Nahum 1:9 - Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

Bible Comments

What do ye imagine against the LORD? he will make an utter end: affliction shall not rise up the second time.

What do ye imagine against the Lord? Abrupt address to the Assyrians. How mad is your attempt, O Assyrians, to resist so powerful a God! What can ye do against such an adversary, successful though ye have been against all other adversaries? Ye imagine ye have to do merely with mortals, and with a weak people, and that so you will gain an easy victory; but you have to encounter God, the protector of His people. Parallel to Isaiah 37:23-29: cf. Psalms 2:1.

He will make an utter end - the utter overthrow of Sennacherib's host, soon about to take place, is an earnest of the "utter end" of Nineveh itself.

Affliction shall not rise up the second time - Judah's "affliction" caused by this invasion shall never rise again. So Nahum 1:12, "Though I have afflicted thee, I will afflict thee no more." Not that no affliction was afterward to befall Judah; but no affliction from Assyria again. And in the ulterior sense, after the last great foes of Judah, Antichrist and his hosts, of whom Sennacherib and his Assyrian armies were the type, shall have fallen, there shall be no further affliction of the people of God. Compare Isaiah 51:17-23, "Hear now this, thou afflicted ... thus saith thy Lord the Lord, and thy God that pleadeth the cause of His people, Behold, I have taken out of thy hand the cup of trembling, even the dregs of the cup of my fury; thou shalt no more drink it again. But I will put it into the hand of them that afflict thee." But Calvin takes the "affliction" to be that of Assyria; 'There will be no need of His inflicting on you a second blow: He will make an utter end of you once for all' (1 Samuel 3:12, "When I begin, I will also make an end;" 2 Sam. 26:8 , "Let me smite him at once, and I will not smite him the second time;" 2 Samuel 20:10). If so, this verse, in contrast to Nahum 1:12, will express, Affliction shall visit the Assyrian no more, in a sense very different from that in which God will afflict Judah no more. In the Assyrian's case, because the blow will be fatally final; the latter, because God will make lasting blessedness, in Judah's case, succeed to temporary chastisement. But it seems simpler to refer "affliction" here, as in Nahum 1:12, to Judah; indeed destruction, rather than affliction, applies to the Assyrian.

Nahum 1:9

9 What do ye imagine against the LORD? he will make an utter end: affliction shall not rise up the second time.