speaking of holy war against the Assyrian Empire. When Yahweh orders a war, only then is it a true holy war. And when it's a holy war, the outcome's decided before the first battle is fought. Now is a good time to remember the prophet Jonah, Yonah, whom God sent to this same Nineveh around a century earlier than Nahum, but with the hope of them averting God's wrath. Now, recall, Jonah didn't want to go. Oh, he hated Assyria. And it made no sense to him that Yahweh would actually want to try to rescue these barbarians by giving them a chance to repent. Jonah tried to run away from this task. So, develops the story of the storm at sea and Jonah being tossed overboard and swallowed up by some huge fish. Soon, rather comically, I think, he's spit up and discharged onto the shore so that he can go on to Nineveh. And the result of his going to Nineveh with the warning of disaster if they did not repent from their ways was effective. So, God backed off. Well, Nahum's the rest of the story. Nineveh did repent because of Jonah, but in a few years they went right back to their old ways. You will notice as we proceed through Nahum that no offer of repentance was offered again to Nineveh. Their end now was certain. There would be no reprieve. Nahum's prophecy is but an announcement of Nineveh's destruction, but even more, their end was to be permanent with no hope of ever being restored. Now, in Hebrew, the whirlwind and the storm form form a poetic word pair. In Hebrew, it's suphah and se'arah. Now, suphah more literally means destructive wind. Se'arah more literally means gale. And clouds are the dust of his feet. Well, that's rather accurately translated, but here's the thing. A number of times in the Bible we hear of dust being stirred up by humans walking on the dirt. Why? Because humans' place on Earth is that we stand on the ground. But above us in the sky with its clouds and celestial objects, the sky is the abode of God. So, for God, his imagined standing place is upon the clouds. See? We walk on dirt and stir it up. He walks on clouds and stirs them up. It's no more complicated than that. Nahum 1:4, He rebukes the sea and leaves it dry. He dries up all the rivers. Bashan and Carmel languish. The flower of Lebanon withers. I think the Young's Literal Translation helps us a bit in getting the point of this verse. He is pushing against the sea and dryeth it up. Yea, all the floods he hath made dry. Languishing are Bashan and Carmel. Yes, the flower of Lebanon is languishing. Okay. This verse opens up with the Hebrew go'er, which is a a form of the root word ga'ar. Nearly all Bible translations uh translates this as rebukes. Notice that the YLT chooses pushing against. Because this is a stronger term than rebuke. Professor Kennedy argues that the better English word is blasts because it is more severe and very strong. Rebuke and even pushing against he thinks is too weak. This statement is meant to evoke a memory of the Red Sea parting. Took a very strong divine force to do this. And considering the word pair to in the previous verse it speaks of strong winds then blasts is meant to continue the idea of a violent and strong action of God. Even so this is not meant to refer only to the Red Sea parting but to every sea and river on Earth which all powerful Yahweh can smite in his wrath. Cause them to dry up. Therefore in the second half of this verse it speaks of Bashan and Carmel being affected. Bashan and Carmel were particularly fertile areas of Israel. And this due to the abundant availability of water. But by means of God ordained drought Bashan and Carmel lost their fertility. Lebanon with its world-renowned forests here called the flower of Lebanon is an expression of beauty also suffered by drought. See climate change to either cause devastation or abundance is in the province of God. It is not in the control of humans nor in serendipity. He is omnipotent. Humans and technology are not. This message in Nahum makes this so very clear that when the devastating side of climate change happens it's God that's behind it. Similarly when the abundant side of climate change happens it is the same God that's behind it. Modern people even believers would call this primitive superstition. Bible calls it a fact. There is no Mother Nature to determine feast or famine. There is only Father God. Nahum 1:5 The mountains quake before him and the hills dissolve. The earth collapses in his presence, the world and everyone living in it. Verse 5 is but a continuation of thought carried over from verse 4. But essentially it widens the scope of what's affected. When the divine warrior Yahweh brings his presence from heaven to Earth. While plant life can be just devastated by God through control of the climate which verse 4 speaks about so can the mountains be shaken and even melted down and dissolved by Yahweh's limitless power which is what verse 5 speaks about. And as we have