When we teach Genesis 12–50 in our ninth grade class titled Story of God, we lead students through two close readings about Jacob. The first reading focuses on the chaos inducing, goat suit episode where Jacob deceives his father. The second focuses on Jacob’s return, twenty years later, when he seems to have been beaten down by life and ready to begin depending on Yahweh. We emphasize how Abraham’s family is learning how to participate with God, but slowly.

I think Nahum 2:3/2 supports this perspective on the life of Jacob.

For Yahweh has turned/restored the pride/majesty of Jacob like the pride/majesty of Israel, though plunderers have plundered them and ruined their branches. (Nahum 2:3 [English 2:2])

It seems that Nahum is drawing an analogy between Jacob’s story and the future of his people. When Yahweh restores his people, they will change like Jacob, who went from a person full of pride (גְּאוֹן) to a person with a new name, Israel, one whose character drastically develops towards more and more honor (גְּאוֹן). Finally, at the end of Genesis, Jacob-Israel is the one who prophetically and poetically casts visions of the future of Abraham’s family, including an eternal kingdom that will come from Judah (Genesis 49).

In Nahum 2:3/2, there’s a word play on the positive and negative ways that גְּאוֹן can be understood. In English, we have both positive and negative ways to understand pride, too. I’m reminded of a line from one of my favorite bands, The Avett Brothers:

I wanna have pride, like my mother has,

but not like the kind in the Bible that turns you bad.¹

I was encouraged to see Daniel Timmer reads Nahum 2:3/2 similarly:

… the juxtaposition of the two names [Jacob and Israel] suggests that this verse should be related to the Jacob narrative, where Jacob’s name is changed to Israel following his encounter with God. The contrast in Gen 32 is between Jacob who habitually deceives and Israel who struggles successfully with God and is not only spared, but given the promise that he will prevail with divine aid. The promise in Nahum would thus be that God will restore to Jacob (Judah in a lackluster spiritual condition) the “majesty” that was associated with Israel (i.e., Jacob) after his struggle with God and the blessing and new name he received at its end.10 This makes good sense in context, and also develops smoothly from the mildly negative nuance in 1:12 regarding God’s punishment of Judah for its prior sin and through the transitional 2:1 [1:15], which strikes a slightly positive note.²

If this take on Nahum 2:3 is correct, it is another example of The Book of the Twelve making subtle references to key characters in Genesis through Kings, like I argued with Hosea’s reference to Jonah. These subtle narrative analogies invite readers to expand their imagination and ponder “more than they can ask or imagine.”

How can Yahweh possibly change my situation? Nahum says, “Just like he did Jacob’s.”

1. “The Perfect Space,” The Avett Brothers (Apple Music) ↩
2. Daniel C. Timmer, Nahum: The Divine Warrior as Avenger and Deliverer, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the Old Testament (Zondervan Academic, 2020), 124. ↩