God’s Word for You

Nahum 1:9-11 thorns and rascals

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Thursday, May 7, 2026

9 What can you plot against the LORD?
He will make a complete end;
trouble will not rise up a second time.

The prophet asks, what can you possibly think you can accomplish by opposing God? What could you ever plot against the Lord? When the Pharisees and their enemies, the Herodians, joined together to conspire against Jesus, they didn’t do anything that was a surprise to the Lord (Mark 3:6, 12:13). When Joseph’s brothers conspired to kill their brother who had already shown himself to be a prophet, they did nothing that could have changed or thwarted God’s plan for saving them through their brother, as he himself later said: “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (Genesis 50:20). And in a similar way, Paul and Barnabas understood that the troubles they encountered, even coming close to being killed for their faith, was for the good of God’s people. “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22).

But as for the wicked people of Nineveh? No plan of theirs could hinder the kingdom of heaven or the work of the Holy Spirit. Here their sin is clearly labeled: They plot against the LORD, by name. What will be the result? He will make a complete end of them; they won’t get up again. It sounds almost like some of Paul’s boxing analogies (“I do not fight like a man beating the air,” 1 Corinthians 9:26). A modern fighter in the WWE franchise became famous for his GTS “go to sleep” move. But when God says, “They won’t get up a second time,” he doesn’t mean “Go to sleep.” Pa’amayim means “a second time” (dual form). Pa’am usually means “foot,” and the common plural just means “feet” as in “How beautiful your sandaled feet” (Song of Solomon 7:1). But here the dual form is used as a way of saying “two” or “a pair,” as in “David eluded him twice” (1 Samuel 18:11). Those who plot against the LORD will never have a second chance to try it.

10 For they will be consumed
like tangled thorns,
like the drink of drunkards,
like dry stubble.

This verse is even more severe because it describes nothing but the final destiny of those who oppose God. About twenty years ago, a “new atheism” movement rose up and has since fallen down again. Their hostility was probably a reaction to having experienced personal trauma from people who happened to also be religious in the past. Sin does not know any boundaries. But such unrepentant men and women, along with the plotters of Nineveh, will suffer the same kind of agony that burning thorns and chaff go through, except that the fire that consumes thorns and stubble comes to an end soon enough; the fires of hell do not end, ever (Matthew 25:41; Jude 1:7).

Thorns used for burning is a common picture in the Bible because the thorns of Palestine, the sîrîm, often grow in a tangled, impenetrable mass. “I will block her path with thornbushes” (Hosea 2:6). Meier lists seven or eight interpreters who despair of making sense of these “tangled thorns,” thinking that a text that they insist must be an allegory is therefore “hopelessly corrupt,” but why? Because it can be taken literally with no allegorical interpretation at all, and therefore must be wrong? One can almost hear Meier’s sigh as he presents their judgment of the inspired text. What a simpleton, what a fool they must think the Holy Spirit to be! Give the old boy a dunce cap, since he can’t fit his holy words into my grand opinions! What irony that they miss the warning of the verse, which offers the same judgment that they fail to understand, as God’s judgement of them: You will be consumed like the drink of drunkards.

11 From you came someone
who plotted evil against the LORD,
who counsels wickedness.

This verse truly cuts to the heart of the trouble in Nineveh. The Assyrians had someone who was plotting evil against the LORD (just as we were told in verse 9), but there the added sin is revealed: “He counsels wickedness.” The Hebrew word is Belial, which can mean “worthless” or “wicked” (Deuteronomy 13:13), and which is used in intertestamental writings and in the New Testament for a name of Satan, Beliar or Belial, “Wicked One.” Paul says, “What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols?” (2 Corinthians 6:15-16).

This Counselor of Belial is often seen as the Assyrian king Sennacherib (Isaiah 36:1). That king tried to destroy Judah and Jerusalem, and he also planned to transplant the people of God, using deceptive, sweet-sounding words (Isaiah 36:17). He accused the Jews of being misled when they were told, “The Lord will deliver us” (Isaiah 36:18). His wicked plan was also to desecrate the temple and crush the covenants God had made with his people.

We should notice an important doctrinal point here about Sennacherib. If indeed he is the one Nahum is describing (and I think that he is; Luther also begin to use Sennacherib’s name when he interprets Nahum 1:12ff.), how do we square this with the judgment of prophets like Isaiah and Micah who think of Sennacherib and the Assyrians as being the Lord’s tools to fight against and to punish sinful Israel? Isaiah says about Israel, “I was enraged by his sinful greed; I punished him, and hid my face in anger” (Isaiah 57:17). And Micah says, “Samaria’s wound is incurable; it has come to Judah. It has reached the very gate of my people, even to Jerusalem itself” (Micah 1:9). But even while God used Assyria as the rod of his anger, the instrument used to punish Israel and Judah, it is also possible and even almost inevitable for God to hold Assyria and King Sennacherib accountable for the sin of counseling and plotting evil against the Lord. For we live in a fallen and sinful world, and if only the pure could punish the sinful, then how could parents or governments ever punish any wrongdoing? If someone doesn’t understand this, they don’t really understand sin. There will always be a paradox for the child spanked for his misbehavior when he knows that the one spanking him has misbehaved, too. As the Germans say, to soften the blow, “Alles hat ein ende, nur eine wurst hat Zwei” (Everything has an end; only a sausage has two).

If you have been troubled by someone in authority who has been harsh with you, who is also obviously a rascal and a scoundrel, do not forget to “pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). For even when children suffer terribly on account of wicked parents, and so many children today suffer shame and disgrace because their parents were not married (which the culture tries to forget but the conscience cannot forget), it is still right for those children to show love and respect. As one Christian writer (Rungius) said, “After all, if the Christian religion commands us to forgive an injustice by our neighbor, how much more ought we express this love to our parents?” For “the entire law is summed up in a single command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’” (Galatians 5:14). Therefore we should pray for our parents when they sin, and pray for our politicians and other leaders who so often parade their sins in public. Pray that God would work through such people for our good, and not to punish us. A severe and wicked rascal can be a benefit to people even without trying, but we don’t want him to become a scourge that will make all of our backs bleed on account of his cruelty. Nahum also said, “The Lord cares for those who trust in him.”

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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