Nahum 3 commentary

AHUM 3 COMME TARY
EDITED BY GLE PEASE
Woe to ineveh
1 Woe to the city of blood,
full of lies,
full of plunder,
never without victims!
BAR ES, "Woe to the bloody city - Literally, “city of bloods” , i. e., of manifold
bloodshedding, built and founded in blood Hab_2:12; Jer_22:13, as the prosperity of the
world ever is. Murder, oppression, wresting of judgment, war out of covetousness,
grinding or neglect of the poor, make it “a city of bloods.” Nineveh, or the world, is a city
of the devil, as opposed to the “city of God.” : “Two sorts of love have made two sorts of
cities; the earthly, love of self even to contempt of God; the heavenly, love of God even to
contempt of self. The one glorieth in itself, the other in the Lord.” : “Amid the manifold
differences of the human race, in languages, habits, rites, arms, dress, there are but two
kinds of human society, which, according to our Scriptures, we may call two cities. One
is of such as wish to live according to the flesh; the other of such as will according to the
Spirit.” “Of these, one is predestined to live forever with God; the other, to undergo
everlasting torment with the devil.” Of this city, or evil world, Nineveh, the city of
bloods, is the type.
It is all full of lies and robbery - Better, “it is all lie; it is full of robbery” (rapine).
“Lie” includes all falsehood, in word or act, denial of God, hypocrisy; toward man, it
speaks of treachery, treacherous dealing, in contrast with open violence or rapine . The
whole being of the wicked is one lie, toward God and man; deceiving and deceived;
leaving no place for God who is the Truth; seeking through falsehood things which fail.
Man “loveth vanity and seeketh after leasing” Psa_4:2. All were gone out of the way.
Alb.: “There were none in so great a multitude, for whose sake the mercy of God might
spare so great a city.” It is full, not so much of booty as of rapine and violence. The sin
remains, when the profit is gone. Yet it ceases not, but perseveres to the end; “the prey
departs not;” they will neither leave the sin, nor the sin them; they neither repent, nor
are weary of sinning. Avarice especially gains vigor in old age, and grows by being fed.
“The prey departeth not,” but continues as a witness against it, as a lion’s lair is defiled
by the fragments of his prey.

CLARKE, "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 gashes 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.
GILL, "Woe to the bloody city,.... Nineveh, in which many murders were daily
committed; innocent blood shed; the lives of men taken away, under the colour of
justice, by false witnesses, and other unlawful methods; and which was continually
making war with neighbouring nations, and shedding their blood, which it stuck not at,
to enlarge its wealth and dominions; and therefore "woe" is denounced against it; and it
is threatened with the righteous judgments of God, with all sorts of calamity and
distress: or, "O bloody city", as the Septuagint; for the word used is vocative, and
expressive of calling, as Aben Ezra and Kimchi observe:
it is all full of lies and robbery; the palace and court; the houses of noblemen and
common persons were full of flattery and deceit; men of high degree were a lie, and men
of low degree vanity; no man could trust another, or believe what he said; there were no
truth, honesty, and faithfulness, in conversation or commerce; their warehouses were
full of goods, got by rapine and violence; and their streets full of robbers and robberies:
the prey departeth not; they go on in making a prey of their neighbours, in pillaging
and plundering their substance; they repent not of such evil practices, nor desist from
them; or because of the above sins they shall fall a prey to the enemy, who will not cease
plundering them till he has utterly stripped them of all they have; and who is
represented in the next verse Nah_3:2 as just at hand.
HE RY 1-3, "Here is, I. Nineveh arraigned and indicted. It is a high charge that is
here drawn up against that great city, and neither her numbers nor her grandeur shall
secure her from prosecution. 1. It is a city of blood, in which a great deal of innocent
blood is shed by unrighteous war, or under colour and pretence of public justice, or by
suffering barbarous murders to go unpunished; for this the righteous God will make
inquisition. 2. It is all full of lies; truth is banished from among them; there is no such
thing as honesty; one knows not whom to believe nor whom to trust. 3. It is all full of
robbery and rapine; no man cares what mischief he does, nor to whom he does it: The
prey departs not, that is, they never know when they have got enough by spoil and
oppression. They shed blood, and told lies, in pursuit of the prey, that they might enrich
themselves. 4. There is a multitude of whoredoms in it, that is, idolatries, spiritual
whoredoms, by which she defiled herself, and to which she seduced the neighbouring
nations, as a well-favoured harlot, and sold and ruined nations through her whoredoms.
5. She is a mistress of witchcrafts, and by them she sells families, Nah_3:4. That which
Nineveh aimed at was a universal monarchy, to be the metropolis of the world, and to
have all her neighbours under her feet; to compass this, she used not only arms, but arts,
compelling some, deluding others, into subjection to her, and wheedling them as a

harlot by her charms to lay their necks under her yoke, suggesting to them that it would
be for their advantage. She courted them to join with her in her idolatrous rites, to tie
them the faster to her interests, and made use of her wealth, power, and greatness, to
draw people into alliances with her, by which she gained advantages over them, and
made a hand of them. These were her whoredoms, like those of Tyre, Isa_23:15, Isa_
23:17. These were her witchcrafts, with which she unaccountably gained dominion. And
for this that God has a quarrel with her who, having made of one blood all nations of
men, never designed one to be a nation of tyrants and another of slaves, and who claims
it as his own prerogative to be universal Monarch.
II. Nineveh condemned to ruin upon this indictment. Woe to this bloody city! Nah_
3:1. See what this woe is.
1. Nineveh had with her cruelties been a terror and destruction to others, and
therefore destruction and terror shall be brought upon her. Those that are for
overthrowing all that come in their way will, sooner or later, meet with their match. (1.)
Hear the alarm with which Nineveh shall be terrified, Nah_3:2. It is a formidable army
that advances against it; you may hear them at a distance, the noise of the whip, driving
the chariot-horses with fury; you may hear the noise of the rattling of the wheels, the
prancing horses, and the jumping chariots; the very noise is frightful, but much more
so when they know that all this force is coming with all this speed against them, and they
are not able to make head against it. (2.) See the slaughter with which Nineveh shall be
laid waste (Nah_3:3), the sword drawn with which execution shall be done, the bright
sword lifted up and the glittering spear, the dazzling brightness of which is very terrible
to those whom they are lifted up against. See what havoc these make when they are
commissioned to slay: There is a great number of carcases, for the slain of the land shall
be many; there is no end of their corpses; there is such a multitude of slain that it is in
vain to go about to take the number of them; they lie so thick that passengers are ready
to stumble upon their corpses at every step. The destruction of Sennacherib's army,
which, in the morning, were all dead corpses, is perhaps looked upon here as a figure of
the like destruction that should afterwards be in Nineveh; for those that will not take
warning by judgments at a distance shall have them come nearer.
JAMISO , "Nah_3:1-19. Repetition of Nineveh’s doom, with new features; the
cause is her tyranny, rapine, and cruelty: No-ammon’s fortifications did not save her;
it is vain, therefore, for Nineveh to think her defenses will secure her against God’s
sentence.
the bloody city! — literally, “city of blood,” namely, shed by Nineveh; just so now
her own blood is to be shed.
robbery — violence [Maurer]. Extortion [Grotius].
the prey departeth not — Nineveh never ceases to live by rapine. Or, the Hebrew
verb is transitive, “she (Nineveh) does not make the prey depart”; she ceases not to
plunder.
K&D, "The city of blood will have the shame, which it has inflicted upon the nations,
repaid to it by a terrible massacre. The prophet announces this with the woe which
opens the last section of this threatening prophecy. Nah_3:1. “Woe to the city of blood!
She all full of deceit and murder; the prey departs not.” ‛Ir dâmım, city of drops of blood,
i.e., of blood shed, or of murders. This predicate is explained in the following clauses:
she all full of lying and murder. Cachash and pereq are asyndeton, and accusatives

dependent upon ‫ה‬ፎ ֵ‫ל‬ ְ‫.מ‬ Cachash, lying and deceit: this is correctly explained by Abarbanel
and Strauss as referring to the fact that “she deceived the nations with vain promises of
help and protection.” Pereq, tearing in pieces for murder, - a figure taken from the lion,
which tears its prey in pieces (Psa_7:3). ‫ישׁ‬ ִ‫מ‬ָ‫י‬ ‫ּא‬‫ל‬, the prey does not depart, never fails.
Mūsh: in the hiphil here, used intransitively, “to depart,” as in Exo_13:22; Psa_55:12,
and not in a transitive sense, “to cause to depart,” to let go; for if ‛ır (the city) were the
subject, we should have tâmısh.
CALVIN, "The Prophet, as I have said, more clearly expresses here the reason why the
vengeance of God would be so severe on the Ninevites, — because they had wholly given
themselves up to barbarous cruelty; and hence he calls it the bloody city. Bloody city! he
says. The exclamation is emphatical. Though ‫,הו‬ eu, sometimes means Woe; yet it is put here
as though the Prophet would have constrained Nineveh to undergo its punishment, O sanguinary
city, then, the whole of it is full of ‫כחש‬ cachesh: the word signifies leanness and the Prophet no
doubt joins here together two words, which seem to differ widely, and yet they signify the same
thing. For ‫,פרק‬ perek, means to lay by; and ‫,כחש‬ cachesh, is taken for a lie or vanity, when there is
nothing solid in what is said: but the Prophet, I doubt not, means by both words the spoils of the
city Nineveh. It was then full of leanness for it had consumed all others; it was also full of spoils,
for it had filled itself. But the meaning of the Prophet is in no way dubious; for at length he adds,
Depart shall not the prey; that is as some think, it shall not be withdrawn from the hands of
conquerors; but others more correctly think that a continued liberty in plundering is intended,
that the Assyrians were constantly employed in pillaging and kept within no bounds.
We hence see that the Prophet now shows why God says, that he would be an adversary to the
Ninevites, because he could not endure its unjust cruelty. He bore with it indeed for a time; for
he did not immediately execute his judgment; but yet he never forgot his own people.
As, then, God has once declared by the mouth of his Prophet that he would be the avenger of the
cruelty which the Assyrians had exercised, let us know that he retains still his own nature; and
whatever liberty he may for a time grant to tyrants and savage wild beasts, he yet continues to be
a just avenger. It is our duty calmly to bear injuries, and to groan to him; and as he promises to be
at length our helper, it behaves us to flee to him, and to ask him to succor us, so that seeing his
Church oppressed, and tyrants exercising licentiously their power, he may hasten the time to
restrain them. If then we were at all times to continue thus resigned under God’s protection,
there is no doubt but that he would be ready even at this day to execute a similar judgment to

