By Jones

Alright, I just read Nahum, one of the prophetic books of the Bible, not even five minutes ago, so this is straight-up initial reaction. I’d like to expand on these thoughts later on, but I thought I’d write something down real quick just so I don’t forget it.

There’s a lot about the nature of our God revealed in the first little bit of Nahum (and it’s a very small book, so it wouldn’t hurt to go read it real quick - honestly, took me about seven minutes or so).

The first bit deals with some attributes of God that we 21-century folks may want to initially cringe and back away from. Those attributes are the jealousy, wrath, and vengeance of God (I was reading from the New Living Translation, so I don’t know how the other translations read right now). It says that God “takes revenge on all that oppose Him and furiously destroys His enemies” (1:2).

We really don’t spend much time thinking about that. And those aren’t necessarily our childhood Sunday School memory verses.

The next verse says that God is also slow to anger. But when we think about someone we know who may be jealous and wrathful, we often don’t, in the next thought, imagine that same person to be slow to anger.

This issue of God being a wrathful God, a jealous God who seeks revenge and restitution, used to be a big problem with me. And it made reading much of the Old Testament a bit of a problem as well.

But today I paused for a minute, and asked myself these questions:

1) How do we define “jealousy” and “wrath” today, and are these definitions justifiable in a biblical context (or are they, so to speak, “fluff” definitions created by pansy pop-psychologists who would prefer we all pop a xanax and get on with our lives)?

and

2) What are the objects of all of God’s attributes/emotions that we, in the Freudian West, may find a bit disconcerting?

And then I got to thinking about jealousy and wrath. And jealousy, even though it’s really frowned upon by our xanax distributors, IS a very real emotion, usually involving someone or some thing that we highly value, to the point of thinking that our lives would be absolutely no good without them or it. Often times, this jealousy is a result of misapplied or misdirected value placement, so we do indeed usually see jealousy as an ugly head being reared (i.e. jealous abusive boyfriend, smothering parents who are so jealous of their children they won’t allow them to live a normal life, etc.).

But imagine God, who loves His church as a husband loves a bride (see Song of Solomon and Revelation for more info on that), and imagine how He feels when He knows His bride is cheating on Him with Sin. Imagine how God feels when He knows that this Sin fellow is absolutely no-good. Sin is, in fact, disease ridden, unemployed, and very, very contagious. But God’s bride, the Church (in Old Testament context, Israel), keeps hanging around Sin, thinking to herself, “Well, I’m not cheating on my husband. We’re just having lunch. I don’t know why He’s so jealous. And besides, Sin makes me laugh. He seems like a good guy.”

Imagine the furious jealousy that God feels when He sees His bride flirting and, ultimately, sleeping with this darkness behind His back.

After I thought about that for a bit, I came to the conclusion that God’s jealousy for His people is rooted in nothing but goodness and love. And His furious jealousy is a direct result of His furious love.

So the object of God’s jealousy, His people, justifies and allows us to better define that jealousy. And really, it allows us to thank Him and praise Him for it.

Next comes the wrath and vengeance aspect.

Nahum told us that God will take revenge on those who oppose Him and furiously destroy His enemies.

Sounds a bit militant, right?

Well, I’m not a very militant fellow. Meaning, I don’t fancy kevlar vests with dynamite on ‘em, and I most definitely don’t spend my time thinking about ways to get the better of my hell-bound Buddhist neighbor. Mainly because I don’t have a Buddhist neighbor.

And when I read those verses in the Bible, I’m inclined to immediately judge those phrases, and catch myself saying “Well, that’s a bit harsh,” or, “That’s just as bad as militant Islam.”

But is it, in the context of who God is, and who God’s enemies really are?

If you see God as the source of all goodness, all joy, all love, all hope, all everything-you-can-think-of-that’s-possibly-worth-something-in-this-life, then you begin to see that, yeah, God SHOULD take revenge on His enemies, and destroy them. Because God’s enemies are all badness, all sorrow, all sadness, all hatred, all despair, and all everything-you-can-think-of-that’s-possibly-not-worth-something-in-this-life.

In that context, it’s not about God getting pissed and stomping on the little people. And honestly, that’s how some folks see it, and that’s why they discredit the Bible sometimes.

But rather, it’s about goodness triumphing over badness. Right over wrong. Life over death.

This is where Mr. Freud says, “But what IS ‘good?’ What IS ‘right?’ What IS ‘life?’”

I don’t think you can argue with relativists like that. Just punch them in the face and take their cookies. (Then, when they object, ask them why, and when they start blubbering about the cookies being “theirs,” and their nose hurting, just say “What’s a cookie, and what’s a nose?” Then enjoy your cookies.)

But really, it always has been about the cross. Even in the Old Testament, when we wonder why God seems so tribalistic and wrathful, we know that He, in His ultimate wisdom and goodness, worked all things to the good, to the cross, and to the resurrection of Jesus Christ for our salvation.

So the next time you read your Bible, and someone objects, and says, “But God seems so angry and jealous and wrathful in the Old Testament,” simply close the Bible, smile, and say,

“Thank God.”

‘Cause the Old Testament is the record of God, thinking about you.