Nahum 3 commentary

When proud sinners are brought down, others should learn not to lift themselves up. The fall of this great city should be a lesson to private persons, who increase wealth by fraud and oppression. They are preparing enemies for themselves; and if the Lord sees good to punish them in this world, they will have none to pity them. Every man who seeks his own prosperity, safety, and peace, should not only act in an upright, honourable manner, but with kindness to all.

Strong-holds, even the strongest, are no defence against the judgments of God. They shall be unable to do any thing for themselves. The Chaldeans and Medes would devour the land like canker-worms. The Assyrians also would be eaten up by their own numerous hired troops, which seem to be meant by the word rendered “merchants.” Those that have done evil to their neighbours, will find it come home to them. Nineveh, and many other cities, states, and empires, have been ruined, and should be a warning to us. Are we better, except as there are some true Christians amongst us, who are a greater security, and a stronger defence, than all the advantages of situation or strength? When the Lord shows himself against a people, every thing they trust in must fail, or prove a disadvantage; but he continues good to Israel. He is a strong-hold for every believer in time of trouble, that cannot be stormed or taken; and he knoweth those that trust in Him.

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.

Prayer.

Grant, Almighty God. that as we have now heard of punishments so dreadful denounced on all tyrants and plunderers, this warning may keep us within the limits of justice, so that none of us may abuse our power to oppress the innocent, but, on the contrary, strive to benefit one another, and wholly regulate ourselves according to the rule of equity: and may we hence also receive comfort whenever the ungodly molest and trouble us, and doubt not but that we are under thy protection, and that thou art armed with power sufficient to defend us, so that we may patiently bear injuries, until at length the ripened time shall come for thee to help us, and to put forth thy power for our preservation; nor let us cease to bear our evils with patience, as long as it may be thy will to exercise us in our present warfare, until having gone through all one troubles, we come to that blessed rest which has been provided for us in heaven by Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

Lecture One Hundred and Fourth

Nahum 3:2-3

2. The noise of a whip, and the noise of the rattling of the wheels, and of the pransing horses, and of the jumping chariots.

2. Sonitus flagelli, et sonitus commotionis rotae, et equus concutiens, et quadriga exultans;

3. 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:

3. Eques ascendere faciens, et flamma gladii, et fulgur lanceae, et multitudo occisi (est mutatio numeri, occisorum,) et pondus cadaverum (hoc est etiam multitudo,) et nullus finis cadaveribus ejus; impingent in cadavera ejus:

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. It appears from Marckius that Theodoret and Cyril regarded this verse, with Calvin, as a description of the Chaldean army after having invaded Nineveh, but that Jerome and Cocceius viewed it as a delineation of the state of Nineveh in the Prophet’s time; and with the last Newcome agrees, while Henderson coincides with the former. The version given by them is all nearly the same. It seems certainly more consistent with the order of the poem to regard the verse as describing the state of Nineveh at the time, for the sacking of Nineveh had been before very minutely delineated. Having done this, the Prophet may be supposed to give here a reason for the dreadful catastrophe which he had mentioned. Entertaining this view, and differing from others as to the meaning of some of the clauses, I offer the following version of the three verses, —

1. Oh! The city of blood! All of deceit; Of plunder it is full, none can search out the spoil: —

2. The sound of the 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! Who are fallen, with their nations,

3. Through the many fornications of the harlot, That exults in beauty, and possesses 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. רב חלל, “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, כבד פגד. “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 Psalm 110:6. The third verse must be connected with the second, as it has otherwise no grammatical construction. — Ed. 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.

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 —

Nahum 3:4

4. 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.

4. Ob multitudinem scortationum meretricis pollentis gratia, magistrae veneficiorum, vendentis gentes in scortationibus suis, et nationes in suis veneficiis.

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) Practicas, used here evidently in a sense not classical, meaning the crafty tactics of politicians. The word practic, in English, was, at one time, used in a bad sense, signifying what was sly and artful, or crafty; and practice too was employed to designate a trick, or a stratagem. — Ed. 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 —

Nahum 3:5-6

5. Behold, 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.

5. Ecce Ego ad te, inquit Jehova exercituum, et retegam fimbrias tuas super faciem tuam, et ostendam gentibus nuditatem tuam, et regnis foeditatem tuam:

6. And I will cast abominable filth upon thee, and make thee vile, and will set thee as a gazingstock.

6. Et projiciam super te sordes (vel, inquinamenta) et ignominia afficiam te, et ponam te quasi stercus (alii vertunt; alii autem, quasi exemplum; dicam postea de ipsa voce.)

The Prophet confirms here what he has said of the fall of Nineveh; but, as it was stated yesterday, he introduces God as the speaker, that his address might be more powerful. God then testifies here to the Assyrians, that they should have no strife or contention with any mortal being, but with their own judgment; as though he said, “There is no reason for thee to compare thy forces with those of the Chaldeans; but think of this — that I am the punisher of thy crimes. The Chaldeans indeed shall come; chariots shall make a noise and horses shall leap, and horsemen shall shake the earth; they shall brandish the flaming swords, and their spears shall be like lightning; but there is no reason for thee to think that the Chaldeans will, of themselves, break in upon thee: for I guide them by my hidden providence, as it is my purpose to destroy thee; and now the time is come when I shall execute on thee my judgment.”

I am, he says, Jehovah of hosts. The epithet צבאות tsabaut, must be referred to the circumstance of this passage; for God declares here his own power, that the Assyrians might not think that they could by any means escape. He then adds, I will disclose thy extremities on thy face He alludes to the similitude which we have lately observed; for harlots appear very fine, and affect neatness and elegance in their dress; they not only put on costly apparel, but also add disguises. Though then this fine dress conceals the baseness of strumpets, yet, were any to take the clothes of a harlot and throw them over her head, all her beauty would disappear, and all men would abhor the sight: to see her concealed parts disclosed would be a base and filthy spectacle. So God declares that he would strip Nineveh of its magnificent dress, that she might be a detestable sight, only exhibiting her own reproach. We now then apprehend the Prophet’s meaning; as though he said, “Nineveh thinks not that she is to perish. — How so? Because her own splendor blinds her: and she has willfully deceived herself, and, by her deceits, has dazzled the eyes of all nations. As then this splendor seems to be a defense to the city Nineveh, I the Lord, he says, will disclose her hidden parts; I will deprive the Assyrians of all this splendor in which they now glory, and which is in high esteem and admiration among other nations.”

And this passage ought to be especially noticed; for, as I have said, true dignity is not to be found in the highest princes. Princes ought, indeed, to seek respect for themselves by justice, integrity, mercy, and a magnanimous spirit: but they only excel in mean artifices; then they shamelessly deceive, lie, and swear falsely; they also flatter, even meanly, when circumstances require; they insinuate themselves by various crafty means, and by large promises decoy the simple. Since then their true dignity is not commonly regarded by princes, this passage ought to be observed, so that we may know that their elevation, which captivates the minds of men, is an abomination before God; for they do not discern things, but are blind, being dazzled by empty splendor.

Disclose, then, he says, will I thy shame He says first, Disclose will I thy fringes on thy face; and then I will show to the nations thy nakedness And the nakedness of great kings is shown to the nations when the Lord executes his vengeance: for then even the lowest of the low will dare to pass judgment, — “He deserved to perish with shame, for he exercised tyranny on his own subjects, and spared not his own neighbors; he never was a good prince; nay, he only employed deceits and perjuries.” When, therefore princes are cast down, every one, however low, becomes a judge, and ascends as it were, the tribunal to burden and load them with reproaches. And hence the Prophet says, in the person of God, Disclose will I thy fringes on thy face, and will show to the nations thy nakedness, and to kingdoms thy filthiness.

He afterwards adds, I will besprinkle thee with filth, or defilements. The Prophet still alludes to the similitude of a harlot, who is well and sumptuously adorned, and by her charms captivates the eyes of all: but when any one takes mire and filth from the middle of the road, and bespatters her with it, there is then no one who will not turn away his eyes from so filthy an object. But we have already explained the import of this. God is indeed said to besprinkle kingdoms with defilements, when he casts them down; for they all begin freely to express their opinion: and those who before pretended great admiration, now rise up and bring forth many reproachful things. Then it is, that the Lord is said to besprinkle great kingdoms with filth and defilements.

He then adds, I will disgrace thee נבל, nubel, is to fall, and it is applied to dead bodies; but it means also to disgrace, as it is to be taken here. I will make thee as the dung Some think רואי, ruai, to be dung, or something fetid: but as it comes from ראה, rae, to see, and is in many parts of Scripture taken for vision or view, they are more correct, in my judgment, who render it thus, I will make thee an example; so Jerome renders it; as though he said, “Thou shalt be a spectacle to all nations.” The Septuagint favors this meaning, “εις παραδειγμα—for an example.” In this sense Grotius and Piscator take the word. Henderson, with less propriety, renders it “gazingstock,” the word of our version. Newcome translates it “dung,” according to the Rabbins. — Ed. And Nineveh is said to be made an example, because its ruin was more memorable than that of any other which had previously happened. Thou shalt then be a spectacle; that is, the calamity which I now denounce shall attract the observation of all. It afterwards follows —

Nahum 3:7

7. 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? whence shall I seek comforters for thee?

7. Et accidet ut quisquis te viderit recedat abs te, et dicat, Vastata est Nineveh: quis condolebit ei? unde quaeram consolatores tibi?

When he says, כל-ראיך, cal-raik, ‘whosoever sees thee,’ we hence learn again that רואי, ruai, at the end of the last verse, is to be taken for example or spectacle; for the Prophet proceeds with the same subject: I will make thee, he says, an example, or a spectacle. — For what purpose? that whosoever sees thee may depart from thee Literally, “Every one of thy seers shall hasten from thee.” — Ed. And it was an evidence of horror, though some think it to have been a reward for her cruelty, that no one came to Nineveh, but that she was forsaken by all friends in her desolation. And they take in the same sense what follows, Who will condole with her? and whence shall I seek comforters for thee? For they think that the Ninevites are here reproached for their cruelty, because they made themselves so hated by all that they were unworthy of sympathy; for they spared none, they allowed themselves full liberty in injuring others, they had gained the hatred of all the world. Hence some think that what is here intimated is, that the Ninevites were justly detested by and so that no one condoled with them in so great a calamity, inasmuch as they had been injurious to all: “It shall then happen, that whosoever sees thee shall go far away from thee and shall say, Wasted is Nineveh; who will condole with her? Whence shall I call comforters to her?”

But I know not whether this refined meaning came into the Prophet’s mind. We may explain the words more simply, that all would flee far away as a proof of their horrors and that the calamity would be such, that no lamentation would correspond with it. Who will be able to console with her? that is, were the greatness of her calamity duly weighed, though all were to weep and utter their meanings, it would not yet be sufficient: all lamentations would be far unequal to so great a calamity. The Prophet seems rather to mean this. Who then shall condole with her? and whence shall I seek comforters, as though he said, “The ruin of so splendid a city will not be of an ordinary kind, but what cannot be equaled by any lamentations.” It then follows —

Nahum 3:8-10

8. 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?

8. An melior es quam No (id est, Alexandria,) Amon (vertunt quidam, populosum; alii putant esse nomen Regis; an igitur melior es quam Alexandria populosa,) quae habitabat in fluviis? Mare in circuitu ejus, cujus fossa erat mare, et a mari murus ejus;

9. Ethiopia and Egypt were her strength, and it was infinite; Put and Lubim were thy helpers.

9. Aethiopia fortitudo ejus et Aegyptus; et nullus finis; Aphrica et Libyae fuerunt in auxilium ejus

10. Yet was she carried away, she went into captivity: her young children also were dashed in pieces at the top of all the streets: and they cast lots for her honourable men, and all her great men were bound in chains.

10. Etiam ipsa in transmigrationem abiit ad captivitatem; etiam parvuli ejus allisi sunt in capite omnium platearum; et super proceres ejus (vel, honorabiles, ad verbum) jecerunt sortem, et magnetes ejus vincti sunt compedibus.

