The Message Remix (274 page)

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Authors: Eugene H. Peterson

BOOK: The Message Remix
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“The day is coming”
—GOD’s Decree—
“When there will be no more war. None.
I’ll slaughter your war horses and demolish your chariots.
I’ll dismantle military posts
and level your fortifications.
I’ll abolish your religious black markets,
your underworld traffic in black magic.
I will smash your carved and cast gods
and chop down your phallic posts.
No more taking control of the world,
worshiping what you do or make.
I’ll root out your sacred sex-and-power centers
and destroy the God-defiant.
In raging anger, I’ll make a clean sweep
of godless nations who haven’t listened.”
What God Is Looking For
 
006
Listen now, listen to GOD:
“Take your stand in court.
If you have a complaint, tell the mountains;
make your case to the hills.
And now, Mountains, hear GOD’s case;
listen, Jury Earth—
For I am bringing charges against my people.
I am building a case against Israel.
“Dear people, how have I done you wrong?
Have I burdened you, worn you out? Answer!
I delivered you from a bad life in Egypt;
I paid a good price to get you out of slavery.
I sent Moses to lead you—
and Aaron and Miriam to boot!
Remember what Balak king of Moab tried to pull,
and how Balaam son of Beor turned the tables on him.
Remember all those stories about Shittim and Gilgal.
Keep all GOD’s salvation stories fresh and present.”
How can I stand up before GOD
and show proper respect to the high God?
Should I bring an armload of offerings
topped off with yearling calves?
Would GOD be impressed with thousands of rams,
with buckets and barrels of olive oil?
Would he be moved if I sacrificed my firstborn child,
my precious baby, to cancel my sin?
 
But he’s already made it plain how to live, what to do,
what GOD is looking for in men and women.
It’s quite simple: Do what is fair and just to your neighbor,
be compassionate and loyal in your love,
And don’t take yourself too seriously—
take God seriously.
Attention! GOD calls out to the city!
If you know what’s good for you, you’ll listen.
So listen, all of you!
This is serious business.
 
“Do you expect me to overlook obscene wealth
you’ve piled up by cheating and fraud?
Do you think I’ll tolerate shady deals
and shifty scheming?
I’m tired of the violent rich
bullying their way with bluffs and lies.
I’m fed up. Beginning now, you’re finished.
You’ll pay for your sins down to your last cent.
No matter how much you get, it will never be enough—
hollow stomachs, empty hearts.
No matter how hard you work, you’ll have nothing to show for it—
bankrupt lives, wasted souls.
You’ll plant grass
but never get a lawn.
You’ll make jelly
but never spread it on your bread.
You’ll press apples
but never drink the cider.
You have lived by the standards of your king, Omri,
the decadent lifestyle of the family of Ahab.
Because you’ve slavishly followed their fashions,
I’m forcing you into bankruptcy.
Your way of life will be laughed at, a tasteless joke.
Your lives will be derided as futile and fake.”
Stick Around to See What God Will Do
 
007
I’m overwhelmed with sorrow!
sunk in a swamp of despair!
I’m like someone who goes to the garden
to pick cabbages and carrots and corn
And returns empty-handed,
finds nothing for soup or sandwich or salad.
There’s not a decent person in sight.
Right-living humans are extinct.
They’re all out for one another’s blood,
animals preying on each other.
They’ve all become experts in evil.
Corrupt leaders demand bribes.
The powerful rich
make sure they get what they want.
The best and brightest are thistles.
The top of the line is crabgrass.
But no longer: It’s exam time.
Look at them slinking away in disgrace!
Don’t trust your neighbor,
don’t confide in your friend.
Watch your words,
even with your spouse.
Neighborhoods and families are falling to pieces.
The closer they are—sons, daughters, in-laws—
The worse they can be.
Your own family is the enemy.
 
But me, I’m not giving up.
I’m sticking around to see what GOD will do.
I’m waiting for God to make things right.
I’m counting on God to listen to me.
Spreading Your Wings
 
Don’t, enemy, crow over me.
I’m down, but I’m not out.
I’m sitting in the dark right now,
but GOD is my light.
I can take GOD’s punishing rage.
I deserve it—I sinned.
But it’s not forever. He’s on my side
and is going to get me out of this.
He’ll turn on the lights and show me his ways.
I’ll see the whole picture and how right he is.
And my enemy will see it, too,
and be discredited—yes, disgraced!
This enemy who kept taunting,
“So where is this GOD of yours?”
I’m going to see it with these, my own eyes—
my enemy disgraced, trash in the gutter.
 
