Passage
A jealous and avenging God is Yahweh; Yahweh is avenging and wrathful. Yahweh is avenging against His adversaries, And He keeps His anger for His enemies.
Nahum 1:2 (LSB)
Nearby Context
Nahum 1:1 The oracle of Nineveh. The book of the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite.
Nahum 1:2 A jealous and avenging God is Yahweh; Yahweh is avenging and wrathful. Yahweh is avenging against His adversaries, And He keeps His anger for His enemies.
Nahum 1:3 Yahweh is slow to anger and great in power, And Yahweh will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. In whirlwind and storm is His way, And clouds are the dust beneath His feet.
Nahum 1:4 He rebukes the sea and makes it dry; He dries up all the rivers. Bashan and Carmel languish; The blossoms of Lebanon languish.
Study Lenses
The verse centers on "jealous", "avenging", "yahweh", and "wrathful". It is saying that the verse draws attention to "jealous" and "avenging", so its meaning should be read from those terms before moving to application.
The nearby context moves from verse 1's "The oracle of Nineveh The book of..." into verse 3's "Yahweh is slow to anger and great...", so "jealous" and "avenging" belong inside that flow. In Nahum context, the local focus is covenant, worship, and faithfulness.
A plain takeaway is to answer the verse's own emphasis on "jealous" and "avenging" with trust shaped by these words, not by a vague optimism outside the passage.