that which the city Nineveh and its people had to endure.
BENSON, ". Wo to the bloody city — Here God shows the cause of his bringing
destruction on Nineveh, and overthrowing the Assyrian empire. And first, it is declared,
that Nineveh was a city in which acts of cruelty abounded, and innocent blood was
frequently shed; that it was also full of deceit, falsehood, and rapine; unjustly and
continually increasing its riches by the plunder of the neighbouring countries, which had
done them no injury.
COFFMAN, "Verse 1
The reason for the destruction of Nineveh lay in their unmitigated wickedness. "This
imperial city had brought such a fate upon itself by its sin and crimes (Nahum 3:1-7),
and will no more be able to avert it than was the Egyptian No-Amon (Nahum 3:8-
13)."[1] A terrible end will come to the city despite all of their wealth, power, and
resources (Nahum 3:14-19). As Augustine said (as quoted by Barnes):
"Two sorts of love have made two sorts of cities; the earthly love of self even to contempt
of God; the heavenly love of God even to contempt of self ... There are but two kinds of
human society, which we may call two cities. One is of such as will live only for the flesh;
the other of such as will live after the Spirit."[2]
Of this city of the evil world, Nineveh is a type. We have already observed in Nahum 2
that Nineveh is particularly important because of its status as the second head of the
Scarlet Beast of Revelation 13:1ff; this significance of its destruction will appear in even
more bold relief under Nahum 3:8 below.
Nahum 3:1
"Woe to the bloody city! it is all full of lies and rapine; the prey departeth not."
"Woe to the bloody city ..." In the Bible, such an expression as "woe" is occasionally
associated with a lament (Jeremiah 22:18); "But it appears here to be clearly related in
nuance to a malediction ..." "This would suggest a rendition of `Woe be ...' rather than
`Alas.'"[3]
"The bloody city ..." or "city of bloods" as rendered by some. Instances of the remarkable
and sadistic cruelty of Nineveh have already been cited; but in this connection, we shall
return again briefly to that horrible subject:
"On their monuments, we may see prisoners impaled alive, flayed, beheaded, dragged to
death with ropes passed through rings in their lips, blinded by the king's own hand,
hung up by hands or feet to die in slow torture. Others had their brains beaten out, their
tongues torn out by the roots, while the bleeding heads of the slain were tied round the
necks of the living who were reserved for further torture. The royal inscriptions boast
with exultation of the number of enemies slain, and of captives carried away, and of
cities leveled with the ground."[4]
How amazing it is that any scholar would consider Nahum's description of such a city as

in any manner unjustified. Smith wrote, "It is doubtful whether the cruelty of Nineveh
exceeded that of other oriental peoples who had like power and opportunity!"[5]
COKE, "Verses 1-3
Nahum 3:1-3. Woe to the bloody city! &c.— Woe to the bloody city, which is wholly
perfidious and full of cruelty; whence rapines depart not.—Ver. 2. Lo! the sound of the
whip is at hand, the sound of the rattling wheel, &c.—Ver. 3. The horseman approacheth,
and the glittering sword, and shining spear, &c. Houbigant. Others render the passage
thus, Woe to the bloody city, all over deceit, full of robbery and incessant ravening.—Ver.
2. The cracking of the whip, and the rattling noise of the wheel, and the prancing horse,
and the rumbling chariot.—Ver. 3. The high-bearing horseman, and the flaming sword,
and glittering spear, and vast slaughter, and heaps of carcases! But there is no end of the
corpses, &c.
CONSTABLE, "Verse 1
Nahum pronounced woe on Nineveh, a city characterized by bloodshed. Here, as often
elsewhere (e.g, Isaiah 3:9), "woe" announces impending doom. Sometimes "woe" is an
expression of grief (e.g, Isaiah 6:5), but that is only its secondary meaning here. As noted
earlier, the Assyrians were notorious for their cruelty that included cutting off hands,
feet, ears, noses, gouging out eyes, lopping off heads, impaling bodies, and peeling the
skin off living victims. [Note: See Maier, p292.] Nahum saw the city as completely full of
lies (cf. 2 Kings 18:31) and pillage (cf. Nahum 2:9). Nineveh always had prey; she was
constantly on the prowl looking for other nations to conquer.
Verses 1-7
3. The third description of Nineveh"s fall3:1-7
This description explains further the "why" for Nineveh"s fall whereas the first two
descriptions in the previous chapter gave more of the actual events, the "what" of it.
There is much similarity between the descriptions of the siege in Nahum 2:3-4 and
Nahum 3:2-3, however. This section has been called a woe oracle because it pronounces
doom on Nineveh in typical woe oracle fashion (cf. Isaiah 5:18-19; Amos 5:18-20; Amos
6:1-7; Micah 2:1-4). [Note: See Patterson, pp81-82.]
EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE COMMENTARY
Verses 1-19
THE SIEGE AND FALL OF NINEVEH
Nahum 2:1-13; Nahum 3:1-19
THE scene now changes from the presence and awful arsenal of the Almighty to the
historical consummation of His vengeance. Nahum foresees the siege of Nineveh.
Probably the Medes have already overrun Assyria. The "Old Lion" has withdrawn to his
inner den, and is making his last stand. The suburbs are full of the enemy, and the great
walls which made the inner city one vast fortress are invested. Nahum describes the

details of the assault. Let us try, before we follow him through them, to form some
picture of Assyria and her capital at this time.
As we have seen, the Assyrian Empire began about 625 to shrink to the limits of Assyria
proper, or Upper Mesopotamia, within the Euphrates on the southwest, the mountain-
range of Kurdistan on the northeast, the river Chabor on the northwest, and the Lesser
Zab on the southeast. This is a territory of nearly a hundred and fifty miles from north to
south, and rather more than two hundred and fifty from east to west. To the south of it
the Viceroy of Babylon, Nabopolassar, held practically independent sway over Lower
Mesopotamia, if he did not command as well a large part of the Upper Euphrates Valley.
On the north the Medes were urgent, holding at least the farther ends of the passes
through the Kurdish mountains, if they had not already penetrated these to their
southern issues.
The kernel of the Assyrian territory was the triangle, two of whose sides are represented
by the Tigris and the Greater Zab, the third by the foot of the Kurdistan mountains. It is
a fertile plain, with some low hills. Today the level parts of it are covered by a large
number of villages and well-cultivated fields. The more frequent mounds of ruin attest in
ancient times a still greater population. At the period of which we are treating, the plains
must have been covered by an almost continuous series of towns. At either end lay a
group of fortresses. The southern was the ancient capital of Assyria, Kalchu, now
Nimrud, about six miles to the north of the confluence of the Greater Zab and the Tigris.
The northern, close by the present town of Khorsabad, was the great fortress and palace
of Sargon, Dur-Sargina: it covered the roads upon Nineveh from the north, and standing
upon the upper reaches of the Choser protected Nineveh’s water supply. But besides
these there were scattered upon all the main roads and round the frontiers of the
territory a number of other forts, towers, and posts, the ruins of many of which are still
considerable, but others have perished without leaving any visible traces. The roads thus
protected drew in upon Nineveh from all directions. The chief of those, along which the
Medes and their allies would advance from the east and north, crossed the Greater Zam,
or came down through the Kurdistan mountains upon the citadel of Sargon. Two of
them were distant enough from the latter to relieve the invaders from the necessity of
taking it, and Kalchu lay far to the south of all of them. The brunt of the first defense of
the land would therefore fall upon the smaller fortresses.
Nineveh itself lay upon the Tigris between Kalchu and Sargon’s city, just where the
Tigris is met by the Choser. Low hills descend from the north upon the very site of the
fortress, and then curve east and south, bow-shaped, to draw west again upon the Tigris
at the south end of the city. To the east of the latter they leave a level plain, some two and
a half miles by one and a half. These hills appear to have been covered by several forts.
The city itself was four-sided, lying lengthwise to the Tigris and cut across its breadth by
the Choser. The circumference was about seven and a half miles, enclosing the largest
fortified space in Western Asia, and capable of holding a population of three hundred
thousand. The western wall, rather over two and a half miles long, touched the Tigris at
the other end, but between there lay a broad, bow-shaped stretch of land, probably in
ancient times, as now, free of buildings. The northwestern wall ran up from the Tigris for
a mile and a quarter to the low ridge which entered the city at its northern corner. From
this the eastern wall, with a curve upon it, ran down in face of the eastern plain for a
little more than three miles, and was joined to the western by the short southern wall of
not quite half a mile. The ruins of the western wall stand from ten to twenty, those of the

others from twenty-five to sixty, feet above the natural surface, with here and there the
still higher remains of towers. There were several gates, of which the chief were one in
the northern and two in the eastern wall. Round all the walls except the western ran
moats about a hundred and fifty feet broad-not close up to the foot of the walls, but at a
distance of some sixty feet. Water was supplied by the Choser to all the moats south of it;
those to the north were fed from a canal which entered the city near its northern corner.
At these and other points one can still trace the remains of huge dams, batardeaux, and
sluices; and the moats might be emptied by opening at either end of the western wall
other dams, which kept back the waters from the bed of the Tigris. Beyond its moat, the
eastern wall was protected north of the Choser by a large outwork covering its gate, and
south of the Choser by another outwork, in shape the segment of a circle, and consisting
of a double line of fortification more than five hundred yards long, of which the inner
wall was almost as high as the great wall itself, but the outer considerably lower. Again,
in front of this and in face of the eastern plain was a third line of fortification, consisting
of a low inner wall and a colossal outer wall still rising to a height of fifty feet, with a
moat one hundred and fifty feet broad between them. On the south this third line was
closed by a large fortress.
Upon the trebly fortified city the Medes drew from east and. north, far away from Kalchu
and able to avoid even Dur-Sargma. The other fortresses on the frontier and the
approaches fell into their hands, says Nahum, like "ripe fruit." [Nahum 3:12] He cries to
Nineveh to prepare for the siege. [Nahum 3:14] Military authorities suppose that the
Medes directed their main attack upon the northern corner of the city. Here they would
be upon a level with its highest point, and would command the waterworks by which
most of the moats were fed. Their flank, too, would be protected by the ravines of the
Choser. Nahum describes fighting in the suburbs before the assault of the walls, and it
was just here, according to some authorities, that the famous suburbs of Nineveh lay,
out upon the canal and the road to Khorsabad. All the open fighting which Nahum
foresees would take place in these "out-places" and "broad streets" the mustering of the
"red" ranks, the "prancing horses" and "rattling chariots" [Nahum 3:2] and "cavalry at
the charge." [Nahum 3:3] Beaten there the Assyrians would retire to the great walls, and
the waterworks would fall into the hands of the besiegers. They would not immediately
destroy these, but in order to bring their engines and battering-rams against the walls
they would have to lay strong dams across the moats; the eastern moat has actually been
found filled with rubbish in face of a great breach at the north end of its wall. This
breach may have been effected not only by the rams but by directing upon the wall the
waters of the canal; or farther south the Choser itself, in its spring floods, may have been
confined by the besiegers and swept in upon the sluices which regulate its passage
through the eastern wall into the city. To this means tradition has assigned the capture
of Nineveh, and Nahum perhaps foresees the possibility of it: "the gates of the rivers are
opened, the palace is dissolved."
Now of all this probable progress of the siege Nahum, of course, does not give us a
narrative, for he is writing upon the eve of it, and probably, as we have seen, in Judah,
with only such knowledge of the position and strength of Nineveh as her fame had
scattered across the world. The military details, the muster, the fighting in the open, the
investment, the assault, he did not need to go to Assyria or to wait for the fall of Nineveh
to describe as he has done. Assyria herself (and herein lies much of the pathos of the
poem) had made all Western Asia familiar with their horrors for the last two centuries.
As we learn from the prophets and now still more from herself, Assyria was the great