The Prophet, in order to gain credit to his prophecy, produces here the ensample of Alexandria. It is indeed certain, from many testimonies of Scripture, that Alexandria is called No, which was a very ancient city, situated on the confines of Africa, and yet in Egypt. It might, at the same time, be, that the Alexandrians formerly had their own government, at least their own kings: and this is probable; for the Prophet says here, that Egypt and Ethiopia, as well as Africa and the Libyan nations, were the confederates of this city. It may hence then be concluded, that Alexandria was not then a part of Egypt, but had its own government, and was in alliance with the Egyptians, as with the other nations. But as Egypt, after the death of our Prophet, was in part overthrown by the Assyrians, and in part by the Chaldeans, some interpreters think, that the Prophet speaks of a ruin which had not yet taken place. So does Newcome, but with no countenance from the passage. The verb in the 10th verse which refers to the captivity of No, is in the past tense. Most commentators regard the event as having passed. — Ed. But this would not harmonize with his design; for the Prophet shows here, as in a mirror, that the chief empires fall according to the will of God, and that cities, the richest and the best fortified, come to nothing, whenever it pleases God. Unless, then, the destruction of Alexandria was notorious and everywhere known, the Prophet could not have suitably adduced this example: I therefore doubt not but that Alexandria had been then demolished. It is no matter of wonder that it afterwards returned to its former state and became rich; for the situation of the city was most commodious, not so much on account of the fertility of the land, as on account of its traffic; for ships from the Mediterranean sailed up near to it. It had, indeed, on one side, the lake Marcotis, which is not very healthy; and then the sea fortified it; and Pharos was a neighboring island: but yet the city was inhabited by many, and adorned with splendid buildings; for the advantage of traffic drew together inhabitants from all quarters. It was afterwards built again by Alexander of Macedon. But it is evident enough that it had been already an opulent city: for Alexander did not build a new city but enlarged it. Opinions differ as to No. Bochart supposed it to be Diospolis, near Mendes, in Lower Egypt. Henderson says, that later commentators are in favor of Thebes, the ancient capital of Upper Egypt. It is of no consequence to the present purpose which it was. It was some celebrated city in Egypt, whose ruin was well known in the Prophet’s time. Both the Rabbins and early Fathers thought that it was what was afterwards called Alexandria. But most probably it was a city which had lost its name and existence from the catastrophe that is here mentioned. — Ed. Let us now come to the words of the Prophet.

Shall it be better to thee than to Alexandria? The word אמון, amun, some render populous; and I am inclined to adopt this meaning, which has been received nearly by the consent of all. Others have supposed it to be the name of a king; but as proof fails them, I leave to themselves their own conjecture. Shall it then be better to thee than to Alexandria? For it stood, he says, between the rivers Alexandria had the Nile, as it were, under its own power; for it was then divided into many parts, so that it intersected the city in various places. So then he says, that Alexandria dwelt between the rivers; for it divided the Nile, as it suited its convenience, into several streams.

Then he says, The sea was around her: for it was surrounded on one side by the sea, and protected by the island Pharos, which had a tower, not only for the sake of defense, but that ships coming in from the Mediterranean, might have a signal, by which they might direct their course straight to the harbor. The sea then was around her; for the sea encircled more than half of the city; and then the lake Mareotis was on the other side to the south. He afterwards adds, And its wall or moat was the sea The word is written with י, iod, חיל, chil; but it means a wall or a moat, though Latins render antemurale — a front-work: for they were wont formerly to fortify their cities with a double wall, as old buildings still show. According to these interpreters חיל, chil, is the inner wall, and so they render its front-work: and there was also an outer wall towards the sea. But we may take חיל, chil, for a moat or a trench; and it is easy to find from other passages that it was a trench rather than a front-work. It is said that the body of Jezebel was torn by dogs in the trench, and the word there is חיל, chil. As to the object of the Prophet, he evidently intended to show, that Alexandria was so well fortified, that Nineveh had no reason to think herself to be in a safer state; for its fortress was from the sea, and also from Ethiopia, on account of the munitions which he has mentioned. Then he speaks of Africa and Egypt, and the Libyan nations, The original names in this verse are כוש, supposed to be Ethiopia, — מצרים, Egypt, here, either Upper or Lower, — פוט, Put, a country to the west of Lower Egypt, its inhabitants the descendants of Ham, Genesis 10:6, — לובים, Lybians, who occupied the region between Put and Numidia. — Ed. and says in short, that there was no end of her strength; that is, that she could seek the help of many friends and confederates: many were ready to bring aid, even Africa, Ethiopia, and the Lybians.

Yet, he says, she departed into captivity a captive; that is, the inhabitants of Alexandria have been banished, and the city become as it were captive, for its inhabitants were driven here and there. Dashed, he says, have been their little ones at the head of every street The Prophet means, that so great a power as that of Alexandria did not prevent the conquerors to exercise towards her the most barbarous cruelty; for it was a savage act to dash little children against stones, who ought on account of their tender age, to have been spared. There was indeed no reason for raging against them, for they could not have been deemed enemies. But yet the Prophet says that Alexandria had been thus treated; and he said this, that Nineveh might not trust in her strength, and thus perversely despise God’s judgment, which he now denounced on it. He adds, They cast lots on her princess and bound were her great men with fetters In saying that lots were cast, he refers to an ancient custom; for when there was any dispute respecting a captive, the lot was cast: as for instance, when two had taken one man, to prevent contention, it was by lot determined who was to be his master. So then he says that lots were cast on their princes. This usually happened to the common people and to the lowest slaves; but the Prophet says that the conquerors spared not even the princes. They were therefore treated as the lowest class; and though they were great princes, they were led into captivity and bound with chains, in the same manner with the meanest and the lowest of the people. They were not treated according to their rank; and there was no differences between the chief men and the most degraded of the humbler classes; for even the very princes were so brought down, that their lot differed not from that of the wretched; for as common people are usually treated with contempt, so were the chiefs of Alexandria treated by their enemies.

Prayer.

Grant, Almighty God, that since by thy awful judgments thou dost show thy displeasure at the pride of this world, we may be ruled by the spirit of meekness, and in such a manner humble ourselves willingly under thy hand, that we may not experience thy dreadful power in our destruction, but being, on the contrary, supported by thy strength, we may keep ourselves in our own proper station and in true simplicity, and, at the same time, relying on thy protection, we may never doubt, but thou wilt sustain us against all the assaults of our enemies, however violent they may be, and thus persevere in the warfare of the cross which thou hast appointed for us, until we be at length gathered into that celestial kingdom, where we shall triumph together with thy Son, when his glory shall shine in us, and all the wicked shall be destroyed. Amen.

Lecture One Hundred and Fifth

Nahum 3:11

11. Thou also shalt be drunken: thou shalt be hid, thou also shalt seek strength because of the enemy.

11. Etiam tu inebriaberis, tu eris abscondita; etiam tu quaeres robur (vel, suppetias) ab hoste (vel, propter hostem.)

Nahum, after having adduced the example of Alexandria, now shows that nothing would be able to resist God, so that he should not deal with Nineveh in the same manner; and he declares that this would be the case, Thou also, he says, shalt be inebriated. Well known is this metaphor, which often occurs in Scripture: for the Prophets are wont frequently to call punishment a cup, which God administers. But when God executes a heavy punishment, he is said to inebriate the wicked with his cup. The Prophet says now, that the chastisement of Nineveh would make her like a drunken man, who, being overcome with wine, lies down, as it were, stupefied. Hence by this metaphor he intended to set forth a most severe punishment: Thou then shalt be also inebriated The particle גם, gam, is here emphatical; it was introduced, that the Ninevites might know, that they could not possibly escape the punishment which they deserved; for God continues ever like himself. Thou then shalt be also inebriated This would not be consistent, were not God the judge of the world to the end. There is then a common reason for this proceeding; hence it necessarily follows, — since God punished the Alexandrians, the Assyrians cannot escape his hand, and be exempt from punishment.

He adds, Thou shalt be hidden Some refer this to shame, as though the Prophet had said, — “Thou indeed showest thyself now to be very proud, but calamity will force thee to seek hiding-places, in which to conceal thyself.” But I am more inclined to this meaning, — that Nineveh would vanish away, as though it never had been; for to be hidden is often taken in Hebrew in the sense of being reduced to nothing.

He afterwards says, Thou shalt also seek strength, or supplies, from the enemy. The words מעוז מאויב, meouz meavib, may admit of two meanings, — either that she will humbly solicit her enemies, — or that on account of her enemies she will flee to some foreign aid; for the preposition מ, mem, may be taken in both senses. If we adopt the first meaning, then I think that the Prophet speaks not of the Babylonians, but of the other nations who had been before harassed by the Assyrians. Thou shalt now then humbly pray for the aid of those who have been hitherto thine enemies, — not because they had provoked thee, but because thou hast as an enemy treated them. Now it is an extreme misery, when we are constrained to seek the help of those by whom we are hated, and hated, because we have by wrongs provoked them. But the other sense is more approved, for it is less strained: Thou shalt also seek aids on account of the enemy; that is, as strength to resist will fail thee, thou wilt seek assistance from thy neighbors. Thou shalt seek a refuge from the enemy. — Newcome. But מעוז is rather a defense, aid, assistance, that which affords strength. — Ed. It follows —

Nahum 3:12

12. All thy strong holds shall be like fig trees with the firstripe figs: if they be shaken, they shall even fall into the mouth of the eater.

12. Omnes munitiones tuae ficus cum maturis (fructibus;) si moveantur, cadunt super os comedentis.

The Prophet here declares that the strongholds of the Assyrians would avail them nothing; whether they trusted in the number of their men, or in their walls, or in other defenses, they would be disappointed; for all things, he says, will of themselves fall, even without being much assailed. And he employs a very apposite similitude, “Thy fortifications,” he says, “which thou thinkest to be very strong, shall be like figs; for when the fruit is ripe, and any comes to the tree, as soon as he touches it or any of the branches, the figs will fall off themselves.” We indeed know that there is not much firmness in that fruit; when it is ripe, it immediately falls to the ground, or if it hangs on the branches, a very little shaking will bring it down. We now see the design of the Prophet.

And hence an useful doctrine may be deduced: whatever strength men may seek for themselves from different quarters, it will wholly vanish away; for neither forts, nor towers, nor ramparts, nor troops of men, nor any kind of contrivances, will avail any thing; and were there no one to rise against them, they would yet fall of themselves. It afterwards follows —

Nahum 3:13

13. Behold, thy people in the midst of thee are women: the gates of thy land shall be set wide open unto thine enemies: the fire shall devour thy bars.

13. Ecce populus tuus mulieres in medio tui; inimicis tuis aperiendo aperientur portae terrae tuae; vorabit ignis vectes tuos.

The Prophet declares here, that the hearts of them all would become soft and effeminate when God would proceed to destroy Nineveh. We have said before that the hearts of men are so in the hand of God, that he melts whatever courage there may be in them, whenever he pleases: and God prepares men for ruin, when he debilitates their hearts, that they cannot bear the sight of their enemies. God indeed can leave in men their perverseness, so that they may ever run furiously into ruin, and not be able, with a courageous heart, to repel the attacks of their enemies; but he often softens their hearts and deprives them of power, that he may make more evident his judgment: God does not, however, always work in the same way; for variety in his judgments is calculated to do us good, for thereby our minds are more powerfully awakened. Were his proceedings uniformly the same, we could not so well distinguish the hand of God, as when he acts now in this way, and then in another. But, as I have already said, it is what is well known, that God enervates men and strips them of all courage, when he gives them over to destruction.

So now the Prophet speaks of the Ninevites, Behold, he says, thy people are women Both Homer and Virgil have this comparison. “Αχαιδες ουκ ετ Αχαιοι — Grecian women, not Grecians.” — “O! vere Phrygiae, neque enim Phryges — O truly Phrygian women, but not Phrygians.” The demonstrative particle, Behold, is here emphatical: for the Assyrians, no doubt, ridiculed, as a fable, the prediction of the Prophet; and it was what the Israelites found it difficult to believe. This is the reason why the Prophet pointed out, as by the finger, what surpassed the comprehensions of men. By saying, in the midst of thee, he intimates, that though they should be separated from their enemies and dwell in a fortified city, they should yet be filled with trembling. This amplification deserves to be noticed: for it is nothing wonderful, when an onset frightens us, when enemies join battle with us, and when many things present themselves before our eyes, which are calculated to deprive us of courage; but when we are frightened by report only concerning our enemies, and we become fainthearted, though walls be between us, it then appears evident, that we are smitten by the hand of God; for when we see walls of stone, and yet our hearts become brittle like glass, is it not evident, that we are inwardly terrified by the Lord, as it were, through some hidden influence, rather than through intervening and natural causes? We now then perceive the Prophet’s meaning, when he says, that the people would become women, or effeminate, in the midst of the city, in its very bowels; as though he had said, that they would not cease to tremble, even while they were dwelling in a safe place.

