What do ye imagine against the LORD? he will make an utter end: affliction shall not rise up the second time.
9. What do ye imagine against the Lord ]Compare Nah 1:11: “out of thee came forth one that imagined evil against the Lord.” This sense, though the natural one, does not connect well with the next clause. Possibly the meaning is, what do ye imagine (think) of the Lord? in regard to Him and His operations. The next words then explain how He is to be thought of, and what His way of operation is: He will make an utter end.
Affliction the second time ]Oh, trouble shall not rise twice. Is the statement a threat against Jehovah’s enemies or particularly Nineveh? or is it a promise to Israel? Do the words mean that as the Lord shall make an utter end of Nineveh the trouble that now threatens her shall be once for all? or is the sense that Israel having suffered once from Assyria (Sennacherib) she shall not suffer twice? The use of the word “twice” as well as the connection seems to favor the former sense, though perhaps the term “affliction” or trouble not unnaturally suggests the second. Comp. 1Sa 26:8“Let me pin him with the spear to the earth at one stroke (one time) and I will not smite him the second time (lit. I will not repeat to him)”; 2Sa 20:10. The same ambiguity arises in Nah 1:12.
Source: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
The prophet had in few words summed up the close of Nineveh; he now upbraids them with the sin, which should bring it upon them, and foretells the destruction of Sennacherib. Nineveh had, before this, been the instrument of chastising Israel and Judah. Now, the capture of Samaria, which had cast off God, deceived and emboldened it. Its king thought that this was the might of his own arm; and likened the Lord of heaven and earth to the idols of the pagans, and said, Who are they among all the gods of the countries, that have delivered their country out of mine hand, that the Lord should deliver Jerusalem out of mine hand? 2Ki 18:35. He felt to reproach the living God 2Ki 19:16 and defied the Holy One of Israel (see 2 Kings 19:15-34). His blasphemy of him was his destruction of him. It was a war, not simply of ambition, or covetousness, but directly against the power and worship of God.
What will ye so mightily devise, imagine against the Lord? He Himself, by Himself, is already making an utter end. It is in store; the Angel is ready to smite. Idle are mans devices, when the Lord does. Take counsel together, and it shall come to never; speak the word, and it shall not stand: for God is with us Isaiah 8:10. While the rich man was speaking comfort to his soul from him as to future years, God was making an utter end. Thou fool, this night shall thy soul be required of thee.
Affliction shall not rise up the second time – Others have understood this, affliction shall not rise up the second time, but shall destroy at once, utterly and finally (compare 1Sa 26:8; 2Sa 20:10): but:
(1) the idiom there, he did not repeat to him, as we say, he did not repeat the blow is quite different;
(2) it is said affliction shall not rise up, itself, as if it could not. The causative of the idiom occurs in 2Sa 12:11, lo, I will cause evil to rise up against thee; as he says afterward, Though I have afflicted thee, I will afflict thee no more Nah 1:12. God, He had said, is good for a refuge in the day of affliction; now, personifying that affliction, he says, that it should be so utterly broken, that it should rise up no more to vex them, as when a serpents head is, not wounded only but, crushed and trampled underfoot, so that it cannot again lift itself up. The promises of God are conditioned by our not falling back into sin. He saith to Nineveh, God will not deliver Judah to thee, as He delivered the ten tribes and Samaria. Judah suddent under Hezekiah, and He not only delivered it from Sennacherib, but he never afflicted them again through Assyria. Renewal of sin brings renewal or deepening of punishment. The new and more grievous sins under Manasseh were punished, not through Assyria but through the Chaldeans.
The words have passed into a maxim, God will not punish the same thing twice, not in this world and the world to come, ie, not if suddenly of. For of the impenitent it is said, destroy them with a double destruction Jer 17:18. Chastisement here is a token of Gods mercy; the absence of it, or prosperous sin, of perdition; but if any refuse to be corrected, the chastisement of this life is but the beginning of unending torments.
Source: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Nah 1:9-10
What do ye imagine against the Lord?
Without
YO. The essence of sin is suggested. It is hostility to God. It is contrary to the laws, purposes, Spirit of God. It involves–
1. The base of ingratitude.
two. The greatest injustice.
3. Impious assumption.
II. The seat of sin is suggested. It is in the mind. Without is not language, not mere actions. Sin is in the deep mute thoughts of the hearts. As a man thinketh in his heart of him, so is he.
III. The folly of sin is suggested. It is opposition to Omnipotence. In opposing Him, remember–
1. He will completely ruin you.
two. He will completely ruin you, whatever the kind of resistance you may offer. Fighting against God is a mad fight. (homilist.)