Besieger of Men. It is siege, siege, siege, which Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah tell their people
they shall feel: "siege and blockade, and that right round the land!" It is siege, irresistible
and full of cruelty, which Assyria records as her own glory. Miles of sculpture are
covered with masses of troops marching upon some Syrian or Median fortress. Scaling
ladders and enormous engines are pushed forward to the walls under cover of a shower
of arrows. There are assaults and breaches, panic-stricken and suppliant defenders.
Streets and places are strewn with corpses, men are impaled, women led away weeping,
children dashed against the stones. The Jews had seen, had felt these horrors for a
hundred years, and it is out of their experience of them that Nahum weaves his exultant
predictions. The Besieger of the world is at last besieged; every cruelty he has inflicted
upon men is now to be turned upon himself. Again and again does Nahum return to the
vivid details, he hears the very whips crack beneath the walls, and the rattle of the
leaping chariots; the end is slaughter, dispersion, and a dead waste.
Two other points remain to be emphasized. There is a striking absence from both
chapters of any reference to Israel. Jehovah of Hosts is mentioned twice in the same
formula, [Nahum 2:13;, Nahum 3:5] but otherwise the author does not obtrude his
nationality. It is not in Judah’s name he exults, but in that of all the peoples of Western
Asia. Nineveh has sold "peoples" by her harlotries and "races" by her witchcraft; it is
"peoples’" that shall gaze upon her nakedness and "kingdoms" upon her shame. Nahum
gives voice to no national passions, but to the outraged conscience of mankind. We see
here another proof, not only of the large, human heart of prophecy, but of that which in
the introduction to these Twelve Prophets we ventured to assign as one of its causes. By
crushing all peoples to a common level of despair, by the universal pity which her
cruelties excited, Assyria contributed to the development in Israel of the idea of a
common humanity.
The other thing to be noticed is Nahum’s feeling of the incoherence and mercenariness
of the vast population of Nineveh. Nineveh’s command of the world had turned her into
a great trading power. Under Assurbanipal the lines of ancient commerce had been
diverted so as to pass through her. The immediate result was an enormous increase of
population, such as the world had never before seen within the limits of one city. But
this had come out of all races and was held together only by the greed of gain. What had
once been a firm and vigorous nation of warriors, irresistible in their united impact upon
the world, was now a loose aggregate of many peoples, without patriotism, discipline, or
sense of honor. Nahum likens it to a reservoir of waters [Nahum 2:8] which as soon as it
is breached must scatter, and leave the city bare. The Second Isaiah said the same of
Babylon, to which the bulk of Nineveh’s mercenary populace must: have fled:-
"Thus are they grown to thee, they who did weary thee, Traders of thine from thy youth
up Each as he could escape have they fled None is thy helper."
The prophets saw the truth about both cities. Their vastness and their splendor were
artificial Neither of them, and Nineveh still less than Babylon, was a natural center for
the world’s commerce. When their political power fell, the great lines of trade, which had
been twisted to their feet, drew back to more natural courses, and Nineveh in especial
became deserted. This is the explanation of the absolute collapse of that mighty city.
Nahum’s foresight, and the very metaphor in which he expressed it, were thoroughly
sound. The population vanished like water. The site bears little trace of any disturbance

since the ruin by the Medes, except such as has been inflicted by the weather and the
wandering tribes around. Mosul, Nineveh’s representative today, is not built upon it, and
is but a provincial town. The district was never meant for anything else.
The swift decay of these ancient empires from the climax of their commercial glory is
often employed as a warning to ourselves. But the parallel, as the previous paragraphs
suggest, is very far from exact. If we can lay aside for the moment the greatest difference
of all, in religion and morals, there remain others almost of cardinal importance. Assyria
and Babylonia were not filled, like Great Britain, with reproductive races, able to
colonize distant lands, and carry everywhere the spirit which had made them strong at
home. Still more, they did not continue at home to be homogeneous. Their native forces
were exhausted by long and unceasing wars. Their populations, especially in their
capitals, were very largely alien and distraught, with nothing to hold them together save
their commercial interests. They were bound to break up at the first disaster. It is true
that we are not without some risks of their peril. No patriot among us can observe
without misgiving the large and growing proportion of foreigners in that department of
our life from which the strength of our defense is largely drawn-our merchant navy. But
such a fact is very far from bringing our empire and its chief cities into the fatal
condition of Nineveh and Babylon. Our capitals, our commerce, our life as a whole are
still British to the core. If we only be true to our ideals of righteousness and religion, if
our patriotism continue moral and sincere, we shall have the power to absorb the foreign
elements that throng to us in commerce, and stamp them with our own spirit.
We are now ready to follow Nahum’s two great poems delivered on the eve of the Fall of
Nineveh. Probably, as we have said, the first of them has lost its original opening. It
wants some notice at the outset of the object to which it is addressed: this is indicated
only by the second personal pronoun. Other needful comments will be given in
footnotes.
1. "The Hammer is come up to thy face! Hold the rampart! Keep watch on the way! Brace
the loins! Pull thyself firmly together! The shields of his heroes are red, The warriors are
in scarlet; Like fire are the of the chariots in the day of his muster, And the horsemen are
prancing. Through the markets rage chariots, They tear across the squares; The look of
them is like torches, Like lightnings they dart to and fro. He musters his nobles. They
rush to the wall and the mantlet is fixed! The river-gates burst open, the palace dissolves.
And Hussab is Stripped, is brought forth, With her maids sobbing like doves, Beating
their breasts. And Nineveh! she was like a reservoir of waters, Her waters. And now they
flee. "Stand, stand!" but there is none to rally. Plunder silver, plunder gold! Infinite
treasures, mass of all precious things! Void and devoid and desolate is she. Melting
hearts and shaking knees,"
"And anguish in all loins, And nothing but faces full of black fear."
"Where is the Lion’s den, And the young lions’ feeding ground? Whither the Lion
retreated, The whelps of the Lion, with none to affray: The Lion, who tore enough for his
whelps, And strangled for his lionesses. And he filled his pits with prey, And his dens
with rapine."

"Lo, I am at thee (oracle of Jehovah of Hosts): I will put up thy in flames. The sword
shall devour thy young lions: I will cut off from the earth thy rapine, And the noise of
thine envoys shall no more be heard."
2. "Woe to the City of Blood, All of her guile, robbery-full, ceaseless rapine!"
"Hark the whip, And the rumbling of the wheel, And horses galloping, And the rattling
dance of the chariot! Cavalry at the charge, and flash of sabres, And lightning of lances,
Mass of slain and weight of corpses, Endless dead bodies-They stumble on their dead
For the manifold harlotries of the Harlot, The well-favored mistress of charms She who
sold nations with her harlotries And races by her witchcrafts!"
"Lo, I am at thee (oracle of Jehovah of Hosts): I will uncover thy skirts to thy face; Give
nations to look on thy nakedness, And kingdoms upon thy shame; Will have thee pelted
with filth, and disgrace thee, And set thee for a gazing-stock; So that everyone seeing
thee shall shrink from thee and say,"
‘Shattered is Nineveh-who will pity her? Whence shall I seek for comforters to thee?’
"Shalt thou be better than No-Amon, Which sat upon the Nile streams-waters were
round her-Whose rampart was the sea, and waters her wall? Kush was her strength and
Misraim without end; Phut and the Lybians were there to assist her. Even she was for
exile, she went to captivity: Even her children were dashed on every street corner; For
her nobles they cast lots. And all her great men were fastened with fetters."
"Thou too shalt stagger shalt grow faint; Thou too shalt seek help from the foe All thy
fortresses are fig-trees with figs early-ripe: Be they shaken they fall on the mouth of the
eater."
"Lo, thy folk are but women in thy midst: [Jeremiah 50:37;, Jeremiah 51:30] To thy foes
the gates of thy land fly open; Fire has devoured thy bars."
"Draw thee water for siege, strengthen thy forts! Get thee down to the mud, and tramp in
the clay! Grip fast the brick-mould! There fire consumes thee, the sword cuts thee off.
Make thyself many as a locust swarm, Many as grasshoppers Multiply thy traders more
than heaven’s stars, -The locusts break off and fly away, They are as locusts and thy as
grasshoppers, That hive in the hedges in the cold of the day":
"The sun is risen, they are fled, And one knows not the place where they be. Asleep are
thy shepherds, O king of Assyria, Thy nobles do slumber; Thy people are strewn on the
mountains, Without any to gather. There is no healing of thy wreck, Fatal thy wound! All
who hear the brunt of thee shall clap the hand at thee. For upon whom hath not thy
cruelty passed without ceasing?"
NISBET, "NINEVEH’S DIRGE
‘Woe to the bloody city!’

