Judgment and grace even for Nineveh

The prophet Nahum decreed destruction for the Assyrian capital of Nineveh. At that time, Assyria ruled the entire Middle East, including Egypt. Only the kingdom of Judah, ruled by King Josiah, remained independent.

We learn from Jonah's experience that God loved Nineveh, but his patience has limits. The Assyrians, at his direction, had destroyed the kingdom of Israel and resettled all its people. God chose them as his instrument of judgment on Israel, but did not tolerate their cruel pride and arrogance. So he destroyed them, but only after a prophetic warning.

Here is a prophecy directed not at God's chosen people, but an enemy state who only knew enough about him to hold him in contempt. Is there any grace in this prophecy? As a matter of fact, yes there is. The opening chapter introduces God as avenging and wrathful, but in the midst of this dark and stormy prologue, we find a ray of light: "The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble, and He knows those who take refuge in Him" (Nahum 1:7).

In perhaps the most wantonly cruel empire in all of ancient history, who would take refuge in God? Hypothetically at least, I see five distinct groups.

1) First of all, Judah's independence resulted directly from Josiah's faithfulness. He took refuge in God. God knew it and preserved Judah from destruction as long as Josiah lived.

2) Israel had been ruled by a long succession of kings who worshiped the golden calf idol set up by Jeroboam I specifically to keep its citizens from worshiping at the temple in Jerusalem. And yet, there continued to be godly people there throughout its history. Some of them must have been among those exiled from their land and resettled. They must have known the prophecies of Israel's doom and continued to seek God in captivity. God knew when they took refuge in him.

3) If any apostate Israelites who had scoffed at the prophesies repented in exile and turned to the living God, God knew and rewarded them

4) We know that later, people in the Babylonian and Persian empires turned to the one true God after witnessing the godly example of devout captives from Judah. The Bible does not say that any Assyrians took refuge in God under the influence of either faithful or repentant Israelites, but if any did, God knew them, even if he did not cause them to be mentioned in Scripture.

5) We know from 2 Kings 17 that when the Assyrians exiled all of the Israelites, they sent other captive people to repopulate the land. When God sent lions to devour some of them, they appealed to the King of Assyria, who sent a priest of the Lord to teach them how to worship properly. Thus the race of Samaritans was born. They turned to God initially not out of faith, but carnal fear. But for whatever reason they took refuge in God, he knew it.

To the extent that any of these five groups knew about the others at all, they would not have seen much in common. They would probably have disapproved of some of the others, even though God honored them all. All of them, like all of everyone else, were right in their own eyes.

When I first started meditating on this verse and tried to identify modern equivalents of these groups, I immediately ran into trouble. The first group would seem to be people with genuine Christian faith, and the second somehow representing a watered down, partly false understanding, but who goes in which group?

I can only make judgments, only see who most closely resembles me. I cannot know. Like everyone else, I am right in my own eyes. Nahum 1:7 says that God knows who takes refuge in him. That should be comfort enough for anyone, that God takes time out from pronouncing judgment in order to shine some light for and on people who will obtain his grace.