(Please read the Scripture passage before the homily.)
The prophet Nahum fits, somehow, between Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Jeremiah warned the people about the coming exile; Ezekiel prepared the people for the return from exile. What about Nahum?
He was the prophet of the destruction of the Assyrian Empire whose capital was Nineveh. Th Assyrians are the one who destroyed the Northern kingdom in 722 BCE. What the Assyrians did to the northern Israelite tribes, the Babylonians would do for the southern Kingdom and tribes. Eventually, what happened to Nineveh would happen to the Babylonians and the Southern Kingdom would return from Exile to Jerusalem. The Northern Kingdom, however, did not ever return to its own base as a people.
The prophets of Israel, those like Jeremiah, Nahum and Ezekiel, saw nations rivalling God rise and fall. They taught God’s love for them and demanded their faithfulness to God. In our day, the last vestiges of colonialism are dying as peopled who have been impoverished by imperial governments have started demanding their freedom and the recognition of their rights as human beings.
The prophets also call us to see how our attempts to control others or to use them o our own advantage has to stop. Our personal Ninevehs have to be destroyed and the people we have attempted to control must be returned to God’s freedom.
The prophet never speaks only to his or her present generation. The prophet’s message is passed down from yesterday’s today to tomorrow’s today because it is relevant for us in our circumstances.