The Hyperlinked Bible
Intertextuality Pair
Allusion
Later text
Nahum 1:2-3BSB
The LORD is a jealous and avenging God; the LORD is avenging and full of wrath. The LORD takes vengeance on His foes and reserves wrath for His enemies. The LORD is slow to anger and great in power; the LORD will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. His path is in the whirlwind and storm, and clouds are the dust beneath His feet.
Earlier text
Then the LORD passed in front of Moses and called out: "The LORD, the LORD God, is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in loving devotion and faithfulness, maintaining loving devotion to a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin. Yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished; He will visit the iniquity of the fathers on their children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generations."
Nahum 1:2-3 is one of the most significant reuses of Exodus 34:6-7, the foundational creedal statement where God proclaimed Himself "compassionate and gracious, slow to anger (אֶרֶךְ אַפַּיִם, erekh appayim), abounding in loving devotion… Yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished (וְנַקֵּה לֹא יְנַקֶּה)." Nahum quotes the justice side of this creed—"slow to anger," "great in power," "will by no means leave the guilty unpunished"—while conspicuously omitting the mercy language of compassion and loving devotion. This selective quotation is rhetorically devastating: against Nineveh, only the judgment half of God's character is operative. The allusion shows that the same God who forgave Israel after the golden calf (the original context of Exod 34:6-7) stands as implacable judge over the Assyrian oppressor.