By opening, opened shall be thy gates, he says, to thy enemies. He shows again, that though the Assyrians were fortified, every access would be made open to their enemies, as though there was no fortress. By saying, the gates of thy land, it is probable that he speaks not only of the city, but of all their strongholds. The Assyrians, no doubt, fortified many cities, in order to keep afar off the enemy, and to preserve the chief seat of the empire free from danger and fear. I therefore understand the Prophet as referring here to many cities, when he says, By opening, opened shall be the gates of thy land to thine enemies and fire shall consume thy bars He means, that though they had before carefully fortified the whole land around, so that they thought themselves secure from all hostile invasion, yet all this would be useless; for the fire would consume all their bars. By fire, the Prophet understands metaphorically the judgment of God. For as we see that so great is the vehemence of fire, that it melts iron and brass, so the Prophet means, that there would be no strength which could defend Nineveh and its empire against the hand of God. It follows —

Nahum 3:14-15

14. Draw thee waters for the siege, fortify thy strong holds: go into clay, and tread the morter, make strong the brickkiln.

14. Aquas obsidionis hauri tibi, robora munitiones tuas, ingredere in lutum, calca caementum, fortifica fornacem (vel, laterem; alii vertunt, tene, vel, apprehende.)

15. There shall the fire devour thee; the sword shall cut thee off, it shall eat thee up like the cankerworm: make thyself many as the cankerworm, make thyself many as the locusts.

15. Illic vorabit te ignis, exterminabit te gladius, comedet te quasi bruchus (alii vertunt, quasi bruchum;) multiplicari (ad verbum, vel, multiplicando; est כירק quasi bruchus,) multiplicare quasi locusta.

The Prophet goes on with the same subject, — that the Ninevites would labor in vain, while striving anxiously and with every effort to defend themselves against their enemies. The meaning then is, “That though thou remittest no diligence, yet thou shalt lose all thy labor; for thou wilt not be able to resist the vengeance of God; and thou deceives thyself if thou thinkest that by the usual means thou canst aid thyself; for it is God who attacks thee by the Babylonians. How much soever then thou mayest accumulate of those things which are usually employed to fortify cities, all this will be useless.” Draw for thyself, he says, waters for the siege; that is, lay up provisions for thyself, as it is usually done, and have water laid up in cisterns; strengthen thy fortresses, that is, renew them; enter into the clay for the sake of treading the mortar: fortify, or cement, or join together; the brick-kiln (for what some think that חזק, chezek, means, here is to hold, or to lay hold, is wholly foreign to the Prophet’s meaning:) to fortify then the brick- kiln, that is, the bricks which come forth from the kiln, nothing else than to construct and join them together, that there might be a solid building: for we know that buildings often fall, or are overturned, because they are not well joined together: and he refers to the mode of building which historians say was in use among the Assyrians. For as that country had no abundance of stones, they supplied the defect by bricks. We now then understand the intention of the Prophet.

But he adds, There shall the fire consume thee There is much importance in the adverb of place, there, which he uses: there also, he says, shall the fire eat thee up: for he expresses more than before, when he said, that the Assyrians would weary themselves in vain in fortifying their city and their empire; for he says now, that the Lord would turn to their destruction those things in which they trusted as their defenses; There then shall the fire consume thee We now then see what the Prophet means.

We must at the same time observe, that he mentions water; as though he said, However sparingly and frugally thy soldiers may live, being content with water as their drink, (for it is necessary, when we would firmly resist enemies, to undergo all indulgences, and if needs be to endure want, at least the want of delicate meat and drink,) — though thy soldiers be content with water, and seek not water fresh from the spring or the river, but drink it from cisterns, and though thy fortresses be repaired, and thy walls carefully joined together in a solid structure, by bricks well fitted and fastened, yet there shall the fire consume thee; that is, thy frugality, exertion, and care, not only will avail thee nothing, but will also turn out to thy ruin; for the Lord pronounces accursed the arrogance of men, when they trust in their own resources.

He afterwards adds, Exterminate thee shall the sword; that is, the Lord will find out various means by which he will consume thee. By the fire, then, and by the sword, will he waste and destroy thee. He then says, He will consume thee as the chafer we may read the last word in the nominative as well as in the objective case — He as a chafer will consume thee. If we approve of this rendering, then the meaning would be, — “As chafers in a short time devour a meadow or standing corn, so thy enemies shall soon devour thee as with one mouthful.” We indeed know, that these little animals are so hurtful, that they will very soon eat up and consume all the fruit; and there is in these insects an astonishing voracity. But as the Prophet afterwards compares the Assyrians to chafers and locusts, another sense would be more suitable, and that is, — that God’s judgment would consume the Assyrians, as when rain, or a storm, or a change of season, consumes the chafers; for as these insects are very hurtful, so the Lord also exterminates them whenever he pleases. Grotius agrees in this view, though Newcome takes the former, explaining, “as the locust,” that is, in a manner equally unsparing. — Ed. He afterwards adds, to be multiplied; which is, as I have said, a verb in the infinitive mood. But the sentence of the Prophet is this, by multiplying as the chafer, to multiply as the locusts: but why he speaks thus, may be better understood from the context; the two following verses must be therefore added —

Nahum 3:16-17

16. Thou hast multiplied thy merchants above the stars of heaven: the cankerworm spoileth, and flieth away.

16. Multiplicasti negotiatores tuos quasi stellas coelorum; bruchus praedatus est et avolat.

17. Thy crowned are as the locusts, and thy captains as the great grasshoppers, which camp in the hedges in the cold day, but when the sun ariseth they flee away, and their place is not known where they are

17. Principes tui (vel, coronati; deducitur enim a רזכ quod significat coronam; sed malo vertere, egregios, vel, praestantissimos quosque; principes ergo tui, vel, eximii tui) quasi locusta, et duces tui quasi locusta locustarum (est quidem aliud nomen, sed non possumus certo distinguere inter illas species, quemadmodum dictum est Jaelis 1 capite,) quae castramentantur (id est, considunt) in maceriis (id est, clausuris) in die frigoris: sol exortus est, et migrarunt; et non cognoscitur locus earum ubi.

From these words we may learn what the Prophet before meant, when he said that the Assyrians were like locusts or chafers; as though he said, — “I know that you trust in your great number; for ye are like a swarm of chafers or locusts; ye excel greatly in number; inasmuch as you have assembled your merchants and traders as the stars of heaven.” Here he shows how numerous they were. But when he says, The chafer has spoiled, and flies away, he points out another reason for the comparison; for it is not enough to lay hold on one clause of the verse, but the two clauses must be connected; and they mean this, — that the Assyrians, while they were almost innumerable, gloried in their great number, — and also, that this vast multitude would vanish away. He then makes an admission here and says, by multiplying thy merchants, thou hast multiplied them; but when he says, as chafers and as locusts, he shows that this multitude would not continue, for the Lord would scatter them here and there. As then the scattering was nigh, the Prophet says that they were chafers and locusts.

We now understand the design of the Prophet: He first ridicules the foolish confidence with which the Assyrians were inflated. They thought, that as they ruled over many nations, they could raise great armies, and set them in any quarter to oppose any one who might attack them: the Prophet concedes this to them, that is, that they were very numerous, by multiplying thou hast multiplied; but what will this avail them? They shall be locusts, they shall be chafers. — How so? A fuller explanation follows, Thou hast multiplied thy merchants as the stars of heaven: but this shall be temporary; for thou shalt see them vanishing away very soon; they shall be like the chafers, who, being in a moment scattered here and there, quit the naked field or the meadow. But by merchants or traders some understand confederates; and this comparison also, as we have before seen, frequently occurs in the Prophets: and princes at this day differ nothing from traders, for they outbid one another, and excel in similar artifices, as we have elsewhere seen, by which they carry on a system of mutual deception. This comparison then may be suitable, Thou hast multiplied thy traders, — tes practiciens. But the meaning of the Prophet may be viewed as still wider; we may apply this to the citizens of Nineveh; for the principal men no doubt were merchants: as the Venetian of the present day are all merchants, so were the Syrians, and the Ninevites, and also the Babylonians. It is then nothing strange, that the Prophet, by taking a part for the whole should include under this term all the rich, Thou hast then multiplied thy merchants The latter clause of the last verse and this verse and the following are evidently connected. The first, התכבד, hath י added to it in ten or more copies, and may be deemed an imperative as well as the other, and in the feminine gender; Calvin takes it an infinitive. This would be literal rendering —

Increase thyself as the chafer, Increase thyself as the locust,

16. Multiply thy merchants more than the stars of heaven: The chafer spoils, and flies away:

17. Thy crowned ones shall be as the locusts, And thy rulers as the gibbous caterpillar; Which lodge in the fences in the cold day; The sun rises and they flit away, And not known is the place where they are.

— Ed.

He has hitherto allowed them to be very numerous; but he now adds, The chafer has spoiled, and flies away The verb means sometimes to spoil, and it means also to devour: The chafer then has devoured, and flies away; that is, “Thy princes, (as he afterwards calls them,) or thy principal men, have indeed devoured; they have wasted many regions by their plunders, and consumed all things on every side, like the chafers, who destroy the standing corn and all fruits: thou hast then been as a swarm of chafers.” For as chafers in great numbers attack a field, so Nineveh was wont to send everywhere her merchants to spoil and to denude the whole land. “Well,” he says “the chafer has devoured, but he flies away, he is scattered; so it shall happen,” says the Prophet, “to the citizens of Nineveh.” And hence he afterwards adds,

And thy princes are as locusts: this refers to the wicked doings, by which they laid waste almost the whole earth. As then the locusts and chafers, wherever they come, consume every kind of food, devour all the fields, leave nothing, and the whole land becomes a waste; so also have been thy princes; they have been as locusts and thy leaders as the locusts of locusts, that is, as very great locusts; for this form, we know, expresses the superlative degree in Hebrew. Their leaders were then like the most voracious locusts for the whole land was made barren by them, as nothing was capable of satisfying their avarice and voracity.

The Prophet then adds, They are locusts, who dwell in the mounds during the time of cold; but when the sun rises, not known any more is their place He now shows, that it would not be perpetual, that the Ninevites would thus devour the whole earth, and that all countries would be exposed to their voracity; for as the locusts, he says, hide themselves in caverns, and afterwards fly away, so it shall happen to thy princes. But this passage may be taken to mean, — that the Ninevites concealed themselves in their hiding-places during the winter, and that when the suitable time for plundering came, they retook themselves in different directions, and took possession of various regions, and brought home plunder from the remotest parts. This meaning may be elicited from the words of the Prophet; and the different clauses would thus fitly coalesce together, that when the Ninevites left their nests, they dispersed and migrated in all directions. I do not at the same time disapprove of the former meaning: they are then like locusts, who lodge in mounds during the time of cold; but when the sun rises, — that is, when the season invites them, (for he speaks not of the winter sun,) but when the heat of the sun prevails and temperate the air, — then, he says, the locusts go forth and fly away, and known no more is their place He means, in short, that the Ninevites plundered, and that they did so after the manner of locusts; and that a similar end also was nigh them; for the Lord would destroy them, yea, suddenly consume them, so that no trace of them could be found. It follows —

Nahum 3:18

18. Thy shepherds slumber, O king of Assyria: thy nobles shall dwell in the dust: thy people is scattered upon the mountains, and no man gathereth them

18. Dormitaverunt pastores tui, rex Assur; jacuerunt fortes tui; dispersus est populus tuus super montes, et nemo congregans.

He confirms the preceding verse, and says that there would be no counsel nor wisdom in the leading men: for the shepherds of the king of Assyria were his counselors, in whose wisdom he trusted, as we know that kings usually depend on their counselors: for they think that there is in them prudence enough, and therefore they commit to them the care of the whole people. But the Prophet ridicules the confidence of the king of Assyria, because the shepherds would not have so much vigilance as to take care of themselves, and of the people, and of the whole kingdom. He speaks in the past tense, either to show the certainty of the prediction, or because the change of tenses is common in Hebrew. Lie still, he says, shall thy mighty men; Fortes tui, אדיריך, thy eminents, thy nobles. “The shepherds,” the governers of the people, נמו, slumber; and the nobles, the princes, ישכנו, rest, sit still, without making any effort: then it follows, —

Dispersed are thy people on the mountains, And there is no gatherer.

