Attributed commentary excerpt
Barnes' Notes on Nahum 1:15
A historical reference excerpt for this verse. Read it alongside the biblical text and other available sources.
Notes on the Whole Bible
Albert Barnes (1798–1870) · 19th-century historical commentary
Source: BibleWord.ai's local reference edition of this named work.
Behold upon the mountains, the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace - From mountain-top to mountain-top by beacon-fires they spread the glad tidings. Suddenly the deliverance comes, sudden its announcement. “Behold!” Judah, before hindered by armies from going up to Jerusalem, its cities taken 2 Kings 18:13, may now again “keep the feasts” there, and “pay the vows,” which “in trouble she promised;” “for the wicked one,” the ungodly Sennacherib, “is utterly cut off, he shall no more pass through thee;” “the army and king and empire of the Assyrians have perished.” But the words of prophecy cannot be bound down to this. These large promises, which, as to this world, were forfeited in the next reign, when Manasseh was taken captive to Babylon, and still more in the seventy years’ captivity, and more yet in that until now, look for a fulfillment, as they stand. They sound so absolute. “I will afflict thee no more,” “the wicked shall no more pass through thee,” “he is utterly (literally, the whole of him) cut off.” Nahum joins on this signal complete deliverance from a temporal enemy, to the final deliverance of the people of God. The invasion of Sennacherib was an avowed conflict with God Himself. It was a defiance of God. He would make God’s people, his; he would “cut it off that it be no more a people, and that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance” Psalms 83:4. There was a more “evil counselor” behind, whose agent was Sennacherib. He, as he is the author of all murders and strife, so has he a special hatred for the Church, whether before or since Christ’s Coming. Before, that he right cut off that Line from whom “the Seed of the woman” should be born, which should destroy his empire and crush himself, and that he might devour the Child who was to be born Revelation 12:4. Since, because her members are his freed captives, and she makes inroads on his kingdom, and he hates them because he hates God and Christ who dwells in them. As the time of the birth of our Lord neared, his hate became more concentrated. God overruled the hatred of Edom or Moab, or the pride of Assyria, to His own ends, to preserve Israel by chastising it. Their hatred was from the evil one, because it was God’s people, the seed of Abraham, the tribe of Judah, the line of David. If they could be cut off, they of whom Christ was to be born according to the flesh, and so, in all seeming, the hope of the world, were gone. Sennacherib then was not a picture only, he was the agent of Satan, who used his hands, feet, tongue, to blaspheme God and war against His people. As then we have respect not to the mere agent, but to the principal, and should address him through those he employed (as Elisha said of the messenger who came to slay him, “is not the sound of his master’s feet behind him?” 2 Kings 6:32), so the prophet’s words chiefly and most fully go to the instigator of Sennacherib, whose very name he names, Belial. It is the deliverance of the Church and the people of God which he foretells, and thanks God for. To the Church he says in the Same of God, “Though I have afflicted thee, I will afflict thee no more” Nahum 1:12. The yoke which He will burst is the yoke of the oppressor, of which Isaiah speaks, and which the Son, to be born of a Virgin, “the Mighty God, the Prince of Peace,” was to break Isaiah 9:4, Isaiah 9:6; the yoke of sin and the bands of fleshly pleasure and evil habits, wherewith we were held captive, so that hencefo…
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