Nahum 1:4

"He rebuketh the sea, and maketh it dry, and drieth up all the rivers: Bashan languisheth, and Carmel; and the flower of Lebanon languisheth."

"He rebuketh the sea ... maketh it dry ..." Many great cities of the earth are today built where once the waters of the ocean rolled; and this is especially true of Houston, Texas, where a few miles farther inland, near Hempstead, one may still discern "The Old Ocean Shore Line." God who did such things in the past still has the power to do such things now. Valleys that are now arid deserts once supported civilizations; and in Arizona one may see the "Petrified Forest!" Who but God could have been responsible for such changes?

"Bashan ... Carmel ... Lebanon ..." These names are associated with the richest and most-favored dwelling places of antiquity; and they were mentioned here to show that no place on earth is beyond the judgment of God when the sins of its inhabitants require their punishment. The Tigris valley, where Nineveh lay, was another of the garden spots of the earth; but there is nothing there now!

Barnes pointed out that God's making the sea dry "was exactly what he had done in delivering his people from Pharaoh, a type of all subsequent oppressors";[4] and that fact was well known to all the nations of antiquity. The harlot on the walls of Jericho stated forty years after the event that, "The fear of God had fallen upon all of them" because of it.