Calvin is mistaken as to the meaning of the verb פוש: it means more properly, than the other, a dispersed state. It is applied in Leviticus 13:5, and in other places, to the spreading of leprosy. When so used, it is in Kal. It is here, and here only, in Niphal. — Ed. that is, they shall remain idle; they shall not be able to sally out against their enemies, to stop their progress. They shall then lie still: and then he says, Scattered are thy people פוש, push, is not to scatter; hence I doubt not, but that there is a change of letter, that ש, schin, is put for ץ, tzaddi; and I am surprised that some derive the verb from פוש, push, when, on the contrary, it is from פוף, puts, and the change of these two letters is common in Hebrew. Thy people then are dispersed on the mountains and there is no one to assemble them

By these words the Prophet means, that such would be the scattering of the whole kingdom, that there would be no hope of restoration; There will then be none to assemble them He had said before that the chiefs or mighty men would be still. Though it would be needful to go forth to check the progress of their enemies; yet he says, They shall idly lie down: He refers here to their sloth. But the people who ought to be quiet at home, as being weak and feeble, shall be dispersed on the mountains, and no one will be there to gather them It follows —

Nahum 3:19

19. There is no healing of thy bruise; thy wound is grievous: all that hear the bruit of thee shall clap the hands over thee: for upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually?

19. Non est contractio (vel, cicatrix) fracturae tuae; dolore est plena plaga tua; omnes qui audierint famam tuam (id est, de te) percutient manum super te; quia super quem non transiit malitia tua jugiter?

The Prophet shows here more clearly, that when the empire of Nineveh should be scattered, it would be an incurable evil, that every hope of a remedy would be taken away. Though the wicked cannot escape calamity, yet they harbor false expectations, and think that they can in a short time gather new strength. Hence, in order to take from them this hope, the Prophet says, that there would be no contraction of the fracture אין-כהה לשברך — No stopping or restraining to thy breach. The word is applied to the restraint put on men’s wickedness, 1 Samuel 3:13, and to the checking and restraining of the spread of leprosy, Leviticus 6:28. The breach or breaking was such that there was no stopping of it from becoming entire and complete. The Septuagint gives the meaning—”ουκ εστιν εασις τη συντριβη σου — there is no healing to thy breach.” — Ed. And this is a striking similitude; for he compares the ruin of Nineveh to a wound which cannot be seamed and healed. There is then no contraction; some render it, a wrinkle, but improperly. There is then no contraction: and he adds, Thy stroke is full of pain; Rather, “grievous is thy stroke.” The verb is נחלה, from חלה, to be languid, and sometimes, to make languid, grievous or afflictive, and then in Niphal, as here, to be grievous. See the same clause in Jeremiah 10:19. As a noun it is rendered “grief” in Isaiah 17:11. — Ed. that is, the pain of thy stroke cannot be allayed. This is one thing, — that the ruin of Nineveh would be irreparable.

Then he says, Whosoever shall hear the report, shall strike the hand on thy account Many give this rendering, They shall clap the hand over thee, or with the hands; and they think that the singular is put for the plural number. But as in Hebrew to strike the hand is a token of consent, it would not be unsuitable to say, that the Prophet means, that wherever the report of this calamity would be heard, all would express their approbation, “See, God has at length proved himself to be the just avenger of so much wickedness.” To strike the hand is said to be done by those who make an agreements or when any one pledges himself for another. The phrase here used, תקע כף, is found in three other places, Psalm 47:1; Proverbs 17:18; 22:26. In the first it is a symptom of joy; and in the two other places, in the sense here mentioned. — Ed.

As then in giving pledges, and in other compacts, men are said to strike the hand; so also all shall thus give their assent to God’s judgment in this case, “O how rightly is this done! O how justly has God punished these tyrants, these plunderers.” They will then strike the hand on thy account; that is, “This thy ruin will be approved;” as though he said, “Not only before God art thou, Nineveh, accursed, but also according to the consent of all nations.” And thus he intimates, that Nineveh would perish in the greatest dishonor and disgrace. It sometimes happens that an empire falls, and all bewail the event: but God here declares, that he would not be satisfied with the simple destruction of the city Nineveh without adding to it a public infamy, so that all might acknowledge that it happened through his righteous judgment.

He afterwards adds, For upon whom has not thy wickedness passed continually? This is a confirmation of the last clause; and this reason will suit both the views which have been given. If we take the striking of the hand for approbation, this reason will be suitable. — How? For all nations will rejoice at thy destruction, because there is no nation which thou hast not in many ways injured. So also, in token of their joy, all will congratulate themselves, as though they were made free; or they will clap their hands, that is, acknowledge that thou hast been destroyed by the judgment of God, because all had experienced how unjustly and tyrannically thou hast ruled. As then thy wickedness has been like a deluge, and hast nearly consumed all the earth, all will clap or shake their hands at thy ruin.

And he says, continually, to show that God’s forbearance had been long exercised. Hence, also, it appears, that the Assyrians were inexcusable, because, when God indulgently spared them, they did not repent, but pursued their wicked ways for a long course of time. As then to their sinful licentiousness they added perverseness, every excuse was removed. But the Prophet does, at the same time, remind the Israelites, that there was no reason for them to be cast down in their minds, because God did not immediately execute punishment; for by the word תמיד, tamid, he insinuates, that God would so suspend for a time his judgment as to Nineveh, that his forbearance and delay might be an evidence of his goodness and mercy. We hence see that the Prophet here opposes the ardor of men, for they immediately grow angry or complain when God delays to execute vengeance on their enemies.

He shows that God has a just reason for not visiting the wicked with immediate punishment; but yet the time will come when it shall appear that they are altogether past recovery, — the time, I say, will come, when the Lord shall at length put forth his hand and execute his judgment.

Prayer.

Grant, Almighty God, that as we are not able to keep a firm footing in the way of justice and uprightness, — O grant, that, being governed by thy Spirit, we may restrain ourselves from doing any harm, and thus abstain from all evil deeds, and that we may labor to do good to all, so that we may, by experience, find that all are protected by thee, who so conform themselves to the rule of thy Law, that they take no advantage of the simple, either for the purpose of ruining or of injuring them, but who, being content with their own small portion, know that there is nothing better than to be wholly subject to thee, and to thy guidance: and may we thus live in forbearance and justice towards our neighbors, that we may, at the same time, rely on thy mercy, by which alone we can be defended, and made safe against so many assaults of Satan and of the wicked, until, having at length completed the course of our warfare, we shall come into that blessed rest which has been prepared for us in heaven by Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

End of the Commentaries on Nahum.

A Translation of Calvin’s Version of

The Book of Jonah.

Chapter 1

1 And the word of Jehovah came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying,

2 “Arise, go to Nineveh, to that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness has ascended before my face.”

3 But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of Jehovah, and went down to Joppa, and found a ship, which was going to Tarshish; and he paid the fare, and went down into it,, that he might go with them to Tarshish from the presence of Jehovah.

4 And Jehovah sent a strong wind on the sea, and a great tempset arose in the sea, and the ship was thought to be breaking:

5 And the mariners feared, and cried every one to his god, and cast out the wares, which were in the ship, into the sea, that it might be lightened of them; but Jonah had gone down to the sides of the ship; and he lay down and slept.

6 And the pilot came to him, and he said to him, — “What meanest thou, O sleeper? Arise, call on thy God, if so be that God will show himself propitious to us, that we may not perish.”

7 And they said each to his friend, — “Come and let us cast lots, that we may know for what cause is this evil come upon us.” And they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah.

8 And they said to him, — “Tell us now why has this evil happened to us, what is thy work, and whence comest thou, what is thy country, and from what people art thou?”

9 And he said to them, — “I am an Hebrew, and I fear Jehovah, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”

10 And the men feared with great fear, and said to him, — “Why hast thou done this?” (52) For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of Jehovah, because he had told them.

11 And they said to him, “What shall we do to thee, that the sea may be still to us?” for the sea was going and was tempestuous.

12 And he said to them, — “Take me and cast me into the sea, and the sea will be still to you; for I know that on my account is this great tempest come upon you.”

13 But the men toiled to bring back the ship, (59) and they could not; for the sea was going and was tempestuous against them.

14 And they cried to Jehovah, and said, — “We beseech, Jehovah, we pray, that we perish not for the life of this man, and lay not on us innocent blood; for thou, Jehovah, hast done as it has seemed good to thee.” (62)

15 Then they took Jonah, and cast him into the sea; and the sea stopped from its raging.

16 And with great fear, the men feared Jehovah, and sacrificed a sacrifice to Jehovah, and vowed vows.

17 And Jehovah provided a great fish to swallow up Jonah; and Jonah was in the bowels of the fish three days and three nights.

CHAPTER 2

1 And Jonah prayed to Jehovah his God from the belly of the fish,

2 And said, — I cried in my distress to Jehovah, and he heard me; (75) From the belly of the grave I cried, thou didst hear my voice.

3 But cast me hadst thou into the deep, Into the midst of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; All thy billows and waves over me passed:

4 Then I said, — “I am driven from the sight of thine eyes; But I would again see the temple of thy holiness.”

5 Beset me did the waters even to the soul, The deep on every side surrounded me, The sedge was wrapped around my head:

6 To the roots of the mountains I descended, The earth with its bars was around me forever: But to ascend hast thou made my life from the grave, O Jehovah my God.

7 When fail did my soul within me, Jehovah did I remember, And enter did my prayer into the temple of thy holiness.

8 They who observe lying vanities, Their own mercy forsake: (87)

9 But I, with the voice of praise, will sacrifice to thee; What I have vowed will I pay: To Jehovah belongs salvation.

10 And Jehovah commanded the fish, and it cast forth Jonah on the dry land.

CHAPTER 3

1 And the word of Jehovah came to Jonah the second time, saying, —

2 “Arise, go to Nineveh, to that great city, and proclaim to it the proclamation which I command thee.” (92)

3 And Jonah arose, and went to Nineveh, according to the command of Jehovah.

4 Now Nineveh was a very great city, a journey of three days. And Jonah began to enter a journey of one day, and cried and said, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.”

5 And the men of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them:

6 For word had come to the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and cast aside his splendid robe from him, and put on sackcloth and sat on ashes;

7 And it was proclaimed and published through Nineveh, by the counsel of the king and his nobles, saying, — “Man and beast! Ox and sheep! Let them taste nothing, let them not be fed, and let them not drink water;

8 And let man and beast put on sackcloth, and cry to God mightily; (107) and return let every one from his evil way, and from the plunder that is in their hands.

9 Who knows, whether God will change and repent, and turn away from the fury of his wrath, that we perish not?”

10 And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil which he had declared that he would do to them, and did it not.

CHAPTER 4

1 And Jonah was grievously displeased, and he was very angry; (116) and he prayed to Jehovah, and said, —

2 “I pray thee, Jehovah, was not this my word, when I was yet in my own land? I therefore hastened to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that thou are a God full of grace, and merciful, slow to wrath, great in kindness, and who repentest of evil.

3 And thou, Jehovah, take, I pray, my life from me; for better it is for me to die than to live.”

4 And Jehovah said to him, — “Doest thou well in being angry?” (129)

5 And Jonah went out of the city, and sat on the east over against the city, and made there for himself a tent, and sat under it in the shade, until he saw what might be in the city.

6 And Jehovah God prepared a gourd, and made it to come up for Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head, and free him from his distress; and Jonah rejoiced for the gourd with great joy.

7 God also prepared a worm, when the morning rose the next day, which smote the gourd, and it withered:

8 And it was, when the sun arose, that God prepared an impetuous wind, and the sun smote the head of Jonah, and he fainted, and wished for himself that he might die, and said, “Better is my death than my life.”

9 And God said to Jonah, — “Doest thou well in being angry for the gourd?” and he said, — “I do well in being angry even unto death.”

10 And Jehovah said, — “Thou wouldest have spared the gourd, for which thou hast not labored, and which thou has not raised up; the daughter of a night it was, It is literally, “the son of a night,” but as cucurbita, gourd, is feminine, Calvin adopted filia instead of filius — Ed. and as the daughter of a night it has passed away;

11 And should I not spare Nineveh, this great city, in which there are twelve times ten thousand men, every one of whom knows not his right hand from his left, and also many animals?”

a translation of

Calvin’s Version of

The Prophecies of Micah.

