This week we are studying the last chapter of Nahum. As you close out your reading of this prophet, you may wonder how a text explicitly focused on the rise and fall of one ancient empire, Assyria, applies to your life or our world today. But let me explain a little bit about why their seems to be a prophetic obsession with Assyria in the Bible.
Prophetic Obsession with Assyria
At its highpoint, the Assyrian empire covered northern Mesopotamia, modern-day Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Syria, and Turkey. Truly, Assyria’s expansionist policies and aggressive military tactics built the first huge empire in the Middle East. We probably know more about Assyria in the seventh century BCE than we know about Europe in the Middle Ages. That is mostly thanks to Assyrian King Ashurbanipal’s library discovered during excavations of the ruins at Nineveh in the mid-1800s which contained 30,000 clay tablets.
Nineveh became the capital of Assyria during the reign of Sennacherib (704 to 681 BCE). By Nahum’s day, it was the largest city in the world. The city’s fortifications combined with its beauty and size created an imperial standard in the region that subsequent empires like the Babylonians aspired to attain.
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