A predicted invasion.
I. THE ENEMY DESCRIBED.
1. His violence. Nahum calls him "a dasher in pieces" (verse 1), and represents his warriors as "mighty" and "valiant" (verse 3)—epithets which apply with fitness and force to the Merdo-Babylonian army under Cyaxares and Nabopolassar.
2. His boldness. He comes up against Nineveh, not stealthily and under cover of darkness, but openly, pitching his tent opposite the city gates. His fearless attitude was a proof that God was secretly impelling him, using him against Assyria as formerly Assyria had been used against other nations.
3. His invincibility. Nineveh may "keep the munition, watch the way, make her loins strong, fortify her power mightily,"—all will be in vails. The onset of this terrible assailant will be practically resistless. Whether irony (Fausset) or poetry (Keil), the meaning is the same, that Nineveh's utmost exertions will not be able to ward off her ruin.
4. His fierceness. With crimson-coated soldiers, bearing red-coloured shields and shaking terribly tall spears of fir, and with chariots flashing with the gleam of steel plates, his appearance was fitted to inspire terror (verse 3). "The chariots of the Assyrians, as we see them on the monuments, elate with shining things made either of iron or steel, battle axes, bows, arrows, and shields, and all kinds of weapons" (Strauss).
5. His impetuosity. The swiftness and the fury of his attack are vividly described (verse 4). His chariots the prophet represents as raging, driving on madly, through the streets, as crowding the broad spaces in such a fashion as to jostle against and threaten to run down one another, as flashing to and fro like torches, as running hither and thither with the celerity of lightning.
II. THE ATTACK EXPLAINED.
1. The Assyrian oppression of Israel. "The emptiers;" i.e. the Assyrians, "have emptied out" the Israelites, and "marred their vine branches" They had done so by their devastation and depopulation of the northern kingdom (2 Kings 17:6), and by their repeated invasions of the southern (Isaiah 10:5-11; 2 Chronicles 32:1). Now the time was come when they themselves should be emptied (verse 10) and their branches marred (Ezekiel 31:12). Jehovah had employed the Assyrian as the rod of his anger to punish Israel and Judah; but he had never concealed his purpose, when this was done, "to punish the fruit of the stout heart of the King of Assyria, and the glory of his high looks" (Isaiah 10:12).
2. The Divine remembrance of Israel. Having promised never to forget her or finally cast her off (Isaiah 44:21; Isaiah 49:16; Psalms 89:33, Psalms 89:34), he had returned to the excellency of Jacob as to the excellency of Israel (Keil), or had brought again the excellency of Jacob as the excellency of Israel (Revised Version). Both renderings are admissible, and both conduct to the same goal. The doom of Nineveh was certain because Jehovah was about to restore Judah to her ideal excellence as "Israel," and this he was to do by himself, returning to her as if she were an ideal Israel.
III. THE RESISTANCE BEGUN.
1. Suddenly. Nineveh at length realizes her danger and bethinks herself of her warriors: "He remembereth his worthies" (verse 5). Assyria had good generals and valiant troops; to these she now turns.
2. Hastily. Not a moment is lost. Men and marshals hurry to the wall. No time to trifle when such enemies as Cyaxares and Nabopolassar thunder at the gates.
3. Vigorously. The defence (Authorized Version), mantelet (Revised Version), or movable parapet, literally, the covering one, the testudo or tortoise (Keil), is prepared—probably "either a movable tower with a battering ram, consisting of a light framework covered with basket work, or else a framework without any tower, either with an ornamented covering or simply covered with skins and moving upon four or six wheels" (Keil).
4. Blindly. Their energy and haste only lead to confusion: "They stumble in their march." The more haste, the less speed.
IV. THE CONQUEST COMPLETED.
1. The capture of the city. This was effected by forcing the gates in the city wall: "The gates of the rivers are opened" (verse 6). These were the gates leading from the river into the city (Luther, Keil), rather than the dams or sluices through which the waters of the river were admitted into the canals which protected the palace.
2. The demolition of the palace. "The palace is dissolved," not by the inundation of water from the river (Fausset), since the palaces were usually "built in the form of terraces upon the tops of hills, either natural or artificial, and could not be flooded with water" (Keil); but by the inrush of enemies against it. The prophet means that "there will be no impediment to hinder the approach of enemies, for all the fortresses will melt away, and that of themselves, as though they were walls of paper, and the stones as though they were water" (Calvin).
3. The deportation of the queen. "And Huzzab is uncovered," etc. (verse 7). This may signify either that the consort of the king is seized, degraded, and borne off into inglorious exile (Ewald), or that Nineveh, personified as a queen, is now cheered with shame, and that she who had formerly been established is now swept off into captivity (Keil, Fausset, Calvin). In the former cage the handmaids who accompany her, mourning with the voice of doves and beating on their breasts (literally, "hearts") are the ladies of her court; in the latter, they are most probably the inhabitants who bewail the fate of their once famous city and kingdom (Calvin, Keil).
4. The flight of the inhabitants. "They," i.e. the masses of the people, "flee away" (verse 8).
5. The spoliation of the treasure.
6. The desolation of the scene. "She is empty, and void, and waste" (verse 10)—the effect of this description being heightened in Hebrew by the combination of throe synonymous and similarly sounding words, buqah umebhuqah umebullaqah. Emptied of her population and despoiled of her treasure, she became a total ruin. According to Strabo, when Cyaxares and his allies took the city, they utterly destroyed it.
7. The horror of the vanquished. "The heart melteth and the knees smite together, and anguish is in all loins, and the faces of them all are waxed pale" (verse 10). "Hence we may learn how foolishly men boast of their courage, while they seem to be like lions; for God can in a moment so melt their hearts that they lose all firmness" (Calvin).
LESSONS.
1. The retributions of Divine providence (verse 1). The destroyers of others may expect themselves to be destroyed (Isaiah 33:1).
2. The hopelessness of defending one's self against the invasions of Heaven (verse 1). "Who would set the thorns and briars against me in battle?" (Isaiah 27:4; cf. 'Herod.,' Isaiah 9:16, "Whatever necessarily comes from God, it is impossible for man by any contrivance to turn aside").
3. The true ideal of a nation's greatness (verse 2)—the dwelling of Jehovah in her midst (Psalms 46:5).
4. The utter vanity of all earthly glory (verse 8). The world's strength, riches, honours, are all destined to perish (1 John 2:17).
5. The horrors of the wicked when the terrors of judgment come upon them (verse 10). "Then shall they say to the mountains and the rocks, Fall on us," etc. (Revelation 6:16).