CHAPTER 1

1 The word of Jehovah, which came to Micah, the Morasthite, in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, kings of Judah, which he saw concerning Samaria and Jerusalem:

2 Hear, all ye people, Give ear, O earth, and its fullness; (155) And the Lord Jehovah shall be against you a witness, Even the Lord from the temple of his holiness:

3 For, behold, Jehovah goeth forth from his place, And will descend and tread on the heights of the earth;

4 And melt shall the mountains under him, And rent shall be the valleys; As wax before the fire, As waters rolling into a lower place. (160)

5 For the wickedness of Jacob is all this, And for the transgressions of the house of Israel: What is the wickedness of Jacob? Is it not Samaria? And what are the high places of Judah? Are they not those of Jerusalem? (162)

6 I will therefore make Samaria A heap of the field, a plantation for vineyards; And I will roll into the valley its stones, And its foundations will I discover;

7 And all her graven images shall be broken down, And all her rewards shall be burnt in the fire, And all her idols will I lay desolate; For from the reward of a harlot hath she gathered, And to the reward of a harlot shall they return.

8 For this will I wail and howl, I will go spoiled and naked; I will make wailing as the dragons, And mourning as the daughters of the ostrich: (170)

9 For grievous is her stroke, For it has come to Judah, It has reached the gate of my people—even Jerusalem.

10 In Gath tell ye it not; weeping, weep not; In the house of Ophrah, roll thyself in the dust.

11 Pass over also, thou inhabitant of Saphir, Naked and in shame; Go forth shall not the inhabitant of Zaanan, In the mourning of Beth-ezel; She will take from you her station. (176)

12 Verily, grieved for good has the inhabitant of Maroth; For come down has evil from Jehovah To the gate of Jerusalem.

13 Tie the chariot to the dromedary, Thou inhabitant of Lachish; The beginning of sin has she been to the daughter of Zion; For in thee have been found the transgressions of Israel.

14 Thou shalt therefore send presents, For Moresheth-gath, to the sons of Achzib, (180) Who have been a deception to the kings of Israel.

15 Yet a possessor will I send to thee, inhabitant of Mareshah; Even to Adullam, the glory of Israel, shall he come.

16 Make bald, and poll thyself, For the children of thy delicacies; Enlarge thy baldness as the eagle, Inasmuch as they have migrated from thee.

CHAPTER 2

1 Woe to those who devise iniquity, And contrive wickedness on their beds! When the morning shines, they execute it; For to do it their hand is ready.

2 And they covet fields, and forcibly take them; And houses, and they take them away; And they oppress a man and his house, A man and his heritage. (187)

3 Therefore, thus saith Jehovah, — Behold, I am devising against this family an evil, From which ye shall not remove your necks; And ye shall not walk in your height, For an evil time will it be.

4 In that day shall they take up against thee a proverb, And bewail with a lamentable lament, And say, “Wasted, we are laid waste; The portion of my people has he changed; How he takes away from me instead of restoring! Our fields he divides.” (191)

5 There shall not therefore be for thee One to cast a line for lot in the assembly of Jehovah.

6 “Prophecy not, ye who prophesy;” — They shall not prophesy for them; — He will not take reproaches. (195)

7 O thou who art called the house of Jacob! Is the Spirit of Jehovah straightened? Are these his works? Are not my words good to him Who walks uprightly? (201)

8 And they who were heretofore my people, Have risen up as an enemy against me; The robe of beauty they plunder From those who pass by securely, As those who return from war. (203)

9 The women of my people have ye expelled From the house of their delights; From their children have ye taken away My ornament forever. (204)

10 Arise, depart, for this is not your rest; Because it has been polluted: (206) He will scatter you with a violent scattering.

11 If a man, walking in the spirit, and lying deceitfully, says, “I will prophesy to thee of wine and of strong drink,” He shall be the prophet of this people. (208)

12 Gathering, I will gather the whole of thee Jacob, Assembling, I will assemble the residue of Israel; I will set them together as the sheep of Bozrah, As a flock in the midst of its fold; They shall make a noise on account of the number of men.

13 Ascend shall a breaker before them, They shall break through and pass the gate; Yea, they shall go out through it; And pass shall their king before them, And Jehovah at their head. (215)

CHAPTER 3

1 And I said, “Hear, I pray, ye princes of Jacob; And ye rulers of the house of Israel: Is it not for you to know judgment?”

2 But they hate good and love evil; They pull off the skin from them, And the flesh from their bones:

3 Yea, they devour the flesh of my people, And their skin they strip from them, And their bones they break, And make them small as for the pot, And their flesh for the cauldron.

4 They shall then cry to Jehovah, And he will not answer them, But he will hide his face from them at that time, As they have acted perversely in their doings.

5 Thus saith Jehovah to the Prophets, Who deceive my people, And bite with their teeth, and cry, “Peace;” And when any one putteth not in their mouth, Against him they declare war;

6 Night shall therefore be to you instead of a vision, And darkness shall be to you instead of divination;’ And set shall the sun on the Prophets, And darkened over them shall be the day: (227)

7 And ashamed shall be the seers, And confounded shall be the diviners; And they shall all cover their lips, For there will be no answer from God.

8 But I indeed am filled with power, By the Spirit of Jehovah, yea, with judgment and courage, To declare to Jacob his wickedness, And to Israel his sin.

9 Hear this, I pray, ye princes of the house of Jacob, And ye rulers of the house of Israel, Who abominate judgment, And all rectitude pervert; (237)

10 Who build Zion by blood, And Jerusalem by iniquity.

11 Its princes judge for reward, And its priests for wages teach, And its prophets for money divine; And on Jehovah they lean, saying, “Is not Jehovah in the midst of us? Come upon us shall no evil.”

12 Therefore for you Zion as a field shall be plowed, And Jerusalem shall be a heap, And the mount of the house as the heights of a forest.

CHAPTER 4

1 But it shall be in the last days, That the mount of the house of Jehovah Shall be set in order on the top of the mountains, And elevated shall it be above the hills; And assemble there shall nations; (252)

2 And go shall many nations and say, — “Come and let us ascend to the mount of Jehovah, And to the house of the God of Jacob; And he will teach us of his ways, And we will walk in his paths:” For from Zion shall go forth a law, And the word of Jehovah from Jerusalem;

3 And he will rule among many people, And convince strong nations afar off; (260) And beat their swords shall they into plowshares, And their spears into pruninghooks; And lift up shall not a nation against a nation a sword, And they shall learn war no more;

4 And they shall sit everyone under his own vine, And under his own fig-tree; And none will there be to terrify them; For thus hath the mouth of Jehovah of hosts spoken.

5 For all people shall walk, Every one in the name of his god; (271) But we will walk In the name of Jehovah our God forever.

6 In that day, saith Jehovah, I will assemble the lame, And the driven out will I gather, And her whom I have afflicted:

7 And I will make the lame a remnant, And the driven out a strong nation; Reign over them shall Jehovah on mount Zion, From henceforth, even forever.

8 And thou tower of the flock, The fortress of the daughter of Zion, To thee it shall come; Yea, come shall the former dominion; The kingdom, to the daughter of Jerusalem.

9 Why dost thou now cry with a loud crying? Is there no king in thee? Has thy counselor perished? For seized thee has pain as one in travail.

10 Be in pain, and groan, O daughter of Zion, As a woman in travail; For go forth shalt thou from the city, And thou shalt dwell in the field, Yea, thou shalt go as far as Babylon; There shalt thou be delivered, There shall Jehovah redeem thee From the hand of thy enemies.

11 And now gathered against thee are many nations, Who say, “Let her be condemned, And look shall our eye on Zion.” (284)

12 But they know not the thoughts of Jehovah, And understand not his counsel; For he shall gather them as a handful to the floor.

13 Arise, and thrash, thou daughter of Zion; For thy horn will I make iron, And thy hoofs will I make brass; And thou shalt tear in pieces strong nations; And consecrate to Jehovah their wealth, And their substance to the Lord of the whole earth.

CHAPTER 5

1 Assemble now thyself, thou daughter of a troop; A siege has he set against us: (294) With a rod shall they smite on the cheek the judge of Israel.

2 And thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, Art small to be among the thousands of Judah! From thee shall to me come forth One to be a ruler in Israel; And his goings forth are from the beginning, From the days of ages.

3 He will therefore give them up till the time, When she who travails shall bring forth, And return to the children of Israel Shall the residue of his brethren:

4 And he shall stand and feed in the power of Jehovah, In the majesty of the name of Jehovah his God; And they shall quietly dwell, For he shall now be magnified to the ends of the earth.

5 And he shall be our peace; When the Assyrian shall come into our land, And when he shall tread in our palaces, Then we shall set up against him seven shepherds, And eight princes of men;

6 And they shall lay waste The land of the Assyrian by the sword, And the land of Nimrod by their swords; (311) And he will deliver us from the Assyrian, When he shall come into our land, And when he shall tread in our borders.

7 And the residue of Jacob shall be, Among the nations, in the midst of many people, As a dew from Jehovah, as drops of rain on the grass; Which tarries not for man, nor waits for the sons of men.

8 The residue of Jacob shall also be, Among the nations, in the midst of many people, As a lion among the beasts of the forest, As a young lion among a flock of sheep, Who, when he passes through, tears and carries away, And no one can deliver.

9 Exalted shall be thy hand above thine enemies, And all thine adversaries shall be cut off.

10 And it shall be in that day, saith Jehovah, That I will cut off thy horses from the midst of thee, And I will destroy thy chariots;

11 And cut off will I the cities of thy land, And will overthrow all thy fortresses;

12 And I will cut off diviners from thine hand, And soothsayers shall not be to thee;

13 And cut off will I thy graven images, And thy stature from the midst of thee, And thou shalt no more bow down Before the work of thy hands;

14 And I will demolish thy groves from the midst of thee, That I man destroy thine enemies;

15 And in anger and fury will I execute on the nations A vengeance, which they have not heard.

CHAPTER 6

1 Hear ye now what Jehovah saith, — “Arise, contend before the mountains, And let the hills hear thy voice.”

2 Hear, ye mountains, the controversy of Jehovah, And ye strong foundations of the earth; For Jehovah has a controversy with his people, And with Israel he will contend: —

3 “My people! What have I done to thee? And in what have I molested thee? Testify against me.

4 I have indeed made thee to ascend from Egypt, And from the house of servants I redeemed thee; I sent before thee Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.

5 My people! Remember now What Balak, the king of Moab, consulted, And what Balaam, the son of Bosor, answered him, And what happened from Shittim even to Gilgal, That thou mayest know the righteousness of Jehovah.” (336)

6 “Wherewith shall I approach Jehovah? And bow down myself before the high God? Shall I approach him with burnt-sacrifices? With calves a year old?

7 Will Jehovah be pleased with thousands of rams? With ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born as my sin-offering? The fruit of my loins as an expiation For the wickedness of my soul?” —

8 He hath declared to thee, O man, what is good: And what does Jehovah require from thee, But to do justice, and to love mercy, And to humble thyself to walk with thy God?

9 The voice of Jehovah crieth to arouse; And the man of understanding will see his name: Hear ye the rod, and who testifies of it.

10 Are there still in the house of the wicked The treasures of iniquity, And the scanty detestable measure?

11 Shall I justify balances of wickedness, And the bag of deceitful weights?

12 For her rich men have filled themselves by violence, And her inhabitants have spoken falsehood, And their tongue is deceitful in their mouth.

13 And I also by smiting will afflict thee, And thee will I destroy for thy sins: (352)

14 Thou shalt eat and not be satisfied, And thy casting down shall be in the midst of thee; And thou shalt lay hold, and not deliver, And what thou deliverest will I give up to the sword:

15 Thou shalt sow and not reap, Thou shalt press the oil, and not anoint thyself with oil, And the new wine, and not drink wine.

16 For observed are the statues of Omri, And every work of the house of Ahab; And ye walk in their counsels, That I should make thee a desolation, And her inhabitants an hissing; And the reproach of my people ye shall bear.

CHAPTER 7

1 Woe is me! For I am as the ingatherings of summer, And as the bunches of the vintage: There is no cluster to eat; The ripe fruits my soul hath desired. (360)

2 Perished has the meek from the land, And upright among men there is none; For all lie in wait for blood, Every one hunts his brother with a net.

3 To effect the wickedness of their hands, The prince asketh, and the judge also, for reward. And the great man speaks himself Of the mischief of his soul; and they wrap it up. (365)

4 The good among them is like a brier, The upright is worse than a thorn-hedge: The day of thy watchmen, thy visitation, is coming; They shall be their confusion.