Nahum 3:1
I. We now come to stanzas of triumph over the great city’s fall.—For convenience and
clearness we may take the closing verses of chapter 2 (i.e., Nahum 3:11-13) separately, as
they contain a kind of dirge which fitly closes the vivid description of the siege and
capture. The dirge opens with the old question which is also ever new—the question,
‘What has become of the glory and strength which once seemed so formidable and even
invincible?’ Nineveh, the stronghold and metropolis of a mighty empire, is described by
the prophet as a lion’s den. ‘Where is the den of lions, and the feeding place of the young
lions, where the lion and lioness walked, the lion’s whelp, and none made them afraid?’
‘The lion did tear in pieces enough for his whelps, and strangled for his lionesses, and
filled his caves with prey, and his dens with ravin.’
It is a strong picture of might ruthlessly used. As to the beast of prey the only aim is to
gather enough for his mate and his young, so was Nineveh, like a ravening beast,
heedless of all interests but his own. But empire ruled on such principles must fall, for it
is built on false estimates of things. Strong though it may be, it has placed itself against
the might which never fails, viz., the might of God. Such in brief is the picture of
Nineveh’s iniquity. Blood, falsehood, and an incurable habit of spoliation—the prey-
taking never ceases. But she who preyed on others becomes a prey, and the prophet
quickly plunges again into description of her overthrow. He hears the warlike sounds
echoing everywhere. ‘The noise of a whip, and the noise of the rattling of wheels, and
prancing horses and jumping chariots; the horsemen mounting, and the flashing sword
and the glittering spear.’
And then all these sounds of war are followed by an awful vision of carnage. ‘A multitude
of slain and a great heap of corpses; they stumble upon the corpses.’
II. And this terrible doom is a simple consequence of violated moral order.—The whole
system of empire has been wrong. Instead of using power for good, it has been used for
evil. Instead of being a nursing-mother to other people, she has been a seducer and a
degrader of them. She has been like a harlot living in splendid ease as the fruit of her
unlawful traffic. Her doom of death follows upon her nefarious life. ‘Because of the
multitude of the whoredoms of the wellfavoured harlot, the mistress of witchcrafts, that
selleth nations through her whoredoms, and families through her witchcrafts.’
The stanzas of woe close with the refrain which reminds us of the invincible but
forgotten might which the city, in her proud insolence, has forgotten: ‘Lo, I am against
thee, saith the Lord of hosts; and I will discover thy skirts upon thy face, and I will shew
the nations thy nakedness and the kingdoms thy shame. And I will cast abominable filth
upon thee, and make thee vile, and will set thee as a gazingstock. And it shall come to
pass, that all they that look upon thee shall flee from thee, and say, Nineveh is laid waste:
who will bemoan her? when shall I seek comforters for thee?’
—Bishop Boyd Carpenter.
Illustrations
(1) ‘We need to look to ourselves that no such fate should overtake our British people, for
ours also is the lion-empire. Has God forgiven the iniquity of the opium traffic, or

forgotten it? Does He not take note of the methods by which we have extended our
empire since the days of Clive? Do not the impurity and drunkenness of our streets
weigh with Him? Let true patriots confess these things before Him, and plead with Him
to spare us that we may yet spread His Gospel to the world.’
(2) ‘Not on account of idolatry in itself would God have destroyed Nineveh, otherwise He
would not have sent Jonah: His justice waited for the outbreak of murder. But after this
has infected the whole city, after all its works have assumed the known heathen
character, to put itself in the place of God, and to trample under foot the universal
revelation of God, that deceit and murder are sins; after it had thus identified itself with
the impious principle, its destruction must come. For God’s judgment is revelation. In
the fall the entire ignominy concealed by external glory, the rottenness of the powerful
tree, the utterly forlorn condition, in which it for a long time already internally stood,
whilst it was externally pressed, come to light. Then indeed the more unexpected the
blow, the more certain: the nearer it advances, the more fearful and incurable.’
NISBET, "The Uses of History
Nahum 3
"Woe to the bloody city! it is all full of lies and robbery" ( Nahum 3:1).
The city was Nineveh. The city is every city under the sun. There is something in the very
word "city" suggestive of this kind of prosperity. It would seem as if city-building were a
practical blasphemy. We cannot account for this, but the light of history seems to direct
our attention in this unhappy direction. Nineveh had repented under the preaching of
Jonah; Nineveh had forgotten her penitence and her prayers, and had gone back to riot
and revel, idolatry, self-indulgence, and enervating luxury. She had thrown her arms
around embodied evil, and loved it with all her wicked passion. Nahum succeeded Jonah
, and he pronounces the fate of the backslider. He came from the village to rebuke the
city; he brought the fresh air of the country with him, the mountain breeze, the village
simplicity, the rustic frankness, sanctified and inspired by the Holy Ghost. Even a village
is the germ of a city; but the village is better. There is less thickness of iniquity. Evil is
still there; we cannot get rid of evil in time. Who can blot out the evil mark in so short a
day as poor little empty time? The fate of backsliders is always the same. Backsliding
hardens the heart of the apostate. He puts his fingers into his ears, and will not hear the
voice of the divine judgment; he places his hands over his eyes when he does not want to
see the light of holiness, and reasons within himself that because he has created the
darkness God is purposely concealing his own righteousness. Wickedness is able, subtle,
clever, sagacious, inventive. If there is any way into enjoyment wickedness will find it
out; if there is any gate by which wickedness can escape final judgment, wickedness is
quick enough to discover that way. But there is none. Though hand join in hand, though
there be a plot, a conspiracy a confederacy of evil, it shall be burned like stubble.
Of Nineveh the prophet says, "It is a city of bloods": that is the literal translation of the
words which Nahum used; a Hebraism, as of one blood upon another, great coatings of
blood. Nineveh was painted in that vermilion. Everything Nineveh had was bought with
blood; Nineveh was an Aceldama, a field of blood. Its prosperity was laid in blood. It had

nothing that had not on it that red spot, that brand of condemnation. It is difficult to
have a city built on any other foundation; such is the rush, the fury, the competition:
such is the result of friction, collision, conflict, that man cuts the throat of Prayer of
Manasseh , and cuts so many throats that he knows not he is a murderer: the number
makes him a kind of hero. How is it to be otherwise? Great cities require great self-
restraint, profound and prolonged processes of education. If the moral element once
gets loose, if it begins to trifle and to tamper with the realities of life, then the battle is to
the strong; let the weak go where they may. It is only Christianity that can save any city.
Man ought not to trust himself when he becomes only part of a multitude. He may be
but trusted or chastened or highly utilised when he is but one or a unit amongst a few;
but when he becomes a million thick on the ground it would seem as if a kind of miasma
rose from the sweltering mass and poisoned the men that breathed it. It is sad. It is true.
"Oh, it was pitiful, near a whole city full, hope, health, strength, joy she had none." What
is this mystery of numbers? What is this miracle of continuing, increasing in numerical
force? An evil passion comes along with it. Things are concealed, or are so perplexed,
embarrassed, and wrapped up, that it is difficult to find the central line of justice and
right and truth. What mercy can there be in a crowd? The centre has been lost, the
guiding, dominating, uplifting principle is for the time being in abeyance. It is easy for a
crowd to become mad.
The city, saith Nahum , "is all full of lies": literally, the city is a lie. They spoke cannon-
balls in the olden time. We cannot tell in our softened language what the prophet really
said, or how the prophet truly said it; but the opening of his lips was the utterance of a
great storm. Is our property a lie? Dare we really analyse our possessions? Was every
sixpence taken honestly? Did we not tell the victim that we were his friend, and whilst
the tears were in his eyes, expressive of gratitude, did we not put our hands into his
pockets, and rob him of his earnings? Nahum saw that in his day there was an organised
oppression—"The noise of a whip, and the noise of the rattling of the wheels, and of the
prancing horses, and of the jumping chariots." All this pointed in the direction of
forbidden organisation. No Hebrew believer had any right to a horse. The horse was a
forbidden animal; the very suggestion brought with it the idea of self-reliance, pomp,
pride, War. As Solomon increased in horses he decreased in piety. It is not so with us,
because of our different relations; but we must take the typology of the Old Testament as
indicating possibilities along the line of our own civilisation. To have an army is to fight,
to want to fight An army is itself a provocation to war. Would God all civilised countries
could simultaneously disarm themselves, and thus cut off the devil at one source. But the
argument is of course only indicated by particular instances; it is not exhausted. All
power is dangerous. Wealth without humility, true rational piety, is the horse that
tempts the owner, is the army that incites the possessor to defiance, to war, to contempt,
which is worse than either. Yet what genius we lavish in our organisations of oppression!
How we set actions and policies and movements in such relations that we cannot put our
fingers upon the guilty spot, and say, That is it—burn it. We have put evil into the
kaleidoscope, and whilst we are looking at one image, we are turning it round into
another, and we cannot say which is the guilty combination. What if God should deal
with us in our corporate capacity, and burn the city? When men begin to divide up evil,
and say, "You shall take a part, and you shall take another part, and a third man shall
come in and share both the parts with us, and we shall play into one another"s hands in
such a manner as that nobody shall be able to say exactly how we came by anything we
have,"—man cannot handle such knavery, but God will burn it.

