Scholarly comments are given in brackets after each verse.
Chapter 1
1 Prophecy about Nineveh; the book of visions of Nahum Elkoseyanin. (The birthplace of Nahum was a small Jewish town Elkosh, Nahum prophesied at the same time as Zephaniah).
2 The Lord is a jealous and avenging God; the Lord is avenging and terrible in anger: the Lord takes vengeance on His enemies and will not spare His adversaries. (A zealot and an avenger is an exact description of the vindictive priests of Judaism, who in every possible way took revenge on all their enemies).
3 The Lord is long-suffering and great in power, and does not leave without punishment; in the whirlwind and in the tempest is the procession of the Lord; the cloud is the dust from his feet. (All kinds of natural phenomena were attributed by ancient people to God, who allegedly creates all this).
4 He rebuke the sea, and it dries up, and all the rivers dry up; Bashan and Carmel wither, and the color fades in Lebanon. (Everything, they say, is done in the world only by order of God).
5 The mountains tremble before Him, and the hills melt, and the earth trembles before Him, and the world and all who live in it. (Everything, they say, is done in the world only by order of God).
6 Who can stand before His indignation? And who can endure the fire of His wrath? His wrath spills like fire; the rocks crumble before Him. (Everything, they say, is done in the world only by order of God).
7 The Lord is good, a refuge in the day of trouble, and he knows those who trust in him. (The concept of "the Almighty" bizarrely mixed the features of the ancient god of nomads, the god of the storm and the desert, with the image of the god of the whole world).
8 But with an overwhelming flood he will destroy [Nineveh] to its foundations, and darkness will overtake His enemies. (Yahweh, that is, the priests of Judaism, directed his wrath against Nineveh, the capital of Assyria).
9 What do you think against the Lord? He will make an extermination, and the disaster will not be repeated, (Nineveh (the dwelling or city of Nina), the history of Nineveh dates back to the 5th millennium BC; in biblical times it was the capital city of the Assyrian kingdom (VIII-VII centuries BC Nineveh was located on the banks of the Tigris River (now the hills of Kuyundzhik and Tel-Nebi-Yunus, Iraq) In 612 BC it was taken by the troops of the Babylonians and Medes).