Oh, that will be a day! A day for rebuilding your city,
a day for stretching your arms, spreading your wings!
All your dispersed and scattered people will come back,
old friends and family from faraway places,
From Assyria in the east to Egypt in the west,
from across the seas and out of the mountains.
But there’ll be a reversal for everyone else—massive depopulation—
because of the way they lived, the things they did.
Shepherd, O GOD, your people with your staff,
your dear and precious flock.
Uniquely yours in a grove of trees,
centered in lotus land.
Let them graze in lush Bashan
as in the old days in green Gilead.
Reproduce the miracle-wonders
of our exodus from Egypt.
And the godless nations: Put them in their place—
humiliated in their arrogance, speechless and clueless.
Make them slink like snakes, crawl like cockroaches,
come out of their holes from under their rocks
And face our GOD.
Fill them with holy fear and trembling.
 
Where is the god who can compare with you—
wiping the slate clean of guilt,
Turning a blind eye, a deaf ear,
to the past sins of your purged and precious people?
You don’t nurse your anger and don’t stay angry long,
for mercy is your specialty. That’s what you love most.
And compassion is on its way to us.
You’ll stamp out our wrongdoing.
You’ll sink our sins
to the bottom of the ocean.
You’ll stay true to your word to Father Jacob
and continue the compassion you showed Grandfather Abraham—
Everything you promised our ancestors
from a long time ago.
INTRODUCTIONNAHUM
 
The stage of history is large. Larger-than-life figures appear on this stage from time to time, swaggering about, brandishing weapons and money, terrorizing and bullying.
These figures are
not, as they suppose themselves to be, at the center of the stage—not,
in fact, anywhere near the center. But they make a lot of noise and are able to call attention to themselves. They often manage to get a significant number of people watching and even admiring: big nations, huge armies, important people.
At any given moment a few superpower nations and their rulers dominate the daily news. Every century a few of these names are left carved on its park benches, marking rather futile, and in retrospect pitiable, attempts at immortality.
The danger is that the noise of these pretenders to power will distract us from what is going on quietly at the center of the stage in the person and action of God. God’s characteristic way of working is in quietness and through prayer. “I speak,” says poet George Meredith, “of the unremarked forces that split the heart and make the pavement toss—forces concealed in quiet people and plants.” If we are conditioned to respond to noise and size, we will miss God’s word and action.
From time to time, God assigns someone to pay attention to one or another of these persons or nations or movements just long enough to get the rest of us to
quit
paying so much attention to them and get back to the main action:
God
! Nahum drew that assignment in the seventh century B.C. Assyria had the whole world terrorized. At the time that Nahum delivered his prophecy, Assyria (and its capital, Nineveh) appeared invincible. A world free of Assyrian domination was unimaginable. Nahum’s task was to make it imaginable—to free God’s people from Assyrian paralysis, free them to believe in and pray to a sovereign God. Nahum’s preaching, his Spirit-born metaphors, his God-shaped syntax, knocked Assyria off her high horse and cleared the field of Nineveh-distraction so that Israel could see that despite her world reputation, Assyria didn’t amount to much. Israel could now attend to what was
really
going on.
Because Nahum has a single message—doom to Nineveh/Assyria—it is easy to misunderstand the prophet as simply a Nineveh-hater. But Nahum writes and preaches out of the large context in which Israel’s sins are denounced as vigorously as those of any of her enemies. The effect of Nahum is not to foment religious hate against the enemy but to say, “Don’t admire or be intimidated by this enemy. They are going to be judged by the very same standards applied to us.”
 
 
From:
Nahum used some of the most graphic imagery in the Bible. He pulled out all the stops in mocking Assyria, but his message was aimed at Israel.
 
To:
Just before Jeremiah started to warn God’s people to turn their attention back to God before it was too late, Nahum cleared the deck. Nahum said they could stop obsessing about Assyria; Jeremiah told them what they’d better worry about instead. In the past, God had used Assyria as his paddle to smack some sense into them, but all they’d learned was to fear Assyria. They thought everything depended on their control: their resources, their schemes, their money, connections, luck. They couldn’t see that God could blow away Assyria like dandelion fluff while raising up another tool: Babylon. Their only hope was to quit maneuvering and trust him.
 
Re:
Between 663 and 612 B.C. Nahum 3:8 refers to Assyria’s brief conquest of Egypt. By this time, Egypt was a faded rose. Egyptian artists, nostalgic for the nation’s glory days, imitated the art of the Old and Middle Kingdoms well enough to trick modern experts. Pharaoh Shabaka tried to reinstate pyramid burials, which hadn’t been done for nearly a thousand years.

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