PETT, "Introduction
Chapter 3 Why Nineveh Deserves Its Fate.
The prophet now explains why this is to happen to Assyria
Nahum 3:1-3
‘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?
PULPIT, "Nahum 3:1
The bloody city; literally, city of bloods, where Mood is shed without scruple (comp.
Ezekiel 24:6, Ezekiel 24:9; Habakkuk 2:12). The cruelty of the Assyrians is attested by
the monuments, in which we see or read how prisoners were impaled alive, flayed,
beheaded, dragged to death with ropes passed through rings in their lips, blinded by the
king's own hand, hung up by hands or feet to die in slow torture. Others have their
brains beaten out, or their tongues torn out by the roots, while the bleeding heads of the
slain are tied round the necks of the living, who are reserved for further torture. The
royal inscriptions recount with exultation the number of the enemies slain and of
captives carried away, cities levelled with the ground, plundered, and burnt, lands
devastated, fruit trees destroyed, etc. It is all full of lies; ολη ψευδής, "all lie". The
Assyrians used treachery in furthering their conquests, made promises which they never
kept, to induce nations to submit to their yoke. Such, doubtless, were those of
Rabshakeh (Isaiah 36:16). Rawlinson, "Falsehood and treachery … are often employed
by the strong, as furnishing short cuts to success, and even, where the moral standard is

low, as being in themselves creditable (see Thucyd; 3.83). It certainly was not necessity
which made the Assyrians covenant breakers; it seems to have been in part the
wantonness of power—because they 'despised the cities, and regarded no man' (Isaiah
33:8); perhaps it was in part also their imperfect moral perception, which may have
failed to draw the proper distinction between craft and cleverness" ('Ancient
Monarchies,' 1.305). Robbery; rather, rapine, or rending in pieces. The figure applies to
the way in which a wild beast kills its prey by tearing it to pieces. So the three crimes of
Nineveh here enumerated are bloodshed, deceit, and violence. In the uncertainty
concerning the word (pereq). rendered "robbery," which only occurs m Obadiah 1:14,
where it means "crossway," the LXX. translates, αδικίας πλήρης, "full of
unrighteousness." The Vulgate is correct, dilaceratione plena. The prey departeth not.
They go on in the same way, gathering spoil into the city, never ceasing from this crime.
The monuments continually record the booty that was brought to Nineveh. Septuagint,
ου ψηλαφηθήσεται θήρα, which gives a sense contradictory to the text, "Prey shall not
be handled."
2 The crack of whips,
the clatter of wheels,
galloping horses
and jolting chariots!
BAR ES, "The noise (literally, “voice”) of the whip - There is cry against cry;
the voice of the enemy, brought upon them through the voice of the oppressed. Blood
hath a voice which crieth Gen_4:10 to heaven; its echo or counterpart, as it were, is the
cry of the destroyer. All is urged on with terrific speed. The chariot-wheels quiver in the
rapid onset; the chariots bound, like living things; the earth echoes with the whirling
swiftness of the speed of the cavalry. The prophet within, with the inward ear and eye
which hears “the mysteries of the Kingdom of God” Mat_13:11, Mat_13:16 and sees
things to come, as they shall come upon the wicked, sees and hears the scourge coming,
with The words in Hebrew are purposely chosen with rough “r” sounds: ‫רעשׁ‬ ra‛ash, ‫דהר‬
dâhar, ‫מרקדה‬ me
raqēdâh, a great noise, impetuously; and so describes it as present. Wars
and rumors of wars are among the signs of the Day of Judgment. The “scourge,” though
literally relating to the vehement onset of the enemy, suggests to the thoughts, the

scourges of Almighty God, wherewith He chastens the penitent, punishes the
impenitent; the wheel, the swift changes of man’s condition in the rolling-on of time. “O
God, make them like a rolling thing” Psa_83:14.
GILL, "The noise of a whip,.... Of a horseman or chariot driver whipping his horses
to make speed to Nineveh, and enter into it, so near as to be heard by the inhabitants of
it; and is thus represented in order to strike terror into them:
and the noise of the rattling of the wheels; that is, of the chariots upon the stones,
whose drivers drove Jehu like, making the utmost haste they could to get in first, and
seize the prey:
and of the pransing horses; or bounding steeds, upon a full gallop; either with
horsemen on them riding full speed to partake of the booty; or in chariots, in which they
caper and prance, and shake the ground as they go; hence it follows:
and of the jumping chariots; which, through the swiftness of the motion, seem to
leap and dance as they run along.
JAMISO , "The reader is transported into the midst of the fight (compare Jer_
47:3). The “noise of the whips” urging on the horses (in the chariots) is heard, and of
“the rattling of the wheels” of war chariots, and the “horses” are seen “prancing,” and the
“chariots jumping,” etc.
K&D 2-4, "This threat is explained in Nah_3:2., by a description of the manner in
which a hostile army enters Nineveh and fills the city with corpses. Nah_3:2. “The
cracking of whips, and noise of the rattling of wheels, and the horse in galloping, and
chariots flying high. Nah_3:3. Riders dashing along, and flame of the sword, and
flashing of the lance, and multitude of slain men and mass of dead men, and no end of
corpses; they stumble over their corpses. Nah_3:4. For the multitude of the whoredoms
of the harlot, the graceful one, the mistress of witchcrafts, who sells nations with her
whoredoms, and families with her witchcrafts.” Nahum sees in spirit the hostile army
bursting upon Nineveh. He hears the noise, i.e., the cracking of the whips of the
charioteers, and the rattling (ra‛ash) of the chariot-wheels, sees horses and chariots
driving along (dâhar, to hunt, cf. Jdg_5:22; riqqēd, to jump, applied to the springing up
of the chariots as they drive quickly along over a rugged road), dashing riders (ma‛ăleh,
lit., to cause to ascend, sc. the horse, i.e., to make it prance, by driving the spur into its
side to accelerate its speed), flaming swords, and flashing lances. As these words are well
adapted to depict the attack, so are those which follow to describe the consequence or
effect of the attack. Slain men, fallen men in abundance, and so many corpses, that one
cannot help stumbling or falling over them. ‫ד‬ ֶ‫ב‬ ִⅴ, the heavy multitude. The chethib ‫יכשׁלו‬
is to be read ‫לוּ‬ ְ‫ֽשׁ‬ ָⅴִ‫י‬ (niphal), in the sense of stumbling, as in Nah_2:6. The keri ‫לוּ‬ ְ‫ֽשׁ‬ ָ‫כ‬ְ‫ו‬ is
unsuitable, as the sentence does not express any progress, but simply exhibits the
infinite number of the corpses (Hitzig). ‫ם‬ ָ‫ת‬ָ ִ‫ו‬ְ‫,ג‬ their (the slain men's) corpses. This
happens to the city of sins because of the multitude of its whoredoms. Nineveh is called

Zōnâh, and its conduct ze
nūnım, not because it had fallen away from the living God and
pursued idolatry, for there is nothing about idolatry either here or in what follows; nor
because of its commercial intercourse, in which case the commerce of Nineveh would
appear here under the perfectly new figure of love-making with other nations (Ewald),
for commercial intercourse as such is not love-making; but the love-making, with its
parallel “witchcrafts” (ke
shâphım), denotes “the treacherous friendship and crafty politics
with which the coquette in her search for conquests ensnared the smaller states” (Hitzig,
after Abarbanel, Calvin, J. H. Michaelis, and others). This policy is called whoring or
love-making, “inasmuch as it was that selfishness which wraps itself up in the dress of
love, and under the appearance of love seeks simply the gratification of its own lust”
(Hengstenberg on the Rev.). The zōnâh is described still more minutely as ‫ן‬ ֵ‫ח‬ ‫ת‬ ַ‫,טוֹב‬
beautiful with grace. This refers to the splendour and brilliancy of Nineveh, by which
this city dazzled and ensnared the nations, like a graceful coquette. Ba‛ălath ke
shâphım,
devoted to witchcrafts, mistress of them. Ke
shâphım (witchcrafts) connected with
ze
nūnım, as in 2Ki_9:22, are “the secret wiles, which, like magical arts, do not come to
the light in themselves, but only in their effects” (Hitzig). ‫ר‬ ַ‫כ‬ ָ‫,מ‬ to sell nations, i.e., to rob
them of liberty and bring them into slavery, to make them tributary, as in Deu_32:30;
Jdg_2:14; Jdg_3:8, etc. (not = ‫כמר‬ from ‫,כבר‬ to entangle: Hitzig). ָ‫יה‬ֶ‫נוּנ‬ְ‫ז‬ ִ , with (not for)
their whoredoms. Mishpâchōth, families, synonymous with ‫ים‬ ִ ַ‫,ע‬ are smaller peoples or
tribes (cf. Jer_25:9; Eze_20:32).
CALVIN, "Verse 2
The Prophet represents here as in a lively picture, what was nigh the Assyrians; for he
sets forth the Chaldeans their enemies, with all their preparations and in their quick
movements. (239) The sound of the whip, he says; the whips, made a noise in exciting
the horses: the sound of the rattling of the wheel; that is, great shall be the haste and
celerity, when the horses shall be forced on by the whip; the horse also shaking the
earth, and the chariot bounding; the horseman making it to ascend; and then, the flame
of the sword and the lightning of the spear He then says, that there would be such a
slaughter, that the whole place would be full of dead bodies.
We now then understand what the Prophet means: for as Nineveh might have then
appeared impregnable the Prophet confirms at large what he had said of its approaching
ruin, and thus sets before the eyes of the Israelites what was then incredible.
1. Oh! The city of blood! All of deceit;
Of plunder it is full, none can search out the spoil: —
e whip, and the sound of the rattling wheel!
And the horse prancing, and the chariot bounding!
The horseman mounting,
And the flaming of the sword and the glittering of the spear!
And a multitude dancing, and a mass inactive!

And no end to her people!
Whoare fallen, with their nations,
Through the many fornications of the harlot,
That exults in beauty, andpossesses enchantments;
Who sells nations by her fornications,
And tribes by her enchantments.
‫,ימיש‬ “search out,” I derive from ‫,מש‬ which is to feel for the purpose of exploring, and then, to
explore or search out; see Genesis 31:34. The second verse contains a simple enumeration of
what the city exhibited. ‫חלל‬ ‫,רב‬ “a multitude dancing” or piping, the ‫ו‬ being dropped in ‫,חלל‬ as it
is in ‫,חללים‬ pipers, 1 Kings 1:40. Then as a contrast comes the dead, heavy, inactive mass, ‫פגד‬ ‫.כבד‬
“To her people” or nations, ‫,לגויה‬ τοις εθνεσιν αυτης. — Sept. In the word ‫,בנויתם‬ I take that ‫ת‬ is
a mistake for ‫.ה‬ If taken for carcasses, it wants a ‫ו‬ before ‫;ת‬ see Psalms 110:6. The third verse
must be connected with the second, as it has otherwise no grammatical construction. — Ed.
BENSON, "Verse 2-3
Nahum 3:2-3. The noise of a whip, &c. — These verses are highly poetical; the prophet
tells them, that he already hears the sound of the whips driving on the horses, and the
rattling of the chariot wheels, &c., of their enemies coming against them. The horseman
lifteth up both the bright sword, &c. — In the Hebrew it is, The horseman lifteth up the
flame of the sword, and the lightning of the spear, which is more poetical than our
rendering. The style of the whole passage is extremely fine; scarce any thing can be more
picturesque, or strongly descriptive of a victorious army.
COFFMAN, "Verse 2
"The noise of the whip, and the noise of the rattling of wheels, and prancing horses, and
bounding chariots."
The prophet envisioned the attack upon Nineveh here.
"This and Nahum 3:3 are a superlative example of Nahum's powers of description, and
form one of the most vivid battle scenes in Hebrew literature. There are the confusion
and noise as the chariots and horsemen attack, the glint of sun on armor and weapons,
and the huddled dead, lying in heaps about the streets."[6]
CONSTABLE, "Verse 2-3
Again the prophet described the sounds and sights that would accompany the battle in
which Nineveh would fall (cf. Nahum 2:3-4). Whips could be heard as soldiers urged
their horses forward. Nahum heard the sound of chariot wheels and the hoofs of horses
bearing cavalry soldiers clattering on the pavement. Horsemen were charging, swords
were flashing, and spears were gleaming in the light. The large number of corpses on the

