Nahum's Savage Celebration of Nineveh's Destruction

Nahum is unusual in the Bible: it is not a call to repentance but a war poem celebrating the fall of an enemy. Nineveh — the same city Jonah reluctantly saved — is now condemned with no hope of reprieve. 'Woe to the city of blood, full of lies, full of plunder, never without victims! The crack of whips, the clatter of wheels, galloping horses and jolting chariots, charging cavalry, flashing swords and glittering spears!' He mocks the fallen city: 'Where now is the lions' den, the place where they fed their young? Where the lion and the lioness went, and the cub, with nothing to fear?' Nineveh fell to Babylon in 612 BC. Nahum reads like it was written after the fact.