Folly of opposing God
Without, when it is mightiest and most successful, it is transient. Lord Rosebery has been telling us the story of Napoleon the Great. His energy, his intellect, his genius were such that he enlarges the scope of human achievement. Once he fought the Austrians for five consecutive days without taking off his boots or closing his eyes. He was as much the first ruler as the first captain in the world. Ordinary measures do not apply to him; we seem to be trying to span a mountain with a tape. Napoleon was the largest personal force that has come into the modern European world. But his career ended in defeat and exile. At forty-six the man who had dreamed of governing a continent was a captive. His conquests of him left no mark. The kings whom he made lost their thrones. France was beggared and exhausted by him. why? Because God was not his God of him. I am not a man like other men, he asserted himself; the laws of morality could not be intended to apply to me. Therefore I will fear nothing, though wickedness seems to prosper for a time. Such prosperity has not remained about it. It is better to walk humbly with God than to stand alone on the proudest eminence in the world. (A. Smellie, MA)
While they be folded together as thorns.—
national undergrowth
Illustrate by the undergrowth in a great forest. It must be cut; down before anything hopeful can be done with the soil There is a national moral undergrowth: a brutal, vile, wretched population of a most repulsive and dangerous character. Ignorance, sensuality, violence, and irreligion, fostered and perpetuated by drunkenness, forms a dismal, moral undergrowth, where human tigers watch for prey, where foul habits breed disease, where women lose all beauty and joy, and where children–the offspring of immoral parents-are like a nest of unclean birds. What is to be done with this deadly moral undergrowth? Soft measures, easy-going, self-indulgent Christianity are of no use here.
1. Let us take increased care that good and precious seed shall be sown in the hearts of the young. This is of paramount and urgent importance. Take care of the little ones.
two. Seek to reach the people who never enter places of worship.
3. Endeavor to abate incentives to drunkenness.
Four. Consecrate yourselves afresh to God, and the work of His kingdom. (George W. McCree.)
Source: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 9. Affliction shall not rise up the second time.]There shall be no need to repeat the judgment; with one blow God will make a full end of the business.
Source: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Having declared the dreadfulness of Gods power and anger against the wicked, his goodness towards his people, and denounced future destruction against the Ninevites and Assyrians, he doth now expostulate with them, would know what it is they think of God, what it is they design against him, and on what ground they flatter themselves into such an attempt.
Against the Lord, the God of Israel; for however you, O Ninevites and Assyrians, will look only upon a poor, afflicted people, (weakened by many wars,) and design to swallow them up, yet they are the people of the Lord, and you design against him what you design against them.
He will make an utter end; he will make your utter desolation to be the issue of your projects, and the punishment of your sins: see Nah 1:8.
Affliction shall not rise up the second time; when that storm which shall overthrow you is past, no other shall arise, because you shall be no more; as if the prophet had said, God will at once and for ever destroy your empire and city.
Source: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
9. What do ye imagine against the Lord? abrupt address to the Assyrians. How mad is your attempt, O Assyrians, to resist so powerful a God! What can ye do against such an adversary, successful though ye have been against all other adversaries? Ye imagine ye have to do merely with mortals and with a weak people, and that so you will gain an easy victory; but you have to encounter God, the protector of His people from him. Parallel to Isaiah 37:23-29;compare ps 1:1.
he will make an utter end The utter overthrow of Sennacherib’s host, soon about to take place, is an earnest of the “utter end” of Nineveh itself.
affliction shall not rise up the second time Judah’s “affliction” caused by the invasion shall never rise again. SW Na1:12. But CALVIN takes the “affliction” to be that of Assyria: “There will be no need of His inflicting on you a second blow: He will make an utter end of you once for all” (1Sa 3:12;1Sa 26:8; 2Sa 20:10).If so, this verse, in contrast to Na1:12, will express, Affliction shall visit the Assyrian no more, in a sense very different from that in which God will afflict Judah no more. In the Assyrian’s case, because the blow will be fatally final; the latter, because God will make lasting blessedness in Judah’s case succeed temporary chastisement. But it seems simpler to refer “affliction” here, as in Na1:12, unto Judah; indeed destruction, rather than affliction, applies to the Assyrian.
Source: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
What do ye imagine against the Lord?…. Or ye Ninevites or Assyrians; do you think you can frustrate the designs of the Lord, resist his power, and hinder him from executing what he has threatened and has determined to do? or what mischief is it you devise against his people from him, which is the same as against himself? can you believe that you shall prosper and succeed, and your schemes be carried into execution, when he, the all wise and all powerful Being, opposes you?
he will make an utter end; of you, as before declared, and will save his people from him; which may be depended on will certainly be the case:
affliction shall not rise up the second time; either this should be the last effort the Assyrians would make upon the Jews, which they made under Sennacherib, and this the last time they would afflict them; or rather their own destruction should be so complete that there would be no need to repeat the stroke, or give another blow; the business would be done at…