Albert Barnes Commentary Nahum 1:15

"Behold, upon the mountains the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace! Keep thy feasts, O Judah, perform thy vows; for the wicked one shall no more pass through thee; he is utterly cut off." — Nahum 1:15 (ASV)

Behold upon the mountains, the feet of him that brings good tidings, that publishes peace (Nahum 1:15) - From mountain-top to mountain-top by beacon-fires they spread the glad tidings. Suddenly the deliverance comes, sudden its announcement. “Behold!” Judah, previously hindered by armies from going up to Jerusalem, its cities taken (2 Kings 18:13), may now again “keep the feasts” there, and “pay the vows,” which “in trouble she promised.” “For the wicked one,” the ungodly Sennacherib, “is utterly cut off, he shall no more pass through you;” “the army and king and empire of the Assyrians have perished.”

But the words of prophecy cannot be bound down to this. These large promises, which, concerning this world, were forfeited in the next reign when Manasseh was taken captive to Babylon, and still more in the seventy years’ captivity, and even more in the captivity that has lasted until now, look for a fulfillment as they stand.

They sound so absolute: “I will afflict you no more” (Nahum 1:12); “the wicked shall no more pass through you; he is utterly cut off” (Nahum 1:15). Nahum connects this significant, complete deliverance from a temporal enemy to the final deliverance of the people of God. The invasion of Sennacherib was an avowed conflict with God Himself; it was a defiance of God. He intended to make God’s people his own; he would “cut it off that it be no more a people, and that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance” (Psalms 83:4). There was a more “evil counselor” behind, whose agent was Sennacherib.

He, as he is the author of all murders and strife, so he has a special hatred for the Church, whether before or since Christ’s Coming. Before Christ’s coming, his aim was that he might cut off that Line from whom “the Seed of the woman” should be born, who would destroy his empire and crush him, and that he might devour the Child who was to be born (Revelation 12:4).

Since Christ’s coming, he hates the Church because her members are his freed captives, she makes inroads on his kingdom, and he hates them because he hates God and Christ who dwells in them.

As the time of our Lord’s birth neared, his hate became more concentrated. God overruled the hatred of Edom or Moab, or the pride of Assyria, for His own ends, to preserve Israel by chastening it. Their hatred was from the evil one, because they were God’s people, the seed of Abraham, the tribe of Judah, the line of David.

If they could be cut off—they from whom Christ was to be born according to the flesh—then, it seemed, the hope of the world would be gone. Sennacherib then was not merely a picture; he was the agent of Satan, who used his hands, feet, and tongue to blaspheme God and wage war against His people.

Therefore, as we look not merely to the agent but to the principal, and should address him through those he employed (as Elisha said of the messenger who came to slay him, “Is not the sound of his master’s feet behind him?” (2 Kings 6:32)), so the prophet’s words chiefly and most fully apply to the instigator of Sennacherib, whose very name he names: Belial. It is the deliverance of the Church and the people of God that he foretells and for which he thanks God.

To the Church he says in the Name of God, “Though I have afflicted you, I will afflict you no more” (Nahum 1:12).

The yoke which He will burst is the yoke of the oppressor, of which Isaiah speaks, and which the Son, to be born of a Virgin, “the Mighty God, the Prince of Peace,” was to break (Isaiah 9:4, 9:6).

This is also the yoke of sin and the bands of fleshly pleasure and evil habits, with which we were held captive, so that from then on we should walk upright, unbowed, look up to heaven our home, and “run the way of Your commandments when You have set my heart at liberty” (Psalms 119:32).

Behold then, “upon the mountains,” that is, above all the height of this world, “the feet of him that brings good tidings,” that is, of remission of sins and sanctification by the Spirit, the freedom and adoption as sons, and the casting out of the Prince of this world, “that publishes peace.” “O Judah,” you, the true people of God, “keep your solemn feasts” (Nahum 1:15), the substance of the figures of the law.

“He who is ever engaged on the words, deeds, and thoughts of Him, who is by nature Lord, the Word of God, ever lives in His days, ever keeps Lord’s days. Yes, he who ever prepares himself for the true life and abstains from the sweets of this life which deceive many, and who does not cherish the mind of the flesh but chastens the body and enslaves it, is ever keeping the days of preparation.

He too who thinks that Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us, and that we must keep festival, eating the flesh of the Word, there is no time when he does not keep the Passover, ever passing over in thought and every word and deed from the affairs of this life to God, and hastening to His city.

