{"id":78488,"date":"2020-08-05T18:38:18","date_gmt":"2020-08-05T15:38:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=78488"},"modified":"2020-08-05T18:38:18","modified_gmt":"2020-08-05T15:38:18","slug":"vengeance-or-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/vengeance-or-justice\/","title":{"rendered":"Vengeance Or Justice?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-content\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[],"acf":{"old_id":"78488","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":73524,"related_cahpter":"540","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"Or a story of salvation from a brutal and evil empire\r\n\r\n","content":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Nahum has to rank among the most ignored and underappreciated of all of the prophets in the Tanach. His single-minded and uncompromising message, a description of the terrifying and violent end that awaited Nineveh, led Christian writers to declare that the emphasis on revenge demonstrated the moral inferiority of the Old Testament. Typical of this view are the words of G. A. Smith in 1903: \u201cSuch is the sheer religion of\u2026[the] Book of Nahum \u2013 thoroughly Oriental in its sense of God\u2019s method and resources of destruction; very Jewish\u2026in the bursting of its long pent up hopes of revenge\u2026we [the Christian West] should not attribute so much personal passion to the Avenger.&#8221;\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Even in Jewish tradition, his words never found their way into the liturgy or readings, with two exceptions \u2013 both in the ancient Israel triennial cycle of <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">haftorot<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Nahum 1:12\u20132:6 was read as the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">haftara<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to Genesis 34, the story of the rape of Dinah, while, several verses of Nahum were appended to the end of Micah as the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">haftara<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to Exodus 11, which describes the upcoming obliteration of the Egyptians in the final plague.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, despite potential discomfort over the violent end that awaited the inhabitants of Nineveh, we have to see Nahum not as a reflection of vengeance but of justice. Assyria was renowned throughout the Ancient Near East for its brutality and violence towards the nations it subjugated. A God of justice could not remain silent forever. Once God made the decision that the accumulation of Assyria\u2019s sins of over fifteen centuries of brutality necessitated its total destruction, that had to occur, even though the possibility was that it would be carried out by a very flawed people.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Nahum knows that God will work in ways that he cannot understand, and he does not question God regarding Nineveh\u2019s horrific downfall. Instead, Nahum focuses on proclaiming God\u2019s righteousness and justice at a time when his despondent listeners refused to believe that salvation from Assyria was even possible. When Nahum lived and prophesied, the answer to the Israelites\u2019 questioning whether God could or would punish the wicked was uncertain. As Elizabeth Achtemeier wrote, \u201c[The book of Nahum] is not primarily a book about human beings, not about human vengeance and hatred and military conquest, but a book about God. And it has been our failure to let Nahum be a book about God that has distorted the value of this prophecy\u2026\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Only through Nineveh&#8217;s destruction could God prove His faithfulness to Israel and His justice to the world. Heschel articulated this idea beautifully in his book The Prophets:<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The ultimate meaning in history lies in the continuity of God\u2019s concern. His wrath is not regarded as an emotional outburst, as an irrational fit, but rather as part of His continued care. Because the prophets could not remain calm in the face of crimes committed by men and disaster falling on men, they had to remember and remind others: God\u2019s heart is not made of stone.<\/span><\/p>\n","image":{"ID":59738,"id":59738,"title":"2sam3-revenge","filename":"2sam3-revenge.png","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/2sam3-revenge.png","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/revenge-is-a-dish-best-served-cold\/2sam3-revenge\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"2sam3-revenge","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":59737,"date":"2019-07-18 13:50:46","modified":"2020-08-05 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