The Sleeping Tiger

“Woe to the bloody city, all full of lies and plunder—no end to the prey!” – Nahum 3:1

“If you were fortunate enough to be born into a family whose ancestors directly benefited from genocide and/or slavery, maybe you think the more you don’t know, the more innocent you can stay, which is a good incentive to not find out, to not look too deep, to walk carefully around the sleeping tiger. Look no further than your last name. Follow it back and you might find your line paved with gold, or beset with traps.” – Tommy Orange, There There

The prophets were people who woke the sleeping tiger. If you want the white-hot truth, look no further. Nahum was someone who looked at Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, with its resplendent palace and impressive city walls, and saw blood. Heaps of corpses, dead bodies of the innocent. What he saw was shame and filth (3:3-5). 

It is not always easy to see. In some sense, if we have the option to see or not, then we by definition are those who need to see the most. Nahum sees the truth behind Nineveh’s gleaming corridors, and the result is a book that is a startling sequel to, and contrast with, the book of Jonah. The repentance of the Ninevites did not last. Half a century after Jonah, the new king of Assyria led a military campaign of bloodshed and cruelty on a scale the world had never seen before. This time, the message of the prophet is not one of repentance, but destruction. And indeed, Nineveh is destroyed in 612 B.C., leading to the end of the Assyrian empire.

But part of what we must see is that Nahum’s vision is God’s vision. Nahum sees as he does because God sees as He does. The first chapter of the book doesn’t even mention Nineveh: he speaks only of God, the God who avenges, who keeps his wrath, who commands the world. “Who can stand before his indignation? Who can endure the heat of his anger? His wrath is poured out like fire” (1:6). This is a God who “will by no means clear the guilty” (1:3). 

We see not from a guilty conscience, not from obligation, not even from well-intentioned peer pressure. We see because we cannot read Jonah without reading Nahum. We see because we love, and are drawn to, and want to become like a God who sees. We grieve because He does. We hold mercy together with justice because Jesus did. He came not only in grace, but in truth. His coming was an act of judgment. “And this is the judgment,” John writes. “The light has come into the world.” To be in Christ is to see as he does, with eyes of flame (Revelation 1:14), through the light that exposes what might be easier left in darkness.