Peter Pett's Commentary on the Bible
Nahum 3 - Introduction
Chapter 3 Why Nineveh Deserves Its Fate.
The prophet now explains why this is to happen to Assyria
‘Woe to the bloody city, it is all full of lies and booty. Its spoils (or ‘the prey') do not leave it. The crack of the whip, and the rumbling of wheels, and prancing horses and bounding chariots! Horsemen charging, and flashing sword and glittering spear, and a host of slain and a great heap of corpses. And there is no end to the dead bodies --they stumble over their bodies!'
This is the grisly fate of Nineveh, as it had been for the many cities from which they had filled their treasure houses and sated their pride. It was not without reason that he named it ‘the bloody city'. It was a city filled with the rewards of blood, and of men boasting about having shed blood, and it was also full of deceit and booty. Sham, hollowness, pretence, all vied with each other and there was booty beyond counting. Nor were their spoils used to benefit others. They remained within the city. This could describe many of our modern cities today, their lives a constant pretence and show, their wealth built on the poverty of others. Why should their inhabitants escape the fate of Nineveh?
Alternately we may read ‘the prey does not leave it' meaning that many Ninevites are made a prey and cannot flee the city.
But then came the crack of the whip, the rattling of wheels, the prancing of horses and their riders, and the bounding forward of chariots. The flashing sword, the glittering spear, the piles of corpses, corpses without end. Their nemesis had arrived. It was the end that they had never believed would come. This was to be the fate of Nineveh, but why?
‘Because of the countless harlotries of the beautiful prostitute, the mistress of witchcrafts, who betrays nations with her harlotries, and peoples through her witchcrafts.'
This could almost be transferred as it is to Revelation 17, although there it was Babylon the Great. But Babylon the Great sums up all large cities, and Nineveh is one of them and a part of the whole.
Her fate came because like a prostitute she had attracted men to what she had to offer. She had offered occult practises, sexual perversion, false religion, political favour and indecent wealth in a poor and struggling world. And she had offered pleasure beyond telling. And people had flocked to her and had been degraded, and had become like her. She had even tried to turn YHWH's people against Him, offering the very things that He had offered (2 Kings 18:31), but with a very different purpose and with a very different intent.
“Behold I am against you,” says YHWH of hosts, “and will lift up your skirts over your face; and I will let nations look on your nakedness and kingdoms on your shame. I will throw horrible filth at you and treat you with contempt, and make you a gazingstock. And it shall be that all who look on you will shrink from you and say, ‘Wasted is Nineveh; who will bemoan her?' ”
Because of her sins God will lay Nineveh bare. She will be the laughing stock and abhorrence of nations. The picture is of a disgraced prostitute, grown old and unwanted, and therefore treated with abhorrence and contempt. Those who had once vied for her attention and paid for her favours, now treated her disgracefully and pretended that they had never known her. What she truly was has been revealed. And no one wants her any more. That is the consequence of the life that she had chosen. (But her despisers are as bad, or worse, than she was. There are none who should not feel ashamed). She had offered them a delusion, and now she was exposed, and the same nations who had honoured her, now looked at her in horror. If you lead people into sin they will not thank you in the end. For all will in the end be exposed as what they are like Nineveh. For God will bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing (Ecclesiastes 12:14). One day what is done in darkness will be revealed in the light (Luke 12:3).
“From where shall I seek comforters for you? Are you better than No-amon (Thebes) which was situated among the rivers, which had waters round about her. Whose rampart was the River (the Nile), and whose wall was of the River? Sudan and Egypt were her strength, and it was immeasurable, Put and the Libyans were your helpers. Yet she was carried away, she went into captivity. Her young children also were dashed in pieces at the top of every street, and they cast lots for her honourable men, and her great men were bound in chains.”
Thebes was captured by the Assyrians in 663 BC. The fathers of these very Ninevites had descended on her and destroyed her, even though she was a great city, protected by surrounding water and strong walls, and had powerful allies. Her king was Sudanese, who at this time ruled Egypt. Yes, Nineveh had destroyed her, and taken away her finest people into captivity (a particularly nasty trait of the Assyrians and Babylonians), and had slaughtered her innocent children, and had made slaves of her nobles and had bound in chains her finest warriors.
And now what she had done to Thebes was to be done to her. She too would be shamed. And why should she see herself as any different? We must remember that how we treat others is the measure by which we should expect to be treated.
“You also will be drunken, you will be hidden; you will seek a refuge because of the enemy. All your fortresses will be like fig trees with first-ripe figs, if they are shaken they fall into the mouth of the eater. Behold, your troops in your midst are women. The gates of your land are set wide open to your foes; the fire has devoured your bars.”
This is the picture of defeated Assyria, a people with no hope, a pitiable sight. On the run from their enemies, drinking heavily in order to drown their sorrows, hiding because they are afraid, seeking for safe refuge in their last few remaining cities. But her fortresses will be easily taken, as easily as shaking first-ripe figs from a fig tree. Her troops will be like women (in those days seen as incapable of fighting), her gates useless, their bars unable to keep out the enemy. The result is that the bars will be burned once the city has fallen, proof of their humiliation. Her proud strength will become firewood.
“Draw yourselves water for the siege, strengthen your forts; go into the clay, and tread the mortar, take hold of the brick mould! There will the fire devour you, the sword will cut you off. It will devour you like the young locust.”
All her efforts to save herself will be in vain. She may draw water for the siege, strengthen her forts, erect new defences and new buildings, but even while she makes the attempt she will perish. Fire and sword will do their work. And just as the young locust descends on the land, devouring until nothing is left, so will their enemies descend on them and devour them.
“Multiply yourselves like the locust, multiply yourselves like the grasshopper! You have increased your merchants more than the stars of the heavens. The locust spreads its wings and flies away. Your princes are like grasshoppers, your scribes like clouds of locusts, settling on the fences in a day of cold, but when the sun rises, they fly away; and no one knows where they are”
Assyria was constantly expanding and growing rich, boasting at her prosperous economy and the huge numbers of her merchants, as they multiplied like locusts and grasshoppers, and even more than the stars of heaven. But her merchant princes are grasshoppers, her accountants (scribes) in their huge numbers are locusts, they have flown in and settled there because circumstances are favourable, but as soon as there is a change of circumstance, and there is no more for them there, they will disappear to where the sun shines. No one is more flexible than the merchant. When it comes to the crunch Nineveh only has fair-weather friends.
So nothing lasts for ever. We must therefore ensure we make the most of what we have while we have it. Our wisest move is to lay up our treasure in heaven where the equivalent of the Babylonians cannot reach it, to use it to make lasting friends in eternal habitations (Luke 16:9).
“Your shepherds are asleep, O king of Assyria; your nobles are slumbering. Your people are scattered on the mountains and there is no one to gather them. There is no assuaging your hurt, your wound is grievous. All who hear the news of you clap their hands over you. For on whom has your evil not continually descended?”
The king of Assyria now finds himself helpless. There is no hope of recovery, for it is the act of God. The result is that those who should be caring for the people, their shepherds and nobles, are asleep, and will continue to be so. (This probably signifies that they are mainly dead). The people are left without leaders. They are no longer a united people. His task is therefore in vain for Assyria is wounded with a deadly wound.
Nor will anyone lament her fate. They have suffered too much at her hands. When they hear they will clap with delight. For their suffering under the hand of Assyria has been long and continuing. And now it is over.
So the prophecy is a warning to all nations, and all people, that in the end they must give account to God. It is telling us that the selfish multiplying of riches can only in the end result in sorrow. What a man sows he will reap.