Moreover, whoever can say truthfully, we have risen together with Christ, yes and also, He has together raised us and together seated us in the heavenly places in Christ, ever lives in the days of Pentecost; and chiefly, when, going up into the upper room as the Apostles of Jesus, he gives himself to supplication and prayer, that he may become worthy of the rushing mighty wind from heaven, which mightily effaces the evil in men and its fruits, worthy too of some portion of the fiery tongue from God.”

“Such a one will keep the feast excellently, having his faith in Christ fixed, hallowed by the Spirit, glorious with the grace of adoption. And he will offer to God spiritual sacrifice, consecrating himself for an aroma of sweetness, cultivating also every kind of virtue: temperance, continence, fortitude, endurance, charity, hope, love of the poor, goodness, long-suffering—for with such sacrifices God is well pleased. Every power of the enemy, which previously had dominion over him, shall pass through no more, since Christ commanded the unclean spirits to depart into the abyss and gives to those who love Him power to resist the enemy, subdue the passions, destroy sin, and tread on serpents and scorpions and every power of the enemy.”

And these feasts were to be kept “in the spirit, not in the letter. For what does it avail to keep any feast outwardly, unless there is the feast of contemplation in the soul?” Therefore he adds, “and pay your vows” (Nahum 1:15), that is, yourself, whom in Baptism you have vowed: for the Wicked One shall no more pass through you.

“For from what time, O Judah, Christ, by dying and rising again, hallowed your feasts, he can no longer pass through you. From then on he perished wholly. Not that he has, in substance, ceased to be, but that the death of the human race, which through his envy came into this world—the twofold death of body and soul—wholly perishes.

Where and when did this Belial perish? When did the death which he brought in die, from which he himself is also called Death? When Christ died, then the death of our souls died; and when Christ rose again, then the death of our bodies perished. When then, O Judah, you keep your feast, remember that your very feast is He, of whom you say that by dying He conquered death and by rising He restored life. Hence it is said, Belial shall no more pass through you (Nahum 1:15).

For if you look to that alone—that Sennacherib departed, to return no more, and perished—it would not be true to say, Belial has wholly perished! For after him many a Belial, such as he was, passed through time, and hurt you far more.

Perhaps you say, ‘So long as Nineveh stands, how do you say that Belial has wholly perished? So long as the world stands, how shall I be comforted that death has perished? For look! persecutors wielding death have stormed, and besides them, many sons of Belial, of whom antichrist will be the worst. How then do you say that Belial has wholly perished?’

It follows, “The Scatterer has gone up before you” (Nahum 2:1). To Judah in the flesh, Nebuchadnezzar, who went up against Nineveh, was worse than Sennacherib. Who then is He who went up before you and dispersed the world, that great Nineveh, that you should have full consolation? Christ who descended, Himself ascended; and as He ascended, so shall He come to disperse Nineveh, that is, to judge the world.

Whatever any persecutor does meanwhile, yes, or the Devil himself or antichrist, takes nothing from the truth that Belial has “wholly perished.” “The prince of this world is cast out” (John 12:31). For nothing which they do, or can do, hinders that both deaths of body and soul are swallowed up in His victory, He who has ascended to heaven. Belial cannot, in the members, kill the soul which has been made alive by the death of the Head, that is, Christ. And as for the death of the body, it is so certain that it will perish, that you may say fearlessly that it has perished, since Christ the Head has risen.”

Each fall of an enemy of the Church, each recovery of a sinful soul being a part of this victory, the words may be applied to each. The Church or the soul is instructed to keep the feast and pay its vows, whatever in its trouble it promised to God.

Jerome says: “It is said to souls which confess the Lord, that the devil who, before, wasted you and bowed you with that most heavy yoke has, in and with the idols which you made for yourself, perished. Keep your feasts and pay to God your vows, singing with the angels continually, for no more shall Belial pass through you, of whom the apostle too says, What concord has Christ with Belial? (2 Corinthians 6:15).

The words too, “Behold upon the mountains the feet of him that brings good tidings, that publishes peace” (Nahum 1:15), belong, in a degree, to all preachers of the Gospel.

“No one can preach peace who is himself below and cleaves to earthly things. For wars are for the good things of earth. If you would preach peace to yourself and your neighbor, be raised above the earth and its goods, riches, and glory. Ascend to the heavenly mountains, from where David also, lifting up his eyes, hoped that his help would come.”