seen before in other and earlier Torah class book studies the mountains shaking the earth trembling are the common responses of our planet to God's presence on Earth. That is a theophany. All of nature, all of the human population must recognize Yahweh's manifestations and power over the realm of nature. Nothing and no one is exempted. See I have observed what the melting away of mountains can look like. In Southern California during a particularly wet rainy season I have seen hills quite literally dissolve and just flow away taking many homes with it. There's much video footage of Mount St. Helens in Washington state a one-time dormant volcano suddenly coming to life and with its eruption a goodly portion of that huge mountain simply coming off and millions of tons of dirt and rock rolled downward to the valley beneath. This is what we are to mentally picture as we read these dramatic and poetic words of Nahum 1:5. Now from a purely a literary standpoint the pairing of the words mountain and hill are common in the Bible. Har meaning mountain and giva meaning hill come from the world of mythical qualities of mountains and hills. Mountains were thought to be the cosmic pillars of the Earth whose hills uh rather while hills were the raised places where temples and altars were to be placed. Since it was believed that this brought humans closer to the gods who lived in the heights. More often than not this word pair is mostly synonymous. There's See we're not to focus on any inherent differences between hills and mountains. Because the difference is not the point. Even to this day those differences are quite subjective. I mean when does a hill become a mountain? Rather the issue is the high places they are. And the strength and stability that mountains and hills represent and the fact that the ancients believed that these were the oldest existing parts of the creation process. Now just for the sake of putting these Hebrew thoughts in perspective long before Abraham the Mesopotamian world in the same terms and we find it in written in some of the most ancient liter literature that's ever been discovered in a very old Mesopotamian hymn to the god Adad found in cuneiform tablets we read this. In the Lord's that's actually Baals anger the heavens will shake in Adad's anger the earth will tremble the great mountains will crumble. See the resemblance between this and Nahum's words cannot be ignored. They both express the same kind of thought. So long before the Hebrews existed even later when the Bible was written this cosmic understanding of the ancient Mesopotamians about gods and what their capabilities were what their appearance on Earth caused this is all held as common knowledge. Nahum 1:6 Who can withstand his fury? Who can endure his fierce anger? His wrath is poured out like fire the rocks broken to pieces before him. So what follows in verse 6 is a wisdom saying. That is if what verses 4 and 5 say are true then it is impossible that any human being could succeed in shielding himself from or defeating in some way the wrath of God. Because Nahum essentially tells the rest of the story of what commenced with Jonah regarding Nineveh then it's not surprising we'd find the same thought as is found in Joel who lived at the same time as Jonah. So in Joel 2:11 we read Yahweh shouts orders to his forces his army is immense mighty and it does what he says for great is the day of Yahweh fearsome terrifying who can endure it? A God that by his presence alone can destroy geographic features cause the earth to crumble and the climate to shift all at his command cannot be withstood. He's not to be trifled with. The conclusion is that any reasonable person ought to come to who has heard or read what Nahum just said is that any man who thinks he can stand up against God's indignation and wrath is foolish beyond measure. Yes Nineveh is doomed. There is nothing they might do to stop it. So what does the wise man do in the face of such awesome imaginable power of God? Submit. Pursue peace with God at all costs. See the amazing part of that requirement that someone else paid for the biggest part of what pursuit of peace with him requires. That person was Yeshua of Nazareth. Our part is to repent of our ways and to trust in Yeshua and then to begin to obey God faithfully and wholeheartedly. There is no way to achieve that peace through personal merit. Nor by living a perfect enough life, and of course in our own estimation. But the bulk of humanity still attempts to do just that. While Yeshua would not arrive for another 600 years after Nahum, the plan is laid out and the consequences for rejecting it are highlighted by what is about to happen to Nineveh. Okay, we'll resume our study of Nahum next time. For more teachings of real Bible study and to rediscover God's word with Tom Bradford, visit Torah Class today on the web, streaming TV, or download the Torah Class mobile app.