The wise leader develops and empowers other leaders to insure their leadership is not limited. Read Nahum 3:18-19.

In chapter 3, Nahum offers a lengthy proclamation of judgment and destruction on Nineveh. He begins in verse 1 by saying, “Woe to the city of blood, full of lies, full of plunder, never without victims.” At the end of chapter 3, God offers insight into one of the fatal weaknesses when He says, “O king of Assyria, your shepherds slumber; your nobles lie down to rest. Your people are scattered on the mountains with no one to gather them.” The leaders at the top of the Assyrian society had not developed other leaders, therefore the people were “scattered” with “no one to gather them.”

God’s leadership can be like a judge or a father depending upon the situation. Read Nahum 1:2-13.

Nahum had the task of prophesying against the most powerful people in the known world. God asked him to help the people living in Nineveh, the capitol city of the Assyrian Empire, to realize the cruelty they had inflicted on other nations, including Israel, was bringing judgment on them; their nation would be destroyed and the people either killed or taken into captivity. Nahum uses the picture of a father and that of a judge to help them understand the serious nature of God’s judgment in this situation.

Each generation of leaders must help the next generation understand that no matter how much power they accumulate they are still accountable to the One True God. Read Nahum 1:1-10.

Just a little more than a century before Nahum’s prophecies, Jonah had taken God’s demand for repentance to the Assyrian capitol of Nineveh. The king and all the leaders had responded immediately by humbling themselves before God and God spared them from destruction. That generation failed to leave any legacy of humility or repentance and the nation returned to the wicked treatment of people that first brought God’s wrath. Unfortunately, children and grandchildren cannot inherit spiritual life so the attitude of repentance was not automatically passed on to the next generation of leaders.

Personal success minus God-honoring character ultimately leads to spiritual bankruptcy. Read Nahum 1-3.

Nineveh was the capitol of the massive, powerful Assyrian Empire. Nahum was an obscure prophet to Judah whom God directed to announce judgment against the people living in the city of Nineveh. Slightly over a century earlier, through the prophet Jonah, God had called the people of Nineveh to repent and they did.