scene of battle impressed Nahum. They seemed to be countless, so many that they
appeared to cover the ground completely. The living soldiers had trouble moving about
because they kept tripping over dead bodies. This was a scene that someone might have
seen had they visited the site of one of the Assyrian army"s battles, but this one was
taking place in Nineveh and the dead were mainly Ninevites.
"God has allowed Nahum to witness the fall of Nineveh even though it is years, perhaps
even decades, away." [Note: Longman, " Nahum ," p813.]
"No passage of Hebrew literature surpasses this for vividness of description." [Note:
Charles L. Feinberg, " Nahum ," in The Wycliffe Bible Commentary, p867.]
3 Charging cavalry,
flashing swords
and glittering spears!
Many casualties,
piles of dead,
bodies without number,
people stumbling over the corpses—
BAR ES, "The horseman lifteth up - Rather, “leading up : the flash of the sword,
and the lightning of the spear.” Thus, there are, in all, seven inroads, seven signs, before
the complete destruction of Nineveh or the world; as, in the Revelations, all the
forerunners of the Judgment of the Great Day are summed up under the voice of seven
trumpets and seven vials. Rup.: “God shall not use homes and chariots and other
instruments of war, such as are here spoken of, to judge the world, yet, as is just, His
terrors are foretold under the name of those things, wherewith this proud and bloody
world hath sinned. For so all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.” Mat_
26:52. They who, abusing their power, have used all these weapons of war, especially
against the servants of God, shall themselves perish by them, and there shall be none
end of their corpses, for they shall be corpses forever: for, dying by an everlasting death,
they shall, without end, be without the true life, which is God.” “And there is a multitude
of slain.” Death follows on death. The prophet views the vast field of carnage, and
everywhere there meets him only some new form of death, slain, carcasses, corpses, and

these in multitudes, an oppressive heavy number, without end, so that the yet living
stumble and fall upon the carcasses of the slain. So great the multitude of those who
perish, and such their foulness; but what foulness is like sin?
GILL, "The horseman lifteth up both the bright sword and the glittering
spear,.... Or, "the flame of the sword and the glittering spear" (w); he rides with a drawn
sword, which, being brandished to and fro, looks like a flame of fire; or with a spear
made of polished iron, or steel, which, when vibrated and moved to and fro, glitters like
lightning; a large number of which entering the city must be terrible to the inhabitants of
it:
and there is a multitude of slain, and a great number of carcasses; of dead
men lying in the streets, pierced and slain with the bright sword and glittering spear of
the Medes and Chaldeans:
and there is none end of their corpses; the number of them could not be told; they
lay so thick in all parts of the city, that there was no telling them:
they stumble upon their corpses; the Ninevites in fleeing, and endeavouring to
make their escape, and the Medes and Chaldeans pursuing them.
JAMISO , "horseman — distinct from “the horses” (in the chariots, Nah_3:2).
lifteth up — denoting readiness for fight [Ewald]. Gesenius translates, “lifteth up
(literally, ‘makes to ascend’) his horse.” Similarly Maurer, “makes his horse to rise up on
his hind feet.” Vulgate translates, “ascending,” that is, making his horse to advance up to
the assault. This last is perhaps better than English Version.
the bright sword and the glittering spear — literally, “the glitter of the sword
and the flash of the spear!” This, as well as the translation, “the horseman advancing
up,” more graphically presents the battle scene to the eye.
they stumble upon their corpses — The Medo-Babylonian enemy stumble upon
the Assyrian corpses.
CALVIN, "As to the words, some interpreters connect what we have rendered, the
horseman makes to ascend, with what follows, that is, he makes to ascend the flame of
the sword and the lightning of the spear But as a copulative comes between, it seems
rather to be an imperfect sentence, meaning, that the horseman makes to ascend or
mount, that is, his horses, by urging them on. With regard to the word ‫,להב‬ leb, it means I
have no doubt, a flame. By this word, I know, is also understood metaphorically the brightness of
swords, which appears like a flame: but the Prophet immediately adds lightning As then he says
that spears lighten, I doubt not but that for the same reason he meant to say that swords flame.
All these things were intended for the purpose of fully convincing the Israelites that Nineveh,
however much it was supplied with wealth and power, was yet approaching its ruin, for its
enemies would prevail against it: and therefore he adds, that all the roads would be full of dead
bodies, that the enemies could not enter without treading on them everywhere. It follows —

COFFMAN, "Verse 3
"The horsemen mounting, and the flashing sword, and the glittering spear, and a
multitude of slain, and a great heap of corpses, and there is no end of the bodies; they
stumble upon their bodies."
This is a continuation of the description of the attack, beginning at once after the
utterance of doom in Nahum 3:1 - "Woe to the bloody city!" The numbers of the dead
were so great as to impede the free movement of the attackers.
"Such a ghastly scene overwhelms the imagination. Again and again, in brief staccato
clauses, harsh-sounding, almost incoherent in their imagery, these two long verses of
battle sounds and sighs, end strikingly with a thrice repeated `corpses ... corpses ...
corpses.'"[7]
The words of the prophet leave no doubt whatever that it was the will of God that such
destruction should occur; but why? The answer was given at once.
NISBET, ""The horseman lifteth up both the bright sword and the glittering spear: and
there is a multitude of slain, and a great number of carcases; and there is none end of
their corpses; they stumble upon their corpses" ( Nahum 3:3).
And men say, What havoc is this? How awful is pestilence; how terrible is war; how
saddening and sickening is the sight of the overthrow of a great city! This Isaiah , or may
easily become, wasted sentiment. What are corpses, what are carcases, what are dead
bodies, compared with starved souls, depleted minds, cheated hearts, blighted
opportunities? Reserve your tears for the true tragedy. What of this crying over bleached
bones? Who has spent his tears so? On the other side there are murdered souls; minds
robbed of their education; hearts enthralled that ought to be at liberty: there let your
head be a fountain of tears. Men will not weep at the right sights. They are touched by
the bodily, the physical, the concrete, the tangible. They see some poor little white-faced
waif on the road, and they are properly touched by that sight; but they might see next to
that poor little pilgrim some mighty Prayer of Manasseh , gold-bedizened and feathered
and coloured, or riding in some chariot of pomp, and they ought to cry over him. He may
be the true object of pity. He does not look it; he has covered up the dead bones well; he
has hidden his mental and moral poverty under a veil of plucked flowers, costly enough;
but what we pluck we kill, and they shall wither away. There is no need to undervalue, or
to pass by in contempt, or neglect things that are obviously in want of attention; at the
same time we ought not to dismiss from our mind the doctrine that moral poverty,
spiritual destitution, heartache and heartbreak are the things that should constrain our
intensest attention, and draw forth our most influential activity.
What is God"s relation to all this evil prosperity, this horrible progress, founded upon
hellish policy? When cities have given themselves over to whoredoms and witchcrafts
and forbidden luxuries, what does God say? He says, "I am against thee." Is God ever so
terrible as when he is quiet? There is no thunder in this declaration, and yet it is all
lightning: "I am against thee." What miracle is this? The Creator against the creature,
God against Prayer of Manasseh , all heaven against the city, the metropolis that ought
to be the mother city, and the fairest among the daughters of cities. Yet this is right, this

is the very sun in the heavens; without this sun of righteousness we can grow no flowers
of morality, no plants of good conduct: this is the sun that warms the roots of virtue.
Here is an eternal principle; we may run into it and be restful and glad. God is against all
evil. The bad man who has succeeded for a time shall have a miserable end; the ox knee-
deep in succulent pasture knows not (for he is a beast) that he is being fatted for the
knife. These hard things must be said; we would rather not say them; it would be easier
to sing some lullaby, to tell some tale that would lure and delight the fancy; it would be
intellectually easier to weave some little fancy network that men would admire because
skilfully done, outdoing the cobweb in fineness, and outdoing the bloom upon the
flowers in exquisiteness: but this would be wasting time, this would be shutting the eyes
to facts, this would be ignoring the tragedy that is killing the world. So there must be
times of thunder and lightning and judgment and terrible pestilence; there must be
hours of disinfection.
Nineveh said she was strong. She walked around her walls and said, They are all
bastions; the enemy would bruise himself against these fortifications—more drink, more
revelry, more gluttony, more devilry! What did the Lord say? "Art thou better than
populous No, that was situate among the rivers, that had the waters round about it,
whose rampart was the sea, and her wall was from the sea?" Let us attend to the uses of
history. Do not throw away the precedents that make up our recollections. He is wise
who is rich in precedents, who knows what has happened, what has been done, who lives
in the temple of history. No-Ammon fell; the sacred name of the capital of Upper Egypt
was rubbed out as the merest speck upon the page of Time. We know the city referred to
by the more modern name of Thebes—a city of a hundred gates and twenty thousand
chariots—and the Pharaohs of this great capital warred and conquered riotously from
the Soudan to Mesopotamia; trampling down everything, and showing their pride and
pomp and power in all manner of ridiculousness of ostentation and wickedness and
infamy of royal display. But God blotted out the city. He can do without any city; he can
make a metropolis in heaven. He would fain educate us by association; he would turn
our relationship to one another into a method of education, healthful progress he would
make us co-contributors to one another"s highest well-being: but when we come and
spoil God"s idea, though we may have as many gates and as many chariots as Thebes a
thousand times multiplied, he can destroy us, throw us into the sea, that we may be
swallowed up as stones. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
Then the Lord applies history, and says, "Thou also." That is the voice of all history. God
never does anything that is complete in itself, final in its processes; whatever he does
refers to the next century, the next city, the next man. He that hath ears to hear, let him
hear. Who died there? The richest man in the world—thou also shalt die. What, did that
black shadow called the funeral pass through all these terraces of flowers, parterres of
choice plants? Did that blighting shadow fall upon the blooming beauty of the full
summer day? Yes—thou also shalt be carried to thy last resting-place. Has pride been
rebuked? Has vanity been snubbed; has self-trust been defeated and overwhelmed?
Yes—"Thou also." These are the lessons of history. They thought to build out God with
clay; they had walls that they erected against him, and he said they should be eaten up as
by a cankerworm. How contemptuous can God be! He said that in their pride and
haughtiness they should be as the "first-ripe figs," so that if a man should shake the tree
the figs would fall into his mouth. He needs no ladder to climb, he needs no elaborate
machinery by which to get at the fruit; if he will put his hand upon the bark and shake it,
the figs will fall down upon the ground. So easily does God hold us in the grip of his

