Nahum – The Comforter
“See, over the mountains the feet of a messenger, a herald of peace. Celebrate your festivals, O Judah, fulfill your vows, for never again shall the wicked invade you… the Lord restores the vineyard of Jacob, like the vineyard of Israel.” (Nahum 2:1-2)
“Do not fear,” seems to say the prophet of consolation, Nahum, whose name precisely means comforter. The small people of Israel, decimated by the deportation of 721 BC and gripped by the powerful Assyrian Empire, would shortly thereafter witness the destruction of their cruel oppressor.
The prophet Nahum, originally from Elkosh, presumably operated between 663 BC and 612 BC, the year of the fall of Nineveh, the great capital of the powerful Assyrian kingdom. In this context of oppression and despair, the prophet’s oracles against Nineveh had a psychologically liberating impact on the oppressed people of Judah: what seemed impossible came true, proving that God had not forgotten His chosen people and had listened to their suffering. God restored to them the hope of being able to worship Him once again in freedom and peace, within a kingdom restored and reconstituted by Him.
Even though Nahum’s oracles do not have an explicitly messianic character, within his very short book of only three chapters we can find many themes present in the mission of Jesus itself.
The Good News and True Peace
First and foremost, his message presents itself as “the good news”: See, over the mountains the feet of a messenger, a herald of peace (Nahum 2:1).
The “gospel,” the good news, has to do with the true peace brought by Jesus; a peace that is not the end of a war where there are victors and vanquished, but the peace of the heart, the one born from reconciliation with God and with one’s brother. Peace is the fruit of God’s Holy Spirit, which transforms minds and hearts and helps us live deep relationships of mutual fraternity. This message of peace is Jesus Himself, the single definitive word spoken by the Father to every human being, a word of mercy that generates mercy.
A God of Refuge and Salvation
Nahum announces a God who is a refuge: “The Lord is good, a secure stronghold in the day of distress” (Nahum 1:7), which strongly echoes Jesus’ invitation to go to Him in our affliction and oppression to find refreshment and comfort: “…Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Mt 11:28). When God reveals Himself to Moses and speaks His ineffable Name, He does not only say that He is Who He Is, but that He is “FOR,” definitively and irrevocably for humankind.
This being “for humankind” is salvation, liberation from the enemy that besieges them, the “destruction of the oppressor.” In our spiritual context, this oppressor is not an enemy nation like the Assyrian people historically were, but the ultimate enemy: the devil, the one who holds the power of death, the prince of this world, whom Jesus defeated forever through the sacrifice of His own life.
The Restored Vineyard
Another theme dear to scriptural literature is the image of the “restored vineyard”: “…the Lord restores the vineyard of Jacob, like the vineyard of Israel.” (Nahum 2:2)—a vineyard of which the Father is the vinedresser and Jesus is the vine itself, recalling the Johannine pericope of the vine and the branches. Jesus restores that vineyard which by then produced only sour grapes or had been abandoned by unworthy tenants, and He Himself becomes the good vine that will produce good fruit for the Father. Of this vine, we are the branches indissolubly united to Him and enlivened by the same sap of the Spirit of Christ, thus enabling us too to bear good fruit for the Father and for the Kingdom.
Ultimate Consolation and Eternal Life
The consolation of the “comforter” prophet is therefore the presence of God entering into the suffering of His people and bringing salvation. While for Nahum, salvation meant the destruction of a city and another nation in favor of the people of Judah, we know that for the person of the New Testament salvation is the life that never dies, even when experiencing the limitation of death. This is because God’s life is qualitatively different from mortal life, and the stakes involved are eternal. The New Life is a life woven with Love—true Love, which flows directly from the heart of the Trinity. We have all received this Life as a gift; it dwells within us and asks to be welcomed, nurtured, protected, and grown.
Let us allow ourselves to be guided by Nahum this month, so that we may welcome the consolation God wishes to give us through the many “prophets” of good we encounter daily, who remind us that God is for us and not against us. However, let us also ask for the gift of being prophets of consolation for others, making us bearers of the glad tidings of peace and of the certainty that evil has already been destroyed.
“Now (says the Lord) I will break his yoke from your neck and snap your chains apart.” (Nahum 1:13)
This month’s meditation is by Sr. Michela Brugnoli, AVI.