5 Trust not a friend, put no faith in a counselor; From her who sleepeth in thy bosom, Guard the openings of thy mouth:

6 For the son dishonors his father, The daughter rises up against her mother, The daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; Enemies to man are his own domestics.

7 But I to Jehovah will look, I will wait for the God of my salvation; Hear me will my God.

8 Rejoice not thou over me, my enemy; (374) Though I have fallen, I shall rise again; When I sit in darkness, Jehovah will be my light.

9 The wrath of Jehovah will I bear, (For I have sinned against him,) Until he plead my cause, And execute judgment for me; He will bring me to light, I shall see his righteousness:

10 And see shall my enemy, And cover her shall shame, who said to me, — “Where is Jehovah thy God?” Mine eyes shall see her; And now trodden shall she be as the mire of the street.

11 The day to build thy walls! That day shall remove far the decree:

12 And in that day to thee shall they come From Assyria and the cities of the fortress, From the fortress also to the river, (386) And from sea to sea, and from mountain to mountain, —

13 But the land shall become a desolation, On account of its inhabitants, For the fruit of their works.

14 Feed thy people by thy crook, Thy flock of thy heritage, Who dwell in solitude, in the wood, As in the midst of Carmel; They shall be fed in Bashan and Gilead, As in the days of old. (392)

15 As in the days of thy going forth from the land of Egypt, I will show to him wonderful things.

16 Shall see the nations, And be ashamed of all their might; They shall lay their hand on their mouth, Their ears shall become deaf;

17 They shall lick the dust as a serpent, As reptiles of the earth shall they move from their holes; Jehovah our God shall they dread, And they shall be afraid of thee.

18 What God is like thee, Taking away iniquity, And passing over transgression, As to the remnant of his heritage? He will not retain forever his anger, For he loveth mercy:

19 He will return, he will have mercy on us; He will tread down our iniquities, And cast into the depths of the sea all their sins:

20 Thou wilt grant truth to Jacob, Mercy to Abraham; Which thou hast sworn to our fathers In the days of old.

a translation of

Calvin’s Version of

The Prophecies of Nahum.

CHAPTER 1

1 The burden of Nineveh, — the book of the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite:

2 A God jealous, and an avenger is Jehovah; Avenger is Jehovah, and a retainer of wrath; Take vengeance does Jehovah on his enemies, And keep it for his adversaries: (421)

3 Jehovah is slow to wrath, and great in power, And by clearing he will not clear: Jehovah! In the whirlwind and tempest is his way, And the cloud is the dust of his feet: (424)

4 He chides the sea, and it becomes dry; And all the rivers he dried up; Languish do Bashan and Carmel, And the flower of Lebanon languishes:

5 Mountains tremble at him, and hills melt; And burn does the earth before his face, Yea, the world, and all who dwell in it. (427)

6 Before his indignation who can stand? And who can bear the fierceness of his wrath? (429) His fury is poured out like fire, And rocks dissolve before him.

7 Good is Jehovah for strength in the day of distress; And he knoweth them who hope in him.

8 But with an inundation, he, passing through, Will make a consummation in her place; (433) And pursue shall darkness his enemies.

9 What do ye imagine against Jehovah? A consummation he makes! Not rise again shall affliction.

10 They who are like entangled thorns, And drunken as with their own drinking — Devoured shall they be as stubble fully dry. (437)

11 From thee has gone forth a contriver of evil Against Jehovah, a wicked counselor.

12 Thus saith Jehovah, — Though they are secure, and though they are many, They shall yet be cut off, and he shall pass through: (443) And through I have afflicted thee, I will afflict thee no more;

13 For now will I break off from thee his yoke, And his bonds will I burst asunder.

14 And a command respecting thee hath Jehovah given, — “Let none be sown hereafter of thy name;” From the house of thy gods will I cut off The graven and the molten image; I will make thy grave, for thou art execrable.

15 Behold on the mountains the feet of him Who announceth, who publisheth peace! Celebrate thou, Judah, thy solemnities, Perform thy vows; for pass through thee Shall the wicked one no more, — he is wholly cut off.

CHAPTER 2

1 Come up is the destroyer before thy face; Watch the fortress, guard the way, (455) Make strong the loins, fortify mightily thy strength:

2 (For taken away hath Jehovah the pride of Jacob, As he had done as to the pride of Israel; As he had done as to the pride of Israel; For emptied them the emptiers, And their branches have they cut down:)

3 The shield of his mighty ones are made red, The men of his strength are clad in scarlet; With the fire of torches is the chariot, In the day of his expedition; And the fir-trees tremulously shake:

4 In the wide places they madden with their chariots, The hurry away through the streets, The appearance of them is that of lamps, As lightnings they run here and there.

5 He will remember his valiant men, They shall stumble in their march, They shall hasten to her wall, And prepared will be the defense.

6 The gates of the rivers are opened, And the palace is dissolved;

7 And she which stood firm is cast into exile, And her maids lead her as with the voice of doves, Beating on their breasts. (463)

8 And yet Nineveh had been As a pool of waters from ancient days; But now they flee — “Stand ye, stand;” And no one regards.

9 Take ye away the silver, take away the gold; For there is no end of her preparations; Her glory is from every desirable vessel. (468)

10 Emptied and emptied is she, and denuded; And the heart is melted; And there is a knocking of the knees, And trembling in all loins, And the faces of all withdraw their brightness. (472)

11 Where is the abode of lions? Where came the lion, the lioness, the cub of the lion; And none terrified them. (474)

12 The lion tare what sufficed his whelps, And strangled for his lionesses, And filled with raving his caves, And his dens with prey.

13 Behold, I am against thee, saith Jehovah of hosts, And I will burn with smoke her chariot, And thy young lions shall the sword devour, And I will cut off from the land thy prey, And the sound of thy teeth shall no more be heard.

CHAPTER 3

1 Oh blood city! The whole is full of deceit, and of ravin; From it the prey departs not.

2 The sound of the whip! The sound of the rattling of the wheel! And the horse prancing, and the chariot bounding!

3 The horseman urging onward! And the flame of the sword, and the lightning of the spear! And the number of the slain, and the mass of carcasses! And there is no end to her dead bodies, They stumble on their carcasses!

4 This is for the multitude of the fornications Of the harlot who excels in beauty, The mistress of sorceries, Who sells nations by her fornications, And tribes by her sorceries. (481)

5 Behold, I am against thee, saith Jehovah of hos

CHAPTER 3

Na 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.

1. 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.

2. The reader is transported into the midst of the fight (compare Jr 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," &c.

3. horseman--distinct from "the horses" (in the chariots, Na 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.

4. 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 (Re 18:2, 3), to trust her.

witchcrafts--(Is 47:9, 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, 3, 6-8). But elsewhere there is no evidence that the Assyrians did this.

families--peoples.

5. I will discover thy skirts upon thy face--that is, discover thy nakedness by throwing up thy skirts upon thy face (the greatest possible insult), pulling them up as as high as thy head (Jr 13:22; Eze 16:37-41). I will treat thee not as a matron, but as a harlot whose shame is exposed; her gaudy finery being lifted up off her (Is 47:2, 3). So Nineveh shall be stripped of all her glory and defenses on which she prides herself.

6. cast abominable filth upon thee--as infamous harlots used to be treated.

gazing stock--exposed to public ignominy as a warning to others (Eze 28:17).

7. all ... that look upon thee--when thou hast been made "a gazing stock" (Na 3:6).

shall flee from thee--as a thing horrible to look upon. Compare "standing afar off," Re 18:10.

whence shall I seek comforters for thee?--Compare Is 51:19, which Nahum had before his mind.

8. populous No--rather, as Hebrew, "No-ammon," the Egyptian name for Thebes in Upper Egypt; meaning the portion or possession of Ammon, the Egyptian Jupiter (whence the Greeks called the city Diospolis), who was especially worshipped there. The Egyptian inscriptions call the god Amon-re, that is, Amon the Sun; he is represented as a human figure with a ram's head, seated on a chair (Jr 46:25; Eze 30:14-16). The blow inflicted on No-ammon, described in Na 3:10, was probably by the Assyrian Sargon (see on Is 18:1; Is 20:1). As Thebes, with all her resources, was overcome by Assyria, so Assyrian Nineveh, notwithstanding all her might, in her turn, shall be overcome by Babylon. English Version, "populous," if correct, implies that No's large population did not save her from destruction.

situate among the rivers--probably the channels into which the Nile here divides (compare Is 19:6-8). Thebes lay on both sides of the river. It was famed in Homer's time for its hundred gates [Iliad, 9.381]. Its ruins still describe a circumference of twenty-seven miles. Of them the temples of Luxor and Karnak, east of the river, are most famous. The colonnade of the former, and the grand hall of the latter, are of stupendous dimensions. One wall still represents the expedition of Shishak against Jerusalem under Rehoboam (1Ki 14:25; 2Ch 12:2-9).

whose ... wall was from the sea--that is, rose up "from the sea." Maurer translates, "whose wall consisted of the sea." But this would be a mere repetition of the former clause. The Nile is called a sea, from its appearance in the annual flood (Is 19:5).

9. Ethiopia--Hebrew, Cush. Ethiopia is thought at this time to have been mistress of Upper Egypt.

Egypt--Lower Egypt.

her strength--her safeguard as an ally.

it was infinite--The resources of these, her allies, were endless.

Put--or Phut (Ge 10:6); descended from Ham (Eze 27:10). From a root meaning a bow; as they were famed as archers [Gesenius]. Probably west of Lower Egypt. Josephus [Antiquities, 1:6.2] identifies it with Mauritania (compare Jr 46:9, Margin; Eze 38:5).

Lubim--the Libyans, whose capital was Cyrene; extending along the Mediterranean west of Egypt (2Ch 12:3; 16:8; Ac 2:10). As, however, the Lubim are always connected with the Egyptians and Ethiopians, they are perhaps distinct from the Libyans. The Lubim were probably at first wandering tribes, who afterwards were settled under Carthage in the region of Cyrene, under the name Libyans.

thy--No's.

helpers--literally, "in thy help," that is, among thy auxiliaries.

10. Notwithstanding all her might, she was overcome.

cast lots for her honourable men--They divided them among themselves by lot, as slaves (Joe 3:3).

11. drunken--made to drink of the cup of Jehovah's wrath (Is 51:17, 21; Jr 25:15).

hid--covered out of sight: a prediction remarkably verified in the state in which the ruins of Nineveh have been found [G. V. Smith]. But as "hid" precedes "seek strength," &c., it rather refers to Nineveh's state when attacked by her foe: "Thou who now so vauntest thyself, shalt be compelled to seek a hiding-place from the foe" [Calvin]; or, shalt be neglected and slighted by all [Maurer].

seek strength because of the enemy--Thou too, like Thebes (Na 3:9), shalt have recourse to other nations for help against thy Medo-Babylonian enemy.

12. thy strongholds--on the borders of Assyria, protecting the approaches to Nineveh: "the gates of thy land" (Na 3:13).

fig trees with the first ripe figs--expressing the rapidity and ease of the capture of Nineveh (compare Is 28:4; Re 6:13).

13. thy people--thy soldiers.

women--unable to fight for thee (Is 19:16; Jr 50:37; 51:30).

gates on thy land--the fortified passes or entrances to the region of Nineveh (compare Jr 15:7). Northeast of Nineveh there were hills affording a natural barrier against an invader; the guarded passes through these are probably "the gates of the land" meant.

fire shall devour thy bars--the "bars" of the fortresses at the passes into Assyria. So in Assyrian remains the Assyrians themselves are represented as setting fire to the gates of a city [Bonomi, Nineveh, pp. 194, 197].

14. Ironical exhortation to Nineveh to defend herself.

Draw ... waters--so as not to be without water for drinking, in the event of being cut off by the besiegers from the fountains.

make strong the brick-kiln--or "repair" [Maurer]; so as to have a supply of bricks formed of kiln-burnt clay, to repair breaches in the ramparts, or to build new fortifications inside when the outer ones are taken by the foe.

15. There--in the very scene of thy great preparations for defense; and where thou now art so secure.

fire--even as at the former destruction; Sardanapalus (Pul?) perished with all his household in the conflagration of his palace, having in despair set it on fire, the traces of which are still remaining.

cankerworm--"the licking locust" [Henderson].

make thyself many as the locusts--"the swarming locusts" [Henderson]; that is, however "many" be thy forces, like those of "the swarming locusts," or the "licking locusts," yet the foe shall consume thee as the "licking locust" licks up all before it.