almightiness; so that he shakes down tower and temple and town and mountain; so that
he dries up seas and rivers and turbulent streams; he sends a blight upon the brain, and
the wise man who was all genius yesterday is asking a child to take him home; the man
who yesterday commanded listening senates or directed great enterprises, or was the
envy, the joy, and the pride of all who knew him, so stalwart in mind, so capable in
action, so hospitable in the entertainment of all weakness,—he does not know his own
child. There is but a step between thee and death. Oh, proud Prayer of Manasseh , thou
art but a proud fool. Pride and progress can never go together. Pride and education are
sworn enemies. Self-trust and reality of character can never cohere. We live our greatest
life in our humility, in our reverence, in our aspiration. Why fight against this God? If
the cities have outwitted him, where are they? You should be able to find them. Where is
old Babylon? Where the mocking, mighty, pompous, overbearing Rome? Where are
those cities that have threatened God and lived? You ought to be able to find them if they
have been victorious. Now we are called upon to acquaint ourselves, and be at peace with
him; we are called into harmony, and the way by which this harmony is attained is one
way and only one, and unchangeable and complete, and that is the way we call the
Gospel of Christ, the doctrine of the Cross, the doctrine of atonement, the doctrine of
something being done for man that man could never do for himself, and which he lays
hold of by the energy called faith. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be
saved. You may reform the city, but you cannot regenerate it That is a divine Acts , and if
the city is ever to become a sanctuary of progress, education, liberty, and independence,
it must be wrought out by spiritual methods; our life must come from the quarter called
true religion,—not conventional religion, not ecclesiastical religion, but the Cross, the
mighty power of love, the mighty power of sacrifice. I am not ashamed of the Gospel of
Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; and when all
our reformers and ameliorators and improvers and decorators have done their utmost,
they have only painted the devil, they have not destroyed him; they have hidden
momentarily his innate and everlasting hideousness under a coating of foolish
ornamentation. We can only do this work by going right back to Jesus Christ, and living
as he lived. Let us try that method.
PULPIT, "The horseman lifteth up. The Hebrew is more vivid, the words standing in
pairs, as if describing the successive onsets of the enemy. So Pusey. It is best to render,
"horsemen making to rear;" or as Septuagint. ιππέως αναβαίνοντος, "horseman
mounting;" so the Vulgate; Henderson. Horsemen are seen in the most ancient
sculptures of Nimroud, and in the bas-reliefs of Kouyunjik (comp. Judith 2:15; Ezekiel
23:6; Layard, ' Nineveh,' 2.356). Both the bright sword; better, and the flaming sword
(Genesis 3:24); literally, the flame of the sword. And the glittering spear; literally, the
lightning flash of the spear (Habakkuk 3:11). These are the arms of the foot soldiers. A
multitude of slain. The effect of the assault is described. So numerous are the corpses
that one cannot help stumbling over them; the invaders themselves are impeded by the
heaps of dead bodies which they have to mount. The LXX. connects this verse with the
following, thus. "They shall grow weak in their bodies by reason of the multitude of their
fornications."

4 all because of the wanton lust of a prostitute,
alluring, the mistress of sorceries,
who enslaved nations by her prostitution
and peoples by her witchcraft.
BAR ES, "Because of the multitude of the whoredoms of the well-favored
harlot - There are “multitudes of slain” because of the “multitude of whoredoms” and
love of the creature instead of the Creator. So to Babylon Isaiah saith, “they (loss of
children and widowhood) shall come upon thee in their perfection for the multitude of
thy sorceries, for the great abundance of thine enchantments” Isa_47:9. The actual use
of “enchantments,” for which Babylon was so infamous, is not elsewhere attributed to
the Assyrians. But neither is the word elsewhere used figuratively; nor is Assyria, in its
intimate relation to Babylon, likely to have been free from the longing, universal in
pagandom, to obtain knowledge as to the issue of events which would affect her. She is,
by a rare idiom, entitled “mistress of enchantments,” having them at her command, as
instruments of power. Mostly, idolatries and estrangement from God are spoken of as
“whoredoms,” only in respect of those who, having been taken by God as His own,
forsook Him for false gods.
But Jezebel too, of whose offences Jehu speaks under the same two titles 2Ki_9:22,
was a pagan. And such sins were but part of that larger all-comprehending sin, that man,
being made by God for Himself, when he loves the creature instead of the Creator,
divorces himself from God. Of this sin world empires, such as Nineveh, were the
concentration. Their being was one vast idolatry of self and of “the god of this world.”
All, art, fraud, deceit, protection of the weak against the strong 2Ki_16:7-9; 2Ch_28:20-
21, promises of good Isa_36:16-17, were employed, together with open violence, to
absorb all nations into it. The one end of all was to form one great idol-temple, of which
the center and end was man, a rival worship to God, which should enslave all to itself
and the things of this world. Nineveh and all conquering nations used fraud as well as
force, enticed and entangled others, and so sold and deprived them of freedom. (see
Joe_3:3).
Nor are people less sold and enslaved, because they have no visible master. False
freedom is the deepest and most abject slavery. All sinful nations or persons extend to
others the infection of their own sins. But, chiefly, the “wicked world,” manifoldly
arrayed with fair forms, and “beautiful in the eyes of those who will not think or weigh
how much more beautiful the Lord and Creator of all,” spreads her enticements on all
sides “the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eye, and the pride of life,” “her pomps and
vanities,” worldly happiness and glory and majesty, and ease and abundance, deceives
and sells mankind into the power of Satan. It is called well-favored (literally, good of
grace), because the world has a real beauty, nor , “unless there were a grace and beauty

in the things we love, could they draw us to them.” They have their beauty, because from
God; then are they deformed, when “things hold us back from God, which, unless they
were in God, were not at all.”
We deform them, if we love them for our own sakes, not in Him; or for the intimations
they give of Him. : “Praise as to things foul has an intensity of blame. As if one would
speak of a skilled thief, or a courageous robber, or a clever cheat. So though he calls
Nineveh a well-favored harlot, this will not be for her praise, (far from it!) but conveys
the heavier condenmation. As they, when they would attract, use dainty babblings, so
was Nineveh a skilled artificer of ill-doing, well provided with means to capture cities
and lands and to persuade them what pleased herself.” She selleth not nations only but
families, drawing mankind both as a mass, and one by one after her, so that scarce any
escape.
The adultery of the soul from God is the more grieveus, the nearer God has brought
any to Himself, in priests worse than in the people, in Christians than in Jews, in Jews
than in pagan; yet God espoused mankind to Him when He made him. His dowry were
gifts of nature. If this be adultery, how much sorer, when betrothed by the Blood of
Christ, and endowed with the gift of the Spirit!
CLARKE, "Because of the multitude of the whoredoms - Above, the Ninevites
were represented under the emblem of a lion tearing all to pieces; here they are
represented under the emblem of a beautiful harlot or public prostitute, enticing all men
to her, inducing the nations to become idolatrous, and, by thus perverting them,
rendering them also objects of the Divine wrath.
Mistress of witchcrafts, that selleth nations through her whoredoms -
Using every means to excite to idolatry; and being, by menace or wiles, successful in all.
GILL, "Because of the multitudes of the whoredoms of the wellfavoured
harlot,.... Meaning Nineveh; which, as it was an ancient city, was a well built one; full of
stately and beautiful buildings, the seat of the kings of Assyria, and the metropolis of the
nation, and abounded with wealth and riches; perhaps here may be an allusion to the
name of the city, and to the signification of it; for Nineveh may have its name from the
beauty of it, and be read, in Hebrew, ‫נוה‬ ‫נאי‬ or ‫,נוי‬ and may signify a beautiful or pleasant
habitation; so Hillerus (x) and Cocceius (y) give the etymology of it; which agrees with
its delightful situation on the banks of the river Tigris, and the stately edifices in it, as
the king's palace, and others; just as Zion is said to be "beautiful for situation, the joy of
the whole earth", Psa_48:2 and the epithet of "well favoured" well agrees with a harlot,
whose beauty is engaging and ensnaring, as Lais, and others; particularly Semiramis, the
wife of Ninus, from whom it is generally thought Nineveh had its name, was first a
harlot, and one of exceeding beauty, who surpassed all others in it; on account of which
she was beloved by the king of Assyria, and after a short time made his wife, and then he
delivered the government of the kingdom to her (z); yea, Sardanapalus the Last, and at
this time the present king of the Assyrians, was very effeminate, used to dress himself in
women's clothes, imitate a woman's voice, and paint his face, and even his whole body;
and, by other tricks and enticements of harlots, made himself more lascivious, and
behaved more lewdly, than any harlot (a); in short, all the Assyrian women must be
harlots, since they were obliged once in their lifetime to lie with a stranger in the temple

