Nahum 3 · NIVAC

Original Meaning

Nineveh’s Cruelty Exposed (3:1–7)

THE EXPOSURE OF Nineveh’s cruelty is accomplished through Nahum’s graphic vision of the “city of blood” (3:1–3) and by a powerful taunt metaphor for military defeat (3:4–7). It begins with a vivid description of Nineveh’s war-making with a cry of “woe” (hoy) for all its violence. Nineveh’s evil reputation and Yahweh’s wrath against its details begin the chapter: “blood … lies … plunder … never without victims” (3:1). The last verse of the chapter echoes this beginning with the question: “Who has not felt your endless cruelty?” (3:19).

Woe oracles were prophetic threats that had their primary context in funeral dirges (1 Kings 13:30; Jer. 22:18–19).1 Jerusalem was the target of a similar woe oracle (Ezek. 24:6, 9) a few years after the fall of Nineveh.2 Nineveh’s woe was for four reasons: blood, lies, plunder, and victims (Nah. 3:1). Nineveh was known for shedding “blood” and often boasted of the details in art and written form (see “The Terror-Mongers of Nineveh, Assyria” in the introduction to Jonah).

Nineveh was also known for its “lies.” The phrase in 3:1 can be translated, “It has perfected deceit” (see 2 Chron. 28:16, 20–21 for an example of Assyria’s deceit against Israel). Its government had perfected duplicity in its treatment of other countries, making peace and then attacking (not unlike Hitler with Czechoslovakia). Such governments also practice domestic propaganda against their own citizens to create a false sense of prosperity and peace.

Nineveh had many of the spoils of its “plunder.” At its height the Assyrian empire controlled the Middle East from North Africa to Iran, and the city of Nineveh received many stolen treasures. Nineveh’s “merchants” were like locusts that descended on conquered cities and stripped them of all their goods (see Nah. 3:16). This city of blood was never without “victims” (2:12–13; 3:1; lit., “prey that is torn”; see 2:11–13).

This description of Nineveh and its woeful reputation is abruptly followed by a sensory vision of preparation to stage an attack (3:2), the attack itself (3:3a), and the resultant carnage (3:3b). The sounds and sensations carry the listener to the scene of preparation for battle: “crack … clatter … gallop … jolt.” These sounds of the mobilization of troops would be familiar to the many witnesses of Nineveh’s aggressions. The sights of the attack then transport the hearer to the battle itself: “charging cavalry, flashing swords, and glittering spears.” Finally, the carnage appears, its magnitude reinforced by a repetitive fourfold description: “Many casualties, piles of dead, bodies without number, people stumbling over the corpses.”

Exposure of evil always requires a detailed description of what has been done; otherwise all is lost in abstraction. In three short verses Nahum summarizes Nineveh’s own offensive reputation: blood, lies, plunder, victims, whips, wheels, horses, chariots, cavalry, swords, spears, casualties, dead, bodies, corpses. What is the motivation for this unparalleled aggression in the ancient world?

Verse 4 begins a strong metaphor with the source of Nineveh’s deep offenses. All the dead bodies and slaves of Assyria’s aggressions are “because of the wanton lust” (3:4a). The metaphor of a sorceress-harlot, though not familiar to modern readers, serves to name the source of Nineveh’s corruptions. Nahum joins two metaphors (harlotry and sorcery) as one offense by the parallel poetic structure in 3:4: “wanton lust [blood, lies, plunder, victims] of a harlot [zonah] … mistress of sorceries [kašap],” followed by “enslaved nations by her prostitution [zonah] … witchcraft [kašap].”

With a double metaphor verse 4 presents the primary and deep offense of Nineveh’s rule over the ancient Near East (3:4). The primary offense is found in the phrase “who enslaved nations … and peoples.” Nations may be translated “cultures” or “ethnic groups”; “peoples” may be translated “families” or “clans.” Enslaving them is what the Ninevites did. Nineveh captured many political and ethnic groups and forced them to submit to its control and will, sustaining a lucrative slave-based economy. The reference is not to simple prostitution, but the combination of sorcery and harlotry, which indicate the tremendous power and wealth gained.