16. multiplied thy merchants--(Eze 27:23, 24). Nineveh, by large canals, had easy access to Babylon; and it was one of the great routes for the people of the west and northwest to that city; lying on the Tigris it had access to the sea. The Phoenicians carried its wares everywhere. Hence its merchandise is so much spoken of.

the cankerworm spoileth, and fleeth away--that is, spoiled thy merchants. The "cankerworm," or licking locust, answers to the Medo-Babylonian invaders of Nineveh [G. V. Smith]. Calvin explains less probably, "Thy merchants spoiled many regions; but the same shall befall them as befalls locusts, they in a moment shall be scattered and flee away." Maurer, somewhat similarly, "The licking locust puts off (the envelope in which his wings had been folded), and teeth away" (Na 2:9; compare Joe 1:4). The Hebrew has ten different names for the locust, so destructive was it.

17. Thy crowned--Thy princes (Re 9:7). The king's nobles and officers wore the tiara, as well as the king; hence they are called here "thy crowned ones."

as the locusts--as many as the swarming locusts.

thy captains--Tiphsar, an Assyrian word; found also in Jr 51:27, meaning satraps [Michaelis]; or rather, "military leaders" [Maurer]. The last syllable, sar means a "prince," and is found in Belshaz-zar, Nabopolas-sar, Nebuchadnez-zar.

as the great grasshoppers--literally, "as the locust of locusts," that is, the largest locust. Maurer translates, "as many as locusts upon locusts," that is, swarms of locusts. Hebrew idiom favors English Version.

in the hedges in the cold--Cold deprives the locust of the power of flight; so they alight in cold weather and at night, but when warmed by the sun soon "flee away." So shall the Assyrian multitudes suddenly disappear, not leaving a trace behind (compare Pliny, Natural History, 11.29).

18. Thy shepherds--that is, Thy leaders.

slumber--are carelessly secure [Maurer]. Rather, "lie in death's sleep, having been slain" [Jerome] (Ex 15:16; Psa 76:6).

shall dwell in the dust--(Psa 7:5; 94:17).

thy people is scattered--the necessary consequence of their leaders being laid low (1Ki 22:17).

19. bruit--the report.

clap the hands--with joy at thy fall. The sole descendants of the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians in the whole country are the Nestorian Christians, who speak a Chaldean language [Layard].

upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually?--implying God's long forbearance, and the consequent enormity of Assyria's guilt, rendering her case one that admitted no hope of restoration.

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.

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.

I will discover thy skirts upon thy face - It was an ancient, though not a laudable custom, to strip prostitutes naked, or throw their clothes over their heads, and expose them to public view, and public execration. This verse alludes to such a custom.

I will cast abominable filth upon thee - I will set thee as a gazing-stock. This was a punishment precisely like our pillory. They put such women in the pillory as a gazing-stock; and then, children and others threw mud, dirt, and filth of all kinds at them.

Who will bemoan her? - In such cases, who pities the delinquent? She has been the occasion of ruin to multitudes, and now she is deservedly exposed and punished. And so it should be thought concerning Nineveh.

Art thou better than populous No - No-Ammon, or Diospolis, in the Delta, on one branch of the Nile. This is supposed to be the city mentioned by Nahum; and which had been lately destroyed, probably by the Chaldeans.

The waters round about it - Being situated in the Delta, it had the fork of two branches of the Nile to defend it by land; and its barrier or wall was the sea, the Mediterranean, into which these branches emptied themselves: so that this city, and the place it stood on, were wholly surrounded by the waters.

Ethiopia and Egypt were her strength - The land of Cush, not far from Diospolis; for it was in Arabia, on the Red Sea.

Put and Lubim - A part of Africa and Libya, which were all within reach of forming alliances with No-Ammon or Diospolis.

They cast lots for her honorable men - This refers still to the city called populous No. And the custom of casting lots among the commanders, for the prisoners which they had taken, is here referred to.

Great men were bound in chains - These were reserved to grace the triumph of the victor.

Thy strong holds - The effects of the consternation into which the Ninevites were cast by the assault on their city are here pointed out by a very expressive metaphor; the first-ripe figs, when at full maturity, fell from the tree with the least shake; and so, at the first shake or consternation, all the fortresses of Nineveh were abandoned; and the king, in despair, burnt himself and household in his own palace.

Thy people - are women - They lost all courage, and made no resistance. O vere Phrygiae, neque enim Phryges: "Verily, ye are Phrygian women, not Phrygian men." So said Numanus to the Trojans. Virg., Aen. ix.

Draw thee waters for the siege - The Tigris ran near to Nineveh, and here they are exhorted to lay in plenty of fresh water, lest the siege should last long, and lest the enemy should cut off this supply.

Go into clay, and tread the mortar - This refers to the manner of forming bricks anciently in those countries; they digged up the clay, kneaded it properly by treading, mixed it with straw or coarse grass, moulded the bricks, and dried them in the sun. I have now some of the identical bricks, that were brought from this country, lying before me, and they show all these appearances. They are compact and very hard, but wholly soluble in water. There were however others without straw, that seem to have been burnt in a kiln as ours are. I have also some fragments or bats of these from Babylon.

Make thyself many as the cankerworm - On the locusts, and their operations in their various states, see the notes on Joel 2 (note). The multitudes, successive swarms, and devastation occasioned by locusts, is one of the most expressive similes that could be used to point out the successive armies and all-destroying influences of the enemies of Nineveh. The account of these destroyers from Dr. Shaw, inserted Joel 2, will fully illustrate the verses where allusion is made to locusts.

Thou hast multiplied thy merchants - Like Tyre, this city was a famous resort for merchants; but the multitudes which were there previously to the siege, like the locusts, took the alarm, and fled away.

Thy crowned are as the locusts - Thou hast numerous princes and numerous commanders.

Which camp in the hedges in the cold day - The locusts are said to lie in shelter about the hedges of fertile spots when the weather is cold or during the night; but as soon as the sun shines out and is hot, they come out to their forage, or take to their wings.

Thy shepherds slumber - That is, the rulers and tributary princes, who, as Herodotus informs us, deserted Nineveh in the day of her distress, and came not forward to her succor.

Diodorus Siculus says, lib. ii., when the enemy shut up the king in the city, many nations revolted, each going over to the besiegers, for the sake of their liberty; that the king despatched messengers to all his subjects, requiring power from them to succor him; and that he thought himself able to endure the siege, and remained in expectation of armies which were to be raised throughout his empire, relying on the oracle that the city would not be taken till the river became its enemy. See the note on Nah 2:6.

There is no healing of thy bruise - Thou shalt never be rebuilt.

All that hear the bruit of thee - The report or account.

Shall clap the hands - Shall exult in thy downfall.

For upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed - Thou hast been a universal oppressor, and therefore all nations rejoice at thy fall and utter desolation.

Bp. Newton makes some good remarks on the fall and total ruin of Nineveh. "What probability was there that the capital city of a great kingdom, a city which was sixty miles in compass, a city which contained so many thousand inhabitants, a city which had walls a hundred feet high, and so thick that three chariots could go abreast upon them, and which had one thousand five hundred towers, of two hundred feet in height; what probability was there that such a city should ever be totally destroyed? And yet so totally was it destroyed that the place is hardly known where it was situated. What we may suppose helped to complete its ruin and devastation, was Nebuchadnezzar's enlarging and beautifying Babylon, soon after Nineveh was taken. From that time no mention is made of Nineveh by any of the sacred writers; and the most ancient of the heathen authors, who have occasion to say any thing about it, speak of it as a city that was once great and flourishing, but now destroyed and desolate. Great as it was formerly, so little of it is remaining, that authors are not agreed even about its situation. From the general suffrage of ancient historians and geographers, it appears to have been situated upon the Tigris, though others represent it as placed upon the Euphrates. Bochart has shown that Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, and Ammianus Marcellinus, all three speak differently of it; sometimes as if situated on the Euphrates, sometimes as if on the Tigris; to reconcile whom he supposes that there were two Ninevehs; and Sir John Marsham, that there were three; the Syrian upon the Euphrates, the Assyrian on the Tigris, and a third built afterwards upon the Tigris by the Persians, who succeeded the Parthians in the empire of the East, in the third century, and were subdued by the Saracens in the seventh century after Christ. But whether this latter was built in the same place as the old Nineveh, is a question that cannot be decided. "There is a city at this time called Mosul, situate upon the western side of the Tigris; and on the opposite eastern shore are ruins of great extent, which are said to be those of Nineveh. "Dr. Prideaux, following Thevenot, observes that Mosul is situated on the west side of the Tigris, where was anciently only a suburb of the old Nineveh; for the city itself stood on the east side of the river, where are to be seen some of its ruins of great extent even to this day. Even the ruins of old Nineveh, as we may say, have been long ago ruined and destroyed; such an utter end hath been made of it, and such is the truth of the Divine predictions! "These extraordinary circumstances may strike the reader more strongly by supposing only a parallel instance. Let us then suppose that a person should come in the name of a prophet, preaching repentance to the people of this kingdom, or otherwise denouncing the destruction of the capital city within a few years. 'With an overflowing flood will God make an utter end of the place thereof; he will make an utter end: its place may be sought, but it shall never be found.' I presume we should look upon such a prophet as a madman, and show no farther attention to his message than to deride and despise it. And yet such an event would not be more strange and incredible than the destruction and devastation of Nineveh; for Nineveh was much the larger, stronger, and older city of the two. And the Assyrian empire had subsisted and flourished more ages than any form of government in this country; so there is no objecting the instability of Eastern monarchies in this case. Let us then since this event would not be more improbable and extraordinary than the other, suppose again, that things should succeed according to the prediction; that the floods should arise, and the enemies should come; the city should be overthrown and broken down, be taken and pillaged, and destroyed so totally that even the learned could not agree about the place where it was situated. What would be said or thought in such a case? Whoever of posterity should read and compare the prophecy and event together, must they not, by such an illustrious instance, be thoroughly convinced of the providence of God, and of the truth of his prophet, and be ready to acknowledge, 'Verily, this is the word which the Lord hath spoken; verily, there is a God who judgeth the earth?"' - See Bp. Newton, vol. i., dissert. 9.

The horsemen - The Chaldeans and their confederates.

The whoredom - The idolatries, which were multiplied by the many people that served the Assyrian idols. And whoredoms literally understood, did undoubtedly abound, where wealth, luxury, ease, and long continuance of these were to be found. Well - favoured - Glorious in their state and government, and in the splendor of their idols, temples, and sacrifices. Of witchcrafts - Bewitching policies; or it may be taken for witchcrafts or necromances, which abounded among the Assyrians. That selleth - That dispose of them as imperiously, and absolutely as men do slaves. And families - This may intimate the seducing of some particular and eminent families to an hereditary service of the Assyrian idols, or to witchcrafts, in which the devil imitated God's institution, in taking a family to his service.

Discover - l will strip thee naked, and deal with thee as inhuman soldiers deal with captive women.

Shall flee - With loathing and abhorrence. Will bemoan - Whose bowels will be moved for her that had no bowels for any one.

Thou - O Nineveh. No - It is supposed this was what we now called Alexandria. Art thou greater, stronger, and wiser? Yet all her power was broken, her riches spoiled, and her glory buried in ruins. Rampart - The defence of its walls on one side. Her wall - A mighty, strong wall, built from the sea landward.

Her strength - Furnishing soldiers and warlike assistance. It was infinite - There was no end to their confidence and warlike provisions. Put - Or the Moors, who lie westward of Alexandria. Lubim - The people that inhabited that which is now called Cyrene.

Thou also - Thou shalt drink deep of the bitter cup of God's displeasure. Hid - Thou shalt hide thyself. O Nineveh, as well as Alexandria. Shalt seek - Shalt sue for, and intreat assistance.

Ripe figs - Whose weight and ripeness will bring them quickly to the ground. Shaken - If but lightly touched.

Are women - Were very cowards. The gates - The strong frontiers. Wide open - Either through fear or treachery. Thy bars - With which the gates were shut and strengthened.

Draw thee waters - Fill all thy cisterns, and draw the waters into the ditches. Tread the mortar - Set thy brick - makers on work to prepare store of materials for thy fortifications.