of Venus, whom the Assyrians call Mylitta, as Herodotus (b) and Strabo (c) relate; to all
which here may be an allusion: and particularly the inhabitants of this city had all the
arts of address and insinuation to deceive others as harlots have; and both men and
women very probably were given to whoredom and adultery in a literal sense as is
generally the case where luxury and intemperance abound; and especially were grossly
guilty of idolatry, which in Scripture is frequently expressed by whoredom and adultery;
worshipping Bel, Nisroch and other deities and which was highly provoking to God; and
therefore for these things, his judgements came upon them, before and after described:
the mistress of witchcrafts: thoroughly versed in such wicked and devilish practices,
literally understood; see Isa_47:9 for the Assyrians, as well as the Babylonians and
Chaldeans, were addicted to such diabolical arts, as appears from a passage in
Theocritus (d), which Grotius has also quoted; where one is represented saying that she
kept in her box or chest very pernicious poisons, which she had learned from an
Assyrian guest. The allusion seems to be to philtres, and other tricks used by harlots to
besot young men, and bewitch and captivate them: likewise this city and its inhabitants
were well versed in all the arts of flattery, deceit, and carnal policy; and in all the charms
of wealth, riches, luxury, and sensuality, the pomp of superstition and idolatry, to draw
in kingdoms and nations into subjection to them:
that selleth nations through her whoredoms, and families through her
witchcrafts; enslaved whole kingdoms, and brought them under her power and
dominion, to be her vassals; and was the instrument, not only of corporeal servitude, but
of their selling themselves to work wickedness, by committing spiritual fornication or
idolatry; into which multitudes were led by her influence and example, and particularly
the kingdoms and families of Israel and Judah; see 2Ki_16:10. In these whoredoms and
witchcrafts, as well as in her bloodthirstiness, lies, and oppression, Nineveh was a type
of the whore of Rome; see Rev_17:1.
JAMISO , "Because of the multitude of the whoredoms — This assigns the
reason for Nineveh’s destruction.
of the well-favoured harlot — As Assyria was not a worshipper of the true God,
“whoredoms” cannot mean, as in the case of Israel, apostasy to the worship of false gods;
but, her harlot-like artifices whereby she allured neighboring states so as to subject
them to herself. As the unwary are allured by the “well-favored harlot’s” looks, so Israel,
Judah (for example, under Ahaz, who, calling to his aid Tiglath-pileser, was made
tributary by him, 2Ki_16:7-10), and other nations, were tempted by the plausible
professions of Assyria, and by the lure of commerce (Rev_18:2, Rev_18:3), to trust her.
witchcrafts — (Isa_47:9, Isa_47:12). Alluding to the love incantations whereby
harlots tried to dement and ensnare youths; answering to the subtle machinations
whereby Assyria attracted nations to her.
selleth — deprives of their liberty; as slaves used to be sold: and in other property
also sale was a usual mode of transfer. Maurer understands it of depriving nations of
their freedom, and literally selling them as slaves to distant peoples (Joe_3:2, Joe_3:3,
Joe_3:6-8). But elsewhere there is no evidence that the Assyrians did this.
families — peoples.
CALVIN, "The Prophet mentions again the cause why God would execute so dreadful a

vengeance on that city, which yet procured by its splendor so much glory and respect
among all people: and God seems in a manner to have but little regard for the order of
the world when he thus overturns great cities. For since he is the Creator of the whole
world, it seems to be his proper office to protect its various parts, especially those which
excel in beauty, for they seem to deserve a higher regard. When therefore any splendid
city is demolished, such thoughts as these occur to us, — That God is either delighted
with the ruin of the world, or is asleep in heaven, and that thus all things revolve by
chance and contingency. Therefore the Prophet shows, that God had just reasons for
decreeing the ruin of Nineveh, and for deforming that beauty, that it might not deceive
the eyes of men. Hence he compares Nineveh to a harlot. The similitude seems not to be
very suitable: but yet if we take a nearer view of things, the Prophet could not have more
fitly nor more strikingly set forth the condition of that city. He had before mentioned its
barbarous cruelty, and said, that it was the den of lions, and that savage and bloody wild
beasts dwelt there. He now begins to speak of the frauds and crafty artifices by which the
kings of this world attain for themselves both wealth and power. The Prophet then
makes the city Nineveh to be like a harlot for this reason, — because it had not only
brought under its power neighboring nations by threats and terrors, and also by cruelty,
but because it had ensnared many by oblique arts and fraudulent means, by captious
dealings and allurements. This is the reason why it is now called a harlot by the Prophet.
The Prophets of God seem indeed to speak but with little reverence of great cities and
empires: but we know that it rightly belongs to the Spirit of God, that in exercising his
own jurisdiction, he should uncover the base deeds of the whole world, which otherwise
would lie concealed and even under the appearance of virtues deceive the eyes and
senses of the simple: and as men so much flatter themselves, and are inebriated with
their own delusions, it is necessary that those who are too self-indulgent and delicate
should be roughly handled. As then kings ever set up their own splendor that they may
dazzle the eyes of the simple, and seem to have their own greatness as a beautiful
covering, the Spirit of God divests them of these masks. This then is the reason why the
Prophet speaks here, in no very respectful terms, of that great monarchy which had
attracted the admiration of all nations. For when the Spirit of God adopts a humble and
common mode of speaking, men, blinded by their vices, will not acknowledge their own
baseness; nay, they will even dare to set up in opposition those things which cover their
disgraceful deeds: but the Spirit of God breaks through all these things, and dissipates
those delusions by which men impose on themselves.
Such is the reason for this similitude; On account of the multitude, he says, of the
whoredoms of the harlot, who excels in favor It is said by way of concession that Nineveh
was in great favor, that is, that by her beauty she had allured to herself many nations,
like a harlot who attains many lovers: and thus the Prophet allows that Nineveh was
beautiful. But he adds that she was the mistress of sorceries ‫,כשף‬ casheph, means sorcery,
and also juggling: we may then render ‫,כשפים‬ cashaphim, used here, juggleries, (praestigias —
sleights of hand.) But the Prophet seems to allude to filters or amatory potions, by which harlots
dementate youths. As then harlots not only attract notice by their beauty and bland manners and
other usual ways; but they also in a manner fascinate unhappy youths, and use various arts and
delusions; so the Prophet under this word comprehends all the deceits practiced by harlots; as
though he said, “This harlot was not only beautiful, but also an enchantress, who by her charms

deceived unhappy nations like a strumpets who dementates unhappy youths, who do not take
care of themselves.”
He afterwards adds, Who sells nations by her whoredoms, and tribes by her sorceries Though
Nahum still carries on the same metaphor, he yet shows more clearly what he meant by
whoredoms and sorceries, — even the crafts of princes, by which they allure their neighbors, and
then reduce them to bondage. Then all the counsels of kings (which they call policies) (240) are
here, by the Spirit of God, called sorceries or juggleries, and also meretricious arts. This reproof,
as I have already said, many deem to have been too severe; for so much majesty shone forth then
in the Assyrians, that they ought, as they think, to have been more respectfully treated. But it
behaved the Spirit of God to speak in this forcible language: for there is no one who does not
applaud such crafty proceedings. Where any one, without mentioning princes, to ask, Is it right to
deceive, and then by lies, deceptions, perjuries, cavils, and other arts, to make a cover for things?
— were this question asked, the prompt answer would be, that all these things are as remote as
possible from virtue, as nothing becomes men more than ingenuous sincerity. But when princes
appear in public, and make this pretense, that the world must be ruled with great prudence, that
except secret counsels be taken, all kingdoms would immediately fall into ruin, — this veil covers
all their shameful transactions, so that it becomes lawful for them, and even praiseworthy, to
deceive one party, to circumvent another, and a third to oppress by means of deception. Since
then princes are praised for their craftiness, this is the reason why the Prophet here takes away,
as it were by force, the mask, under which they hide their base proceedings; “They are,” he says,
“meretricious arts, and they are sorceries and juggleries.”
It is of one city, it is true, that he speaks here; but the Prophet no doubt describes in this striking
representation how kingdoms increase and by what crafty means, — first, by robberies, — and
then by artful dealings, such as would by no means become honest men in the middle class of life.
But princes could never succeed, except they practiced such artifices. We yet see how they are
described here by the Spirit of God, — that they are like strumpets given to juggleries, and to
other base and filthy arts, which he calls whoredoms. But I have said, that the meaning of the
Prophet can be more clearly elicited from the second clause of the verse, when he says that the
Ninevites made a merchandise of the nations. We see indeed even at this day that princes disturb
the whole world at their pleasure; for they deliver up innocent people to one another, and
shamefully sell them, while each hunts after his own advantage, without any shame; that he may

increase his own power, he will deliver others into the hand of an enemy. Since then there are
crafty proceedings of this kind carried on too much at this day, there is no need that I should
attempt to explain at any length the meaning of the Prophet. I wish that examples were to be
sought at a distance. Let us proceed —
BENSON, "Nahum 3:4. Because of the multitude, &c. — That is, this judgment is
executed upon Nineveh because of the multitude of her whoredoms, by which idolatrous
rites seem to be meant, for they are generally called whoredoms in the Scripture.
Nineveh is called a well-favoured harlot, because, by her example and influence, she
drew in other places to practise the same idolatries and other vices of which she was
guilty. That selleth nations through her whoredoms — That makes whole nations a prey
to their enemies, by encouraging them to worship idols, and thereby exposing
themselves to the wrath of God: or by teaching them the arts of softness and effeminacy,
and so rendering them weak and defenceless. As the violence and injustice of the
Ninevites had been represented under the emblem of a lion, the prophet here paints
their irregularities, their idolatry, and corruption, under the idea of a prostitute enticing
men to commit lewdness.
COFFMAN, "Verse 4
"Because of the multitude of the whoredoms of the well-favored harlot, the mistress of
witchcrafts, that selleth nations through her whoredoms, and families through her
witchcrafts."
"Whoredoms" is primarily the word for pagan idolatry, a kind of "code word" focused
upon the shameful and licentious "worship" (as they called it) of idol gods. It identified
idolatry by its principal and distinguishing characteristic. The term was usually applied
as "harlotry" to the defection and apostasy of God's own people; and some scholars seem
surprised that a pagan city is here called a harlot. However, even in the case of Nineveh
it was an apostasy. The entire city, under the preaching of the prophet Jonah had indeed
repented and turned to the worship of the true God, a phenomenon in which the king
himself with all of his nobles humbled themselves before God, forsook the violence that
was in their hands, clothed themselves with sackcloth, and engaged in fasting, praying
for God to avert the doom of Jonah's prophetic announcement. Thus, as usually in the
Bible, the term "harlot" applied to a falling away from the truth. That the term was
applied now and then to pagan nations cannot indicate any change or variation in this
essential meaning of it.
The notion that pagan Gentile nations generally were any less apostates from God than
were the apostate Israelites is false. Contrary to the thesis that monotheism evolved out
of polytheism, all men at one time knew God. "Knowing God, they glorified him not as
God" (Romans 1:21). How did they know God? "God manifested it unto them" (Romans
1:19). Jonah had quite recently (in Nahum's time) manifested God to the Ninevites; and
the very terminology of this verse is a witness to the actuality and success of Jonah's
mission. (See additional studies on the subject of apostasy under the figure of a harlot in
my commentary on Revelation, p. 386, and also on the state of paganism being a falling
away, or an apostasy, from the knowledge of the true God even on the part of the pre-
Christian Gentile nations, in my commentary on Romans, pp. 30-34.) Therefore, we

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