Editing Nahum (section)

==Works==
[[File:Nahum.jpg|thumb|130px|Nahum (watercolor circa 1888 by [[James Tissot]])]]
{{Main|Book of Nahum}}
Nahum's writings could be taken as prophecy or as history. One account suggests that his writings are a prophecy written in about 615 BCE, just before the downfall of Assyria, while another account suggests that he wrote this passage as liturgy just after its downfall in 612 BCE.<ref>Heaton, E. W., ''A Short Introduction To The Old Testament Prophets'', p. 35, Oneworld Publications, P.O. Box 830, 21 Broadway, Rockport, NA 01966, {{ISBN|1-85168-114-0}}</ref><ref name = "abp">{{cite web|url=http://www.aboutbibleprophecy.com/p52.htm|title=Nahum|website=Aboutbibleprophecy.com}}</ref>

The book was introduced in Reformation theologian [[John Calvin|Calvin]]'s Commentary<ref>{{cite web | title=Commentaries on Twelve Minor Prophets | url=http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/calcom28.titlepage.html | access-date=2012-08-22 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171014183248/http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/calcom28.titlepage.html | archive-date=2017-10-14 | url-status=dead }}</ref> as a complete and finished poem:

{{Blockquote|No one of the minor Prophets seems to equal the sublimity, the vehemence and the boldness of Nahum: besides, his Prophecy is a complete and finished poem; his exordium is magnificent, and indeed majestic; the preparation for the destruction of Nineveh, and the description of its ruin, and its greatness, are expressed in most vivid colors, and possess admirable perspicuity and fulness.|Rev. John Owen, translator|Calvin's Commentary on Jonah, Micah, Nahum}}

There are indications that an acrostic underlies the present text. Thus 1:2 begins with the first letter of the alphabet (א), verse 3b (‘in whirlwind’) with the second letter (ב), verse 4 with the third (ג), and so on until from ten to sixteen of the twenty two letters have appeared. In places the scheme breaks down: in the process of transmission, what was once an alphabetic poem has now been seriously corrupted, rearranged, and supplemented.<ref name="Taylor, C. L 1956 p. 954">Taylor, C. L.-I. (1956). The Interpreters' Bible (first ed., Vol. VI Lamentations through Malachi, p. 954). (S. T. George Arthur Buttrick, Ed.) Nashville: Abingdon Press.</ref>

Nahum, taking words from [[Moses]] himself, has shown in a general way what sort of "Being God is". Calvin argued that Nahum painted God by which his nature must be seen, and "it is from that most memorable vision, when God appeared to Moses after the breaking of the tablets."<ref>[http://onetenthblog.wordpress.com/readings/780-2/ Calvin; Commentary on Jonah, Micah, Nahum] {{webarchive|url=https://archive.today/20121130075010/http://onetenthblog.wordpress.com/readings/780-2/ |date=2012-11-30 }}</ref>

{{Blockquote|Although all three chapters fall below the standards set by the developed Judaeo-Christian tradition concerning the nature of God and man’s relation with his brother man… it is one of the world’s classic rebukes of militarism…. All tyrants are doomed. They make enemies of those whom they attack and oppress; they become corrupt, dissolute, drunken, effeminate; they are lulled into false security… | Charles L. Taylor, Jr.<ref name="Taylor, C. L 1956 p. 954">Taylor, C. L.-I. (1956). The Interpreters' Bible (first ed., Vol. VI Lamentations through Malachi, p. 954). (S. T. George Arthur Buttrick, Ed.) Nashville: Abingdon Press.</ref>}}