Nahum 2:5 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Nahum 2:5

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This is about Nineveh. ‘He [either the king, or the city itself] shall recount [remember] his worthies’, his mighty men of battle, his generals. They were in the past his source of confidence, but now they seem feeble in the face of the enemy. He will recall them to Nineveh in the hope that they will defend the city, and will hurry to the walls to see the approaching enemy. They will make preparations, but there will be an air of hopelessness. Defeat is staring them in the face and they know it. He will try to stir them up to resist, but they are no good. Now ‘they shall stumble like drunken men in their walk.’ They are broken people and so it is with society. ‘The gates of the rivers shall be opened, and the palace shall be dissolved.’ There may be a reference to the river Tigris (although the Hebrew is plural – ‘rivers’) on which Nineveh was built, and which they regarded as a strong defence (Calvin). But the language is probably figurative, as are so many of Nahum’s expressions. The enemy will come in like a flood, and reach to the palace, the place of honour and power which was normally beyond the reach of all outsiders. The enemy will come into the heart of the city and destroy it, as if it had been dissolved by incoming floods.‘And Huzzab shall be led away captive, she shall be brought up, and her maids shall lead her as with the voice of doves, tabering upon their breasts.’ Where the KJV has translated the first word as a proper name, ‘Huzzab’, other versions translate the word with the phrase, ‘It is decreed’. It is the third person singular masculine of a verb meaning to stand, and in its form here means ‘it is fixed’, or as we would say ‘it is decreed’. The other two verbs in the first part of the sentence are feminine, and must refer to the city of Nineveh. The KJV, in translating the word Huzzab, treats this as the name of the queen, but no other individual is named in the book except for Nahum, and the next verse makes Nineveh the subject. She ‘shall be led away captive’, or as others translate this form of the word, ‘she is uncovered’; and ‘she is carried away’. Her maidens or handmaids are Nineveh’s young women who are defenceless after the fall of the city. They go with a sound of mourning as of doves, and beating their breasts as a sign of grief – a tabor was a small drum.

Application

‘But Nineveh is of old like a pool of water: yet they shall flee away.’ All the pleasant and attractive aspects of the city are gone. The good things that we experience in this life cannot last. Because we do not recognise God as the one who gives us every good gift in this brief life, then even those good things we have received will be taken from us. Where the inhabitants of Nineveh previously came into the city for security and safety, they will now flee from it in terror for it is being destroyed. To emphasise this the prophet sees some in charge of Nineveh’s defence desperately crying out to those who are fleeing, ‘Stand, stand’, but so great is their fear that none of those in flight shall even look back. Some of the old writers contended that this was again the mercy of God. As the end draws near there will be those who will run for their lives. Nineveh needs every man he has, and every woman also, to defend against the foe, but look at these people in their droves slipping out of the city and running and the generals on the walls and their officers shout to them to stop, but they won't take any notice, because these are people who have read that the end is coming.

Towards the very end this broken society will try to assert its credibility, but it cannot be done anymore, and besides that, the people are already running. Where are they running? Where are they going? Well, say the old commentators, they're heading for that fortress, that stronghold. They are running, fleeing to that one place where they shall be safe. And so it is right up towards the end. This may even refer to some kind of spiritual awakening that God in his mercy will bring before the final stroke of judgment, so that many will run from the city that has dominated their minds and ruled their thinking and kept them godless – the city of this society – and will flee to that stronghold of mercy. The people who remain will be plundered and terrified because God is against them.

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Nahum 2:5 Commentary and Bible Study

The meaning of Nahum 2:5 explained