Woe to Me!

Scripture Text: Nahum 3:14-19

There is no easing your hurt; your wound is grievous. All who hear the news about you clap their hands over you. For upon whom has not come your unceasing evil?

Nahum 3:19 (ESV)

How can a loving God judge and destroy?

This question applies not only to the city of Nineveh in today’s passage but also to the doctrine of hell. Writer and apologist C. S. Lewis explored this issue in his books The Screw tape Letters and The Great Divorce. He argues that those condemned to hell get not only what they deserve but also what they have chosen. In The Great Divorce, he wrote: “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self–choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.”

One of the challenges of faith is to come to terms with truths that at first glance seem terrible. Judgment and hell are among these. Today’s final reading in the book of Nahum again describes the defeat of Nineveh (vv. 14–15). Though Assyria was a commercial empire and center of world trade, it would be devoured by locusts, as it were. Merchants would take what they could and run (v. 16). Political leaders would disappear during the crisis (vv. 17–18). While a king named Ashur–uballit would try for several years to keep the empire going from another city, Nineveh’s defeat would essentially be the death blow (v. 19).

No one would grieve, for “who has not felt your endless cruelty?” The book ends with one of the many rhetorical questions, an effective literary technique in this prophecy.

Reflect

1. Do we truly have a real sense of God’s holiness?

2. How do we respond to God upon knowing this?

3. Does it lead us to our brokenness before Him, leading us to humility before Him?

4. Does it lead us to obedience to Him?

Remember

Dear readers, how are we to respond to the fact that Nineveh was completely wiped out? It was never rebuilt, though archaeologists discovered its ruins in 1842.

Was this overkill on God’s part? Not at all.

The wonder is that He waits so patiently and offers so much mercy in the face of human wickedness!

If we had a true sense of His holiness and our own sin, we would, like Isaiah, fall to the ground in reverence for Him and in horror with ourselves: “Woe to me!”.

Read

Proverbs 1:7 / 8:13; Isaiah 6:1-5 / 10:6-14; Zephaniah 2:13-14; Revelation 18:18-24

Pray

Dear LORD, I know that You are Faithful and that Your love is everlasting. I know that You are merciful and patient to me. But let me always never forget that You are also HOLY and UPRIGHT and You hate sin – my sins. So I ask You, through the Holy Spirit to always make see and have the true sense of who You are and what You are capable to do and draw me always to the ground in reverence to You. I know this is true wisdom from You. This I pray in His name, my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.