Nahum 3:19

There is no healing - (literally, “dulling”) of thy bruise It cannot be softened or mitigated; and so thy wound is grievous (literally, sick), incurable, for when the wound ever anew inflames, it cannot be healed. The word, bruise, is the more expressive, because it denotes alike the abiding wound in the body Leviticus 21:19, and the shattering of a state, which God can heal Psalms 60:4; Isaiah 30:26, or which may be great, incurable Jeremiah 30:12. When the passions are ever anew aroused, they are at last without remedy; when the soul is ever swollen with pride, it cannot be healed; since only by submitting itself to Christ, “broken and contrite” by humility, can it be healed. Nineveh sank, and never rose; nothing soothed its fall. In the end there shall be nothing to mitigate the destruction of the world, or to soften the sufferings of the damned. The “rich man, being in torments,” asked in vain that Lazarus might “dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue.”

All that hear the bruit of thee shall clap the hands over thee - For none can grieve at thy fall.

Nineveh sinks out of sight amid one universal, exulting, exceeding joy of all who heard the report of her. “For upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually?” “In that he asketh, upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually? He affirms most strongly that his evil did pass upon all continually.” His wickedness, like one continual flood. which knew no ebb or bound, had passed upon the whole world and each one in it; now at length it had passed away, and “the whole earth is at rest, is quiet; they break forth into singing” Isaiah 14:7.

It is not without meaning, that having throughout the prophecy addressed Nineveh (in the feminine), now, in the close Nahum 3:18, the prophet turns to him in whom all its wickedness is, as it were, gathered into one, the soul of all its evil, and the director of it, its king. As Nineveh is the image of the world, its pomps, wealth, luxury, vanity, wickedness, oppression, destruction, so its king is the image of a worse king, the Prince of this world. : “And this is the song of triumph of those, over whom ‘his wickedness has passed,’ not rested, but they have escaped out of his hands. Nahum, ‘the comforter,’ had ‘rebuked the world of sin;’ now he pronounces that ‘the prince of this world is judged.’ ‘His shepherds’ are they who serve him, who ‘feed the flock of the slaughter,’ who guide them to evil, not to good. These, when they sleep, as all mankind, dwell there; it is their abiding-place; their sheep are ‘scattered on the mountains,’ in the heights of their pride, because they are not of the sheep of Christ; and since they would not be gathered of Him, they are ‘scattered, where none gathereth.’” “The king of Assyria (Satan) knows that he cannot deceive the sheep, unless he have first laid the shepherds asleep. It is always the aim of the devil to lay asleep souls that watch. In the Passion of the Lord, he weighed down the eves of the Apostles with heavy sleep, whom Christ arouseth, ‘Watch and pray, lest ye enter into temptation’ Matthew 26:41; and again, ‘What I say unto you, I say unto all, watch!’ ‘And no man gathers them,’ for their shepherds themselves cannot protect themselves. In the Day of God’s anger, ‘the kings of the earth and the great men, and the rich men and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains’ Revelation 6:15. Such are his shepherds, and his sheep; but what of himself?

Truly his bruise or breaking can not he healed; his wound or smiting is incurable; that namely whereby, when he came to Him in whom he found nothing John 14:30, yet bruised His heel, and exacted of Him a sinner’s death, his own head was bruised.” And hence, “all who have ears to hear,” who hear not with the outward only, but with the inner ears of the heart, “clap the hands over thee,” that is, give to God all their souls’ thanks and praise, raise up their eyes and hands to God in heaven, praising Him who had “bruised Satan under their feet.” Ever since, through the serpent, the evil and malicious one has lied, saying, “ye shall not surely die, eat and ye shall be as gods,” hath his evil, continually and unceasingly, from one and through one, passed upon all men. As the apostle saith, “As by one man, sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” Romans 5:12.

Upon whom then hath not his sin paased? Who hath not been shapen in iniquity? and whom did not his mother conceive in sin? Yet, it passes only, for “the world itself also passeth away,” and we pass away from it, and all the evil it can do us, unless we share in its evil, is not abiding, but passing. This then is the cause, and a great cause, why “all that hear the bruit of thee” should “clap the hands over thee;” because thee, whose wickedness passed through one upon all, One Man, who alone was without sin, contemned and bruised, while He riced and justified from wickedness them who “hearing” rejoiced, and rejoicing and believing, “clapped the hands over thee.” Yet they only shall be glad, upon whom his “wickedness,” although it passed, yet abode not, but in prayer and good deeds, by the grace of God, they lifted up their hands to Him Who overcame, and Who, in His own, overcomes still, to whom be praise and thanksgiving forever and ever. Amen.