Things that make you go Na-hum

A God of jealousy
and one who takes vengeance is the LORD;
one who takes vengeance is the LORD
and a master of wrath.
One who takes vengeance is the LORD
toward his adversaries;
and he reserves wrath
for his enemies. -- Nahum 1:2

The impact of Nahum's poetic structure is felt immediately as the prophet opens with a picture of God's person as judge. He is a God of jealousy, one who takes vengeance, a master of wrath who reserves (wrath) for his enemies.

Generally jealousy conveys a negative image. The jealous man makes even his loved ones miserable. But God's jealousy must be seen in a different light. God is "jealous" or "zealous" that his own honor be maintained. A departure from the wholehearted submission to God can only bring chaos into the world. Once a person creates in his mind another god, moral disorder follows inevitably. If covetousness idolizes the material creation, then the unending grasping for more will result in the horrors of war (cf. James 4:1-3).

If the intellect becomes a god to human beings, the consequences will be horrible, no matter how noble a person's ideas may appear. For deifying a platonic realm of ideas leads to an imbalanced neglect of material realities. Embracing a Kantian distinction between a scientific realm of the phenomenal and a spiritual realm of the noumenal gives the illusion that it provides the correct key for the coexistence of science and religion for the modern person.

But in the end, the separation of the noumenal from the phenomenal naturally will result in an ethic of the "categorical imperative," in which a person's inherent "ought" becomes the test of what is morally right. But as history has proved, that "ought" may promote the annihilation of a race as well as the loving of the neighbor.

Only the whole-souled worship of the one true living God can assure a harmonious balance in the world so that all aspects of creation receive their proper due. God's "jealousy" clearly has the best interest of his creation in view. Just as a screeching mother mockingbird terrorizes any feline that comes near her nest, so the Lord zealously hovers over his own to avert any rival to his sovereignty and centrality.

-- O. Palmer Robertson, The Books of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah, pp. 59-60