Nahum 1:5 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Nahum 1:5

Comments

Nahum exalts the terror of the Lord and the overwhelming awesome nature of his presence when he acts in judgment. He pictures God’s judgment as an earthquake for its great power to move everything, even to melt the rocks and the ground. Nothing can stand before him, and it is as if even these inanimate objects are completely overawed by him, so that the whole creation senses his anger and shrinks back from it, and is unable to maintain its composure. Even the foundations, the most solid things in the earth, the mountains, quake at him and the hills melt and the earth is burned at his presence. There can be volcanic eruptions and earthquakes and it is as if everything quakes before him. If these most stable of objects on earth tremble at his presence, what will it be for sinful human beings? That is the point; that is what the verse should make us think about.

Application

People tell themselves such foolish things, and imagine their response to God in such unrealistic terms. We hear people rehearsing their complaints about God’s handling of their lives, and thinking that they will say such things to him when they stand before him. They tell us that they will question the Lord about his government of the world, and raise issues in their defence to force him to rethink his judgments of them. What foolishness this is! How little understanding they possess about his glory and his perfect righteousness and holiness, and about their own corruption. We will be speechless in the presence of the Lord with nothing whatsoever to say in our defence: ‘Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God’ (Romans 3:19).

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Nahum 1:5 Commentary and Bible Study

The meaning of Nahum 1:5 explained