Nahum 3:1 Commentary and Bible Study

The Hebrew is, ‘Woe to the city of bloods;’ – ‘it is all full of lies and robbery; the prey departeth not’ – a reference back to Nahum 2:12. This is the reason why Nineveh is being judged. She has conducted herself with extreme cruelty, inflicting terrible atrocities on the surrounding nations. Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 BC) was the Assyrian king who introduced new siege techniques to Assyrian warfare, particularly the use of earth ramparts and battering engines, supported by sling-shooters and archers. Shalmaneser III (859-824 BC) boasts that he won such a great victory that the rivers were dammed with corpses and the valleys flowed with blood. This was their aggressive language calculated to strike terror into the hearts of their enemies, and they made no attempt to hide their cruelty. Nahum also charges them with lies. We have an example of this in the Rabshakeh’s phoney words to Israel when he tried to persuade Jerusalem to surrender: ‘Make an agreement with me by a present, and come out to me, and then eat ye every man of his own vine, and every one of his fig tree, and drink ye every one the waters of his cistern: ³² Until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of corn and wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of oil olive and of honey, that ye may live, and not die’ (2 Kings 18:31-32). The Lachish room in the British Museum shows with what cruelty they in fact treated their enemies, for there are wall reliefs of the siege of the city resulting in dead defenders shown spiked on poles, and paraded about to demoralise others. Some see verses 2-3 as a description of the Assyrian army inflicting great suffering on those it conquers and the grounds of her judgment to come. Others interpret these verses as a description of the Chaldeans and Medes who have already penetrated Nineveh and are in the process of destroying her with great violence. We will take the first interpretation, and see these two verses as enlarging on a description of the prey in verse 1. Verse 4 then continues in the same vein, and speaks of her brutalities towards other nations and families, and is a summary of her wickedness which is announced before her sentence is determined in verse 5. (If verses 2-3 spoke of the Chaldean invaders, then the judgment would seem to have come too early in the flow of thought.) Seen this way, verse 4 is a summary of her evils and refers back to verse 1 where her woe is announced. (The alternative interpretation will see verse 4 as an explanation for why the Chaldean invaders have already been allowed to enter Nineveh.) Her dominion is described there: ‘The noise of a whip, and the noise of the rattling of the wheels, and of the pransing horses, and of the jumping chariots.’ The whip is used to urge on the horses, which rush forward with great strength and energy, pransing in the air, and even causing the chariots drawn behind them to jump forward. Great pomp and victory are to be seen in the very militant Assyrians, and in Nineveh. ‘The horsemen lifteth up, both the bright sword and the glittering spear.’ It is their domination and massacres that are described in these verses. ‘A great number of carcases; and there is none end of their corpses; they stumble upon their corpses.’ The Assyrians killed for killing's sake. They decapitated the corpses and piled up the heads and depicted them on their monuments.