Nahum 1:1 Commentary and Bible Study

‘The burden of Nineveh.’ The word ‘burden’ is a good word. The Hebrew is something heavy, a heavy weight. And burdens, as used by the prophets, are always messages about a heavy, crushing judgment upon the people, and so it is here. His name means ‘comforter’ and is a contracted form of the name Nehemiah. He was contemporary with three kings of Judah: Manasseh, Amon, and Josiah. The first two were wicked kings, and although the third Josiah was a godly kings who brought about reforms in Judah, they could not alter God’s determination to judge the nation following the evil done in the previous two reigns. Manasseh’s father, Hezekiah, had been a good king, who had urged the people to return to the Lord, and God had delivered Jerusalem in a signal way by destroying the army of Sennacherib when the Assyrians came to besiege Jerusalem. But Manasseh had undone all the good that his father had accomplished, and he was punished by the Lord by being taken to Babylon in chains by the captains of Assyria. There he humbled himself and sought the God of Israel, and was forgiven and found the Lord. God brought him back to Jerusalem and he carried out some reforms, but the judgment on the nation was not averted (2 Chronicles 33:9-17). Nahum lived through the end part of Manasseh’s reign and the short two-year reign of his son Amon, who was no better.