Nahum 3:1

CHAPTER III

The prophet denounces a wo against Nineveh for her perfidy and

violence. He musters up before our eyes the number of her

chariots and cavalry; points to her burnished arms, and to the

great and unrelenting slaughter which she spreads around her,

1-3.

Because Nineveh is a city wholly given up to the grossest

superstition, and is an instructress of other nations in

her abominable rites, therefore she shall come to a most

ignominious and unpitied end, 3-7.

Her final ruin shall be similar to that of No, a famous city

of Egypt, 8-11.

The prophet then beautifully describes the great ease with

which the strong holds of Nineveh should be taken, 12,

and her judicial pusillanimity during the siege, 13;

declares that all her preparation, her numbers, opulence, and

chieftains, would be of no avail in the day of the Lord's

vengeance, 14-17;

and that her tributaries would desert her, 18.

The whole concludes with stating the incurableness of her

malady, and the dreadful destruction consequently awaiting her;

and with introducing the nations which she had oppressed as

exulting at her fall, 19.

NOTES ON CHAP. III

Verse Nahum 3:1. Wo to the bloody city!] Nineveh: the threatenings against which are continued in a strain of invective, astonishing for its richness, variety, and energy. One may hear and see the whip crack, the horses prancing, the wheels rumbling, the chariots bounding after the galloping steeds; the reflection from the drawn and highly polished swords; and the hurled spears, like flashes of lightning, dazzling the eyes; the slain lying in heaps, and horses and chariots stumbling over them! O what a picture, and a true representation of a battle, when one side is broken, and all the cavalry of the conqueror fall in upon them, hewing them down with their swords, and trampling them to pieces under the hoofs of their horses! O! infernal war! Yet sometimes thou art the scourge of the Lord.