There - In the very fortresses. Eat thee - As easily as the canker - worm eats the green herb. Many - They are innumerable; be thou so if thou canst; all will be to no purpose.

The canker - worm spoileth - So these are like the canker - worms, which spoil wherever they come, and when no more is to be gotten, flee away.

Thy crowned - Thy confederate kings and princes. Captains - Commanders and officers are for number, like locusts and grasshoppers; but 'tis all for shew, not for help. In the cool day - While the season suits them. The sun - When trouble, war, and danger, like the parching sun, scald them. Is not known - Thou shalt never know where to find them.

Thy shepherds - Thy rulers and counsellors. Slumber - Are remiss, heartless, or dead. No man gathereth - No one will concern himself to preserve thy dispersed ones.

Shall clap the hands - Insulting and rejoicing. Thy wickedness - Thy tyranny, pride, oppression and cruelty; treading down and trampling upon them.

1 WO to the bloody city, it is all full of lies and robbery , the prey departeth not .

A comprehensive threat of many, and great calamities coming.

Nineveh, the chief City of the Assyrian Kingdom. Vid. chap. 1. ver. 1, let. b.

Every part, Officers and Rulers; Traders, both Buyers and Sellers; Shops, Houses, Judicatories, all fill'd with falsehood and lies.

Cheating in their Trades, and false Witnesses before the Judges.

Their gain, though they count honest, is no better in Gods account than robbery or rapine, as is that the Lion taketh, teareth, and devoureth, as the word Heb. implies.

Unjust acquists by fraud and force; extortions and violent taking away what was not theirs.

As they did so long since, they continue still so to do, no change from injustice to justice.

Marginal references: Ezek. 24.9. Hab. 2.12.; Heb. city of bloods.

2 The noise of a whip , and the noise of the ratling of the wheels , and of the pransing horses , and of the jumpings chariots.

With which the Charioteer roused, and animated the Horses which drew the Warlike Chariots.

By the swi[illegible: 1 letter]t motion of the Horses

in the Chariots proudly and stately trampling,

made to jump by the swiftness, and strength of the Horses which drew them.

The French reads this verse with a Negative distributive, and so links this and the next verse with the former negative, ver. 1. thus the prey de[illegible: 1 letter]arteth not, nor the noise of the whip, nor, &c. intimating the long continuance of the Chaldeans insulting over the N[illegible: 1 letter]nevites.

3 The horseman lifteth up both the bright sword , and the glittering ‖ spear, and there is a multitude of slain , and a great number of carcasses ; and there is no end of their corpses : they stumble upon their corpses.

The Chaldean, and Mede, or their Confederates in the War.

Hath his sword not only drawn, but in a posture ever ready to smite, wound, or kill.

These Warriours kept their weapons in such manner, that they were fit both to cut and kill▪ and also to dazle the eye, and affright.

In Nineveh, and the streets of it.

By the sword of the prevailing besiegers.

The slain lay in the streets unburied.

None knew the numbers of the slain.

Both Invaders, and invaded, all within the City,

are ready to fall at them, not able to avoid them.

Marginal references: Heb. [illegible: 1 word] of the sw[illegible: 1 letter]rd, and [illegible: 1 span]ing of the spear.

4 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.

God is just, Nineveh hath deserved all this.

Her crafts and her policies are in which she resembled those lewd Women, as they by their wiles abuse, and deceive men; so did Nineveh or the Assyrian Kingdom deceive, impoverish, and enslave Nations by state policies, so Isa. 23.17. and Revel. 17.2. or else, by Whoredoms here may be meant Idolatries which were multiplyed by the many people that served the Assyrian Idols, or by their multiplying of Idols which probably they did by taking into the Muster-Roll of their Gods those Idols which the conquered Nations worshipt, or Whoredoms literally understood; for this sin undoubtedly did abound where Wealth, Luxury, Ease, and long continuance of these were to be found.

The Glory of their State and Government, or the splendour of their Idols, Temples, and Sacrifices, or the comeliness and beauty of the lewd, and whorish Women among them.

Bewitching Policies, and enchanting Counc[illegible: 1 letter]ls confederacies, and promised Favours, or it may be literally taken for Witchcrafts or Necromancies, which sin abounded no doubt among the Assyrians

disposeth of them as imperiously, and absolutely as men do slaves which they buy, or else drawing them into the Wars for pay, exposed them to slaughter by the Enemies sword, as if they had bought their persons to sell their lives, that thereby their own Country m [illegible: 1 letter]n and Citizens might be spared, and escape. Or selleth, i. e. [illegible: 1 span] them to abound in sin, for which God in his just judgment selleth them into the Enemies hand.

Whole Kingdoms.

See let. y.

Either 'tis an elegant illustration of the former passage, or perhaps it may intimate the seducing of some particular and eminent Families to ingage themselves in an hereditary and perpetual service to the Assyrian Idols, or to Witchcrafts, in which the Devil imitated God's institution, in taking a Family to his service, so the chief Families had the Authority of Ruling, and the burthen of an Idolatrous Priesthood, Or. [illegible: 1 word]. de Rep. lib. 4. Sect. 9. and lib. 8. c. 2. Sect. 6, and 8.

5 Behold I am against these aith 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.

See chap. 2. ver. 13. let. p. q. r. s.

Nineveh as an Harlot had been proud, and appeared beautiful, and gay in the gifts of her Lovers; but now God will deal with her according to her wayes, (and as men provoked use to do with Harlots) strip her naked, and expose her to greatest infamy, or deal with thee as inhumane Souldiers do deal with Captive Women, Vide Annot. in Ezek. 16.37.

Which once did reverence thy greatness, shall now abhor thy nakedness which they behold

thy vileness and thy shame as in the next words.

Marginal references: Isa. 47.2.3, 8. Jer. 13.22, 26.

6 And I will cast abominable filth upon thee, and make thee vile , and will set thee as a gazing-stock .

By the Chaldean and Medish Army which God will stir up against the Assyrian Monarchy.

As is done to lewd Women.

Nineveh had made her self morally evil, and vile by sinning: now she shall be made penally vile.

O Nineveh.

At which they shall wonder and be astonished, some shall take warning too; so Zenacherib's Tomb was a standing Monument to put men in mind that God is to be feared, and that men looking on it may reflect on their insolence, and decline it. So Senacherib's Tomb-stone with his Statue: Of which chap. 1. ver. 14.

7 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? whence shall I seek comforters for thee?

It will most certainly be.

So soon as ever thou art seen, and discovered O Nineveh in thy vileness,

With hatred, loathing, and abhorrence for her former pride, and wickedness, and for her present miseries.

With wonder, scorn, rejoicing, and spreading the News.

Taken, sackt, emptied of Inhabitants, yea, utterly subverted, that it may be no more a rival with Babylon, 'tis certain that 'tis not now where it once stood.

Whose Bowels will be moved for her that had no Bowels for any one, who will move foot or hand toward her relief?

From what place? She hath wronged all her Neighbours, and ruin'd some of them, from amidst these, surely not one may be fetch't to speak comfortably to her; these do with reason upbraid her former cruelty and pride, and reioyce in her present calamity and ruine, and strangers will not be concern'd for her.

8 Art thou better then populous No, that was scituate among the rivers , that had the waters round about it, whose rampart was the sea , and her wall was from the sea.

O Nineveh.

'Tis generally supposed, that this was what we now call Alexandria, a City full of people, and as full of Luxury and Uncleanness, the sins whereof had brought it to ruin, though the History of it do not specifie time, person or means, &c. Art thou greater, stronger and wiser, more able to resist an enemy, and preserve thy self? Yet all her power was broken, her riches spoiled, and her glory buried in ruines. This known in those dayes, was a fit example to be set before the Ninevites, and though some conjecture the Prophet foretells what should befall populous No, to awaken the Ninevites, yet it seems incredible, that the Prophet should take an instance to terrifie secure Ninevites from somewhat to come to pass in after Ages.

In a place where the seven streams of Nilus very fairly might be accounted so many Rivers, and near to one of these streams toward the Sea, was this mighty and rich City seated.

Though at some distance, yet at no great distance.

Or defence of its walls on one side.

That part of the midland Sea which was Mare Egyptiacum, and was Northward from the City.

A mighty strong wall built from the Sea, on the parts Landward, where need was.

Marginal references: Amos [illegible: 2 letters]; Or, [illegible: 1 span]; Heb. [illegible: 1 span] ▪; Jer. [illegible: 1 span]

9 Ethiopia and Egypt were her strength , and it was infinite , Put and Lubim were thy helpers.

'Tis not very probable that this Ethiopia should be that remote country that lay South of Egypt, though in truth 'tis possible, and while Egypt was in friendship with No-Amon, or Alexandria, the aids might in length of time come from Ethiopia, or Habassia. But there was a Cush, an Ethiopia in Arabia, near to Egypt and Alexandria, whose people were likest to undertake the assistance of Alexandria their Neighbour. See 2 Chron. 14.9. Ezek. 30.4, 5. and Hab. 3.7.

This No or Alexandria, was either a City subject to, and was part of Egypt, or if (as some conjecture) 'twas a free City, 'twas in league with Egypt.

Furnishing Souldiers and Warlike Assistance on all occasions to Alexandria, which relyed on these confederates.

They never made an end of their confederacies and warlike provisions. It is reported that when Amasis Reigned, Egypt reckoned twenty thousand Cities, and when Zerah King of Ethiopia came against Asa it was with an Army of ten hundred thousand men, and three hundred (thousand) chariots; these were the associates of Alexandria.

Or Phuteans or the Moors, who lye along Westward of Alexandria.

The people that inhabited the parts of Africa, and thought to be that which is now called Cyrene, Vid. Ezek 30.

O Alexandria.

Marginal references: Heb. [illegible: 1 span].

10 Yet she was carried away , she went into captivity ; her young children also were dashed in pieces at the top of all the streets; and they cast lots for her honourable men ; and all her great men were bound in chains .

It is probable this might be about thirty years before; for about 3207, as Calvisius, or 3277, as Arch-Bishop [illegible: 1 letter]sher. Sabacon King of Ethiopia invaded Egypt, took Bocchoris, and burnt him, which was not likely to be done without slaughter of men, and sacking of Towns, among which time No might be ruined, Now as Calvisius and Helvicus account about 3238, or as Usher 3307 An. Mund. Nahum appears, and flourisheth.

This ingemination confirms the certainty of the thing, and intends to affect the Ninevites the more.

Their innocent age was no safeguard to them.

First barbarously murthered, and then trod under soot in the streets, as was usual with those cruel bloody Souldiers, 2 Kings 8.12. Psal. 137.9. Isa. 13.16

Either to put a scorn upon them, or else to prevent any contest about them▪ being taken among many others together, and none could say this is my Prisoner.

Citizens of note, or some Officers or Governours.

Great in Place, Strength, Valour, Wisdom, and so likely to do the Conqueror a displeasure, should they not be secured

of Iron or manacled, used as worst Slaves.

11 Thou also shalt be drunken , thou shalt be hid ; thou also shalt seek strength because of the enemy.

O Nineveh,

not only taste, but drink deep, yea, be drunk with the bitter Cup of Gods displeasure, and thine Enemies rage, Isa. 29.9. Obad 16.

Either hide thy self, or be so weakned, and diminisht, that thou shalt no more appear, or else be as contemptible, laid by in some obscure place, fear and shame shall cover thee.

O Nineveh as well as Alexandria,

shalt sue for, and intreat assistance,

or from the Enemy, i. e. Either thus in thy distress thou shalt seek for strength from such as are really thine Enemies, though they make a league with thee; or thus, thou shalt beg protection from thy Enemy that hath captivated thee, and rely on the mercy of him against the rage of others.

Marginal references: Psal. 75.8. [illegible: 1 letter]er. 25.17.

12 All thy strong holds shall be like figtrees with the first ripe figs : if they be shaken , they shall even fall into the mouth of the eater.

Castles, and fortified places, not one or two, but all of them

easily shaken,

whose weight, and ripeness will bring them quickly to the ground

if but very lightly toucht,

into the hand of devouring, and hungry ones.

Marginal references: Rev. 6.13.

13 Behold thy people in the midst of thee are women : the gates of thy land shall be set wide open unto thine enemies , the fire shall devour thy bars .

This may seem strange, but attend diligently, thou shalt see how this will be.

Those thou hirest, and are thine for pay; those that are born thine, all