Elsewhere the “harlotry” of ritual prostitution refers to Jerusalem or the people of Israel (Ezek. 16:14–34; 23:1–21; Hos. 1:2). A faithful marriage relationship is an important biblical metaphor for the exclusive nature of human faithfulness to Yahweh. The reference to harlotry is not a direct reference to sexual sin but an indirect metaphor from biblical law for seeking personal power by following other gods, betraying Yahweh. Worship of the gods that tempted Israel often included ritual intercourse at the temple. As a result, the most powerful metaphor for turning away from Yahweh was fornication or harlotry. When used of Israel, the metaphor means “turning to other gods.”

Nineveh’s offense as a sorceress-harlot was in following “gods” of greed, sexuality, and power. The focus is not on their improper sexuality but on the use of power by which Nineveh enslaved many ethnic groups, cultures, and nations. That metaphor points to the enslaving of nations, the primary offense named in Nah. 3:4.3

Yahweh then states directly a second time, “I am against you” (3:5; cf. 2:13). He says “I” six times in 3:5–7, giving a description of his revelation to the nations (3:5–6). He will “reveal” the truth beneath Nineveh’s glitter and allure in order that the cultures of the world will “see.” Yahweh’s deeds come in two sets. In 3:5 the “seeing” is in the verb “I will show” or “I will cause (them) to see,” which means, “I will cause them to understand” their nakedness and their shame. This is a reversal of the deception (3:5) in which all things come to light. Yahweh will lift the metaphorical skirts to show the world the detestable truth of Nineveh’s enslavements and torture. The lies of the glitter and the false glamor are stripped away, and the naked truth of the abuse is fully exposed and made helpless.4 It is an ironic reversal of Nineveh’s position, even at the time of this prophecy, when she proudly exposed the helplessness of her victims.

Yahweh will make Nineveh “a spectacle” by throwing “filth” and treating them with “contempt” (Nah. 3:6). The word translated “filth” (šiqquṣim) is translated in other contexts as “detestable” or “abominable.” It is often a reference to idols, which are “filth” to Yahweh. The image may be of God throwing Nineveh’s idols back at it. “Contempt” is from the root for “fool” (nabal). It is an ironically appropriate description of a fool who made a pit to trap others but falls into it himself (Ps. 7:15–16). To be treated as a nabal means that Nineveh will receive its own violent medicine.

The human response to Yahweh’s deeds of revelation follows in Nah. 3:7: They will flee and wonder, “Who will mourn for her?” (3:7). The entire area had been enslaved by Nineveh. Some were enticed, some were tricked, and some were forced, but all became its slaves. When Yahweh exposes the evil of Nineveh’s actions, its corrupting of what had been created good will be obvious to everyone. All will see the festering diseases beneath its alluring beauty. No one will defend slavery and its promises of wealth, power, and prowess. Yahweh’s utterance concludes with the question that echoes Nahum’s name: “Where can I find anyone to comfort you?”

Nineveh’s Vulnerability (3:8–13)

Bridging Contexts

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF Nahum 3 first appears as a series of difficulties or enduring problems of the text. Three themes create tension for the interpreter: the violence of God, the image of the sexual abuse of the metaphorical woman, and the related exposure of sin. Each of these is an enduring challenge for the reader today.

The violence of God. God says, “Are you better than Thebes?” and “her infants were dashed to pieces at the head of every street” (3:8a, 10b). A simple reading of the text reveals that earlier the Assyrians “dashed” infants to the ground, and the Babylonians are now dashing the Assyrian children. Most readers, however, quickly see the theological problem just beneath the surface. God implies and history shows that God commissioned the same violence in Nineveh. Infants were killed by ancient armies to annihilate hope for future restoration and to empty the arms of women marching in shackles to distant slave markets. How can we talk of a God who claims responsibility for the violent death of innocents?

A common response of interpreters is to say nothing, thereby avoiding the simmering imagery. Many commentaries dodge the problem through silence. A Bible teacher or pastor may do this also, for good reason, since resolving the problem of God’s violence for students or parishioners is not easy. The Bible, however, does not afford the luxury of ignoring what everyone knows to be true in the world: Every day innocent children are killed in wars, in clinics, or in violent homes. Scripture does not hide the enduring reality of a world gone mad. Grown women and men kill children in God’s world.

The tension is necessarily resolved in part by stating that sin and the will of sinful people account for these heinous crimes against children. Today, as then, rebellious people futilely seek to increase their own well-being through violence against the most powerless.8 After all, it is the evil Assyrians and the Babylonians who actually commit the murder of the infants.

The tension may be further resolved linguistically and philosophically by noting that when speaking of God, Scripture uses the language of “accommodation.” Since God is not a human being, Scripture necessarily uses anthropomorphisms to speak of his actions in the world. Often the anthropomorphisms erroneously cause us to think of God as a human being and to forget that what Yahweh does is done perfectly. In addition, God, as Creator, is behind all that is done in the universe. Any single action must be understood as part of a larger pattern that is not easily understood.

The sharp edges of the text remain sharp. The problem with each of these solutions, for people who read Scripture as God’s Word, is that God directly takes responsibility for the destruction of Thebes and Nineveh. To dismiss the slaughter of infants as the work of evil men, linguistically or philosophically, does not actually put it out of mind. Nor does it settle the contemporary issue of innocent suffering today. God is still the master of an awful mess. “Answers” to the mess are in short supply.

One wisdom tradition offers the “answer” that “all life is suffering.” With this perspective one accepts the problem and lives into it. The story of Jesus offers another perspective that includes God. “When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi” (Matt. 2:16). God in the flesh entered into the fight against evil, not as an obvious conquering warrior but as an innocent. The infant Jesus himself was the target of the same strategy as “dashing on the rocks.” God’s ownership of the responsibility for the human problem did not remain philosophical but took on flesh. He became vulnerable to the violence, running (with Mary and Joseph) for his life to Egypt. He entered the “mess” and the violence, even to a torturous death as an abandoned criminal.

Against women? In the contemporary setting the label of misogyny is thought appropriate for any hint of violence against women. However, any interpretation that supports a general notion of hatred against women must be deconstructed. Anyone who uses Nahum as support to legitimize hatred of women makes an egregious interpretive error. It is obvious that the text is violent and that the object of the violence is a woman. This may be enough in our present climate of awareness of violence against women to avoid public reading of this problematic and easily misinterpreted description of God violently using a woman (Nah. 3:5–6).

If we read these dangerous verses publicly, two fundamental truths ought to be clearly articulated. (1) The violence that God says Babylon will do for him is against everyone in Assyria. Anyone who uses the metaphor of violence against the sorceress-harlot may see the finger of God pointed at them. The prophecy is against all those who use power and sexuality inappropriately. To apply this text against women in particular is to use interpretive power inappropriately. The actual violence of the text is against the entire population—men, women, and children. The sorceress-harlot metaphor in particular is a reference to a nation’s use of seduction and power for horrific purposes (see the Original Meaning section). We would do well to consider that Wisdom is also portrayed as a woman and to learn from her (Prov. 1–4, 7–9).

(2) God is the One who claims responsibility for the violence against everyone. If the text is applied to our situation, God’s responsibility and not human agency must be clearly understood. “Vengeance is mine,” says the Lord. No one can claim to do God’s work of vengeance without condemning themselves. That God used the equally corrupt Babylonian army as his agent in this work is no accident. He did not use holy warriors, and the Babylonians did not see themselves as such. Those who do God’s will in violence of this magnitude stand condemned by their own violence.

In the final assessment, the text remains problematic. Even with the interpretive caveats outlined above, the use of the metaphor of violence against a woman (even a powerful woman) must be approached with a deep sense of grief and interpretive warning. Violence is too much alive in the cultures of the world today to proceed in any other way.

Nakedness exposed. The image of the violent and complete exposure of Assyria tells an enduring truth about God’s judgment: Everything will be revealed in God’s judgment. Every life will be an open book. Jesus claimed to be the light that would expose all deeds (John 3:19–20). The early church experienced radical conversions, even of sorcerers, who confessed their evil deeds publicly (Acts 19:18–20). Paul encouraged believers to be clothed with the light of Christ and so expose their dark deeds in repentance (Rom. 13:12–14; Eph. 5:8–14). Through John, the Spirit warned the church that the Lord knew their deeds and “shameful nakedness” and counseled them to repent and be covered (Rev. 3:14–19).

The enduring truth echoed throughout the New Testament is that everyone, when exposed before God, will be found to be a shameful and diseased sorceress-harlot. It is a harsh image, but it tells the truth. Prostitutes offer what they cannot deliver: beauty and love. They sell what should not be sold and cannot be bought: intimacy and a lifetime of love, care, and commitment. The exposure of Assyria and our own exposure demonstrate that what any culture offers, believes, and promises apart from Christ is a lie. We are exposed as “sorcerers” when we trust in things that bring us power (e.g., technologies, both domestic and military). Serving created things for the power they render is a form of idolatry that attempts to stand in for the Creator. The exposure of cultures and individuals ultimately leads to a powerless death. Everyone is exposed under the harsh image of the sorceress-harlot.

Everyone is exposed before God, naked in unrighteousness and in need of being clothed. “Clothe yourself in Christ,” Paul admonishes (Rom. 13:14). The word “clothe” or “cover” also means “atone” or “deliver” in Hebrew (kapar—as in Yom Kippur, Day of Atonement.). The kapporet was the “mercy seat” (the cover) of the ark of the covenant, where the blood of forgiveness was sprinkled. Paul knew that to be clothed in Christ meant that the nakedness of each person’s unrighteousness was “covered” by Christ.

We don’t like the violent judgment of God. We don’t like the violence of the cross. We don’t like the exposing light of the cross that reveals our self-centeredness before a God who is willing to give everything, even himself. His self-giving exposure on a cross exposes our selfishness, our nakedness, our shortcomings, and our corruptions. Unless we are made naked and die to ourselves, we can never be clothed in Jesus. In regard to our desperate need, we are no different than the people of Nineveh.

Contemporary Significance

A NATURAL RESPONSE to the most uncomfortable parts of Nahum is to create distance between the book and our present situation. The descriptions of the abusive exposure of the harlot in Nah. 3:5 and the killing of infants in 3:10 are especially disturbing.9 Avoiding these passages of Scripture is the most obvious way to apply our contemporary discomfort. This avoidance sometimes rests on the claim that Christ’s command to love our enemies has made some texts insignificant for the Christian (Joshua and Nahum are usually at the top of the list). Yet something may be learned from this part of God’s Word. At the other end of the spectrum, the book may be applied as an excuse for human violence against evil. This involves putting humanity in the place of God or the Babylonian army in the text, something that is commonly called “sin” (see the Original Meaning section on 1:2).10

Between these two extremes, Christians have used a wide range of strategies for understanding Nahum. Many have the effect of pushing the violence into a neat interpretive corner. These rationales avoid the possibility that God will afflict us and those who are dear to us. God’s violence against the woman and against the infants is a warning that catastrophic violence may also come into our communities and require a response from the faithful. Those who have taken Nahum’s word to heart may be prepared to speak and to act in accordance with the gospel. On that occasion Christians will have the opportunity to stand with the suffering and earn the credibility of a witness to God’s power both to kill and make alive. The alternative is to distance oneself ideologically from the suffering (even one’s own) and to lose credibility and even one’s faith in a good God.

We distance ourselves in a variety of ways from the text’s claim that God uses violence to accomplish his will. We can isolate such claims as the embarrassing historical nationalistic diatribes of the Judean prophet against Nineveh. This comes at the cost of removing God from the discussion. We can isolate it as a unique historical circumstance in which God acted before the time of Christ. This requires ignoring or dancing around Jesus’ own words about the violence of the nations to come (Matt. 24; Mark 13; Luke 19:44; 21:18–36) and the violence of the book of Revelation. Another strategy is to point only to the positive passages of comfort in Nahum, such as: “His way is in the whirlwind” (Nah. 1:3b); “the LORD is good” (1:7); “look … the feet of one who brings good news” (1:15); and “the LORD will restore” (2:2). The quality of the poetry can also be praised.

Perhaps the most common and easily accepted move is to acknowledge violence as the necessary punishment of the enemy of God, even with its troubling murder of innocents and actual rape of Ninevite women by the Babylonians. This reading, of course, has substantial warrants in the text and is a common assumption of ancient warfare. The end result, however, is either that the text is again relegated to significance only in the past, or that we are left only with the option of applying it against our own enemies. There is no word in it for us except that God will destroy our enemies. The problem with this application is that most of the time in Scripture, the words of God against a people are against his own people.

Just as in Nahum 3:5, God uses rape-like language against the people of Jerusalem through Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Zechariah. “I will pull up your skirts over your face that your shame may be seen” (Jer. 13:26), and “I will gather all the nations to Jerusalem to fight against it; the city will be captured, the houses ransacked, and the women raped” (Zech. 14:2a; see also Isa. 47:2–3; Ezek. 16:37).

Just as in Nahum 3:10, God prophesies through Jeremiah, Hosea, and Ezekiel that he will kill infants with everyone else in Jerusalem on the day of wrath. “Even if they bear children, I will slay their cherished offspring” (Hos. 9:16b), and “‘I will smash them one against the other, fathers and sons alike, declares the LORD. I will allow no pity or mercy or compassion to keep me from destroying them’” (Jer. 13:14; see also Hos. 10:10–15; 13:16). God is against Nineveh (Nahum 2:13) in the same way that he is against his beloved people. Nineveh does not stand alone. The identical language (“I am against you”) is used in Scripture primarily against his covenant people (Isa. 63:10; Jer. 21:5–6; Ezek. 5:8; 21:3). In this context we dare not read Nahum as if we are exempt from God’s judgment or cataclysmic violence. To claim exemption is exactly what the enemies of God did. We must read “in solidarity with the judged.”11

The challenge for Christians is to hear Nahum as a living word against us. The violence of God may be accepted as relevant Scripture for the Christian today by bringing it close. It may be brought close by considering ourselves as the Ninevites. It may also be brought close by reading similar words spoken against God’s chosen people. Historically, no one escapes the violence of God. God’s enemies and God’s beloved all suffer from their rebellion. The difference is whether the suffering is accepted in repentance and becomes redemptive or not.

The first Christians suffered such unmerciful persecution at the hand of the Romans that John cried out “How long?” (Rev. 6:10). Their suffering drove them to rely on the cross of Christ, the memory of Jesus’ sufferings (the Lamb that was slain), the warnings to the churches, and the promise of the fulfillment of his resurrection victory (themes of Revelation). Paul spoke of his sufferings that came from many sources, yet ultimately from God. Some sufferings were a direct result of his preaching, but others “just happened” (see his catalog of painful experiences in 2 Cor. 11:24–27). He also suffered a chronic physical ailment (“thorn in the flesh”) that God would not remove from him in order that God’s power could be perfected in him (12:7–9).

John Donne also understood the advantage and grace of being assaulted by God.

I, like a usrupt towne, to another due,

Labor to admit you, but Oh, to no end.

Reason, your viceroy in mee, mee should defend

But is captiv’d and proves weak or untrue …

[I] am betroth’d unto your enemie:

Divorce mee, untie or breake that knot againe.

Take mee to you, imprison me, for I,

Except you enthrall mee, never shall be free,

Nor ever chast[e] except you ravish me.12

Donne invited the assault of God because it freed him from his bondage to the limitation of his own experiences. This positive view of assault as a way to experience the grace of God is not commonly used. Certainly to one who has been actually battered or raped this application may be futile and counterproductive. For them, Nahum’s word of comfort through the Lord’s vengeance against the wicked may suffice. But the word stands against the powerful and self-satisfied.

Jesus echoes the harshest part of Nahum’s prophecy (Nah. 3:10). The word of warning is the same: “They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls” (Luke 19:44a). By his presence, teaching, life, death, and resurrection, Jesus offers a new doorway to peace with God. Those who die in him will also rise with him. He does not, however, remove the reality of death or the threat of a vengeful death for those who do “not recognize the time of God’s coming to you” (19:44). All who persist in rebellion against the Creator are subject to the severe warnings of Nahum and Jesus. Christians also died in Jerusalem when the Romans finally razed it in A.D. 70. The difference was that they died in hope and promise rather than in fear and judgment.

The harshest themes of Nahum’s judgment are also used in the book of Revelation. There the referent city is Rome, which inherited the metaphor of the sorceress-harlot (Nah. 3:4) from Assyria and Babylon (Rev. 9:20; 17:1–2; 18:23). In Revelation, the warning against the self-serving worship of created things stands, as does the promise that the sufferings of the faithful will bear fruit and be vindicated in a new creation. The two general concerns of these texts are the magic arts and false worship of immorality. In our present-day context these translate into money and sexuality. The purpose of the “magic arts” is the unbridled pursuit of prosperity and unrestrained manipulation of wealth, people, and material (see the Revelation texts noted above). Immorality is known biblically as the worship of created things. The main context is the libertine use of physical sensuality outside the created boundaries of marriage.

The same themes may be traced in the sins of our century(s). The recent history of the world has been filled with crimes against humanity and God. Most of them have manipulated populations through murder and terror to increase the wealth of the rulers in power. Much genocide is documented in our time, accounting for the murder of forty million people: the Soviet people under Stalin, Jews and others under Nazism, Armenians, Cambodians, Ugandans, Rwandans, Sudanese, Bosnians, and Iraqis. Who profited or still profits from these murders?

In earlier generations, Americans were responsible for the enslavement and deaths of many Africans. In 1860 there were as many as four million slaves in our country. We traded human lives for cheap labor and profit in order to sustain a way of life. The study of the slave trade to the Americas is instructive for considering our own history and future. Especially instructive is the attitude of repentance and acknowledgment that Abraham Lincoln presented to the American people in his second inaugural address on March 4, 1865. He publicly submitted to the possibility that whites would suffer blood for every drop of African blood that had been shed.

If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”13

If we take God’s anger against our sin seriously as a result of reading Nahum’s and Jesus’ words of judgment, our response to uncovered national sin may follow the same course. The accumulation of wealth at human cost, the sacrifice of child-raising for economic gain, or the sacrifice of marriage vows in attempts at sexual “self-fulfillment” tempts every generation. These things may be, like the sorceress-harlot, alluring (Nah. 3:4). They may appear desirable on the surface, but they lead to slavery. All that glitters is not gold. Each case of sin leads to someone’s enslavement. Sin leads us away from God’s love and his law—away from marriage, children, worship, and care for the suffering and dispossessed, for the stranger, for the unbeliever. May God assault us and break our self-serving shackles.

The Christian celebration of the Lord’s Supper is a practice that invites us to regularly receive God’s “assault” on our self-centered enslavements. God has offered a new wine in place of the wrath-filled cup that awaits those who maintain their rebellion against the Creator.14 We are invited to drink from the new cup of Christ’s sufferings (Mark 10:38–39). The cup of remembrance and thanksgiving (1 Cor. 10:16; 11:25) is the drink the Lord offers to those who want to be freed of the world’s common enslavements and their consequential wrath. Rather than wrath, the cup is filled with the new wine of the gospel.

Original Meaning

Nineveh’s Vulnerability (3:8–13)

NAHUM NOW COMPARES Nineveh to the stronger cities of Egypt that fell fifty years before Nineveh (663 B.C.) and then compares its fortresses to ripe figs and its troops to peaceful women.

(1) The demeaning tone of Yahweh’s questions to the Ninevites serves to convince them of the warnings of Nineveh’s coming fall. “So, you believe it is impossible? You feel your security is sure? Are your defenses better than those of Thebes?” If some Ninevites believe the prophecy, perhaps they will repent and flee. Israelites hearing this address to Nineveh may also be convinced to hope that it is possible for the strong city to fall. This is a rhetorical question that anticipates a negative answer.

Thebes was also defended by waterworks and moats filled by the Nile River. It was one of the great and enduring cities of the ancient world (2000–663 B.C.). At the time of its defeat, Thebes controlled Egypt and Cush (ancient Ethiopia that included northern Sudan) and was allied with Put (part of present-day Libya or else Somalia) and Libya. The great irony is that Thebes was conquered by Assyrian King Ashurbanipal. It was the best-defended city ever conquered until Nineveh. The comparison would have raised a valid and haunting question among those who remembered their conquest of Thebes.

Nahum describes what Assyria did to Thebes, rhetorically adding to their offenses. Their deeds were typical of ancient warfare and will now also accompany Assyria’s defeat by Babylon. Infants were dashed upon the ground (2 Kings 8:12; Isa. 13:16; Hos. 13:16), and the honored elders, wealthy, political leaders, and strong men were chained and sold into slavery.

“You too will become drunk” (Nah. 3:11) is an image of despair and helplessness, a common response of those who suddenly encounter the consequences of their sins before God (Ps. 75:8; Isa. 19:14; 51:17; Rev. 14:10; 16:19; 19:15). Like Thebes, Nineveh will “go into hiding” (the Heb. may also mean “swoon” or “pass out”) and seek refuge from the attacking enemy.

(2) Nahum goes on to use two metaphors to provoke Nineveh’s warmongers, comparing their fortresses to ripe fig trees and their troops to peace-loving women (Nah. 3:12–13). A shift in verb tense brings us into the present. Nahum takes a tour of Nineveh’s defenses. Its fortresses are like ripe figs, falling off the branch to be eaten.5 Its troops “are all [like] women” who do not want to or cannot fight. Its city gates cannot be closed because they have been used as fuel in a fire. The whole impression of the tour is domestic and open. This would be greatly ironic to those under Assyria’s thumb of oppression. It would also be an offensive description to the Ninevites, who consider themselves fit, war-worthy, and prepared.

Nineveh’s Corruption and the Joy of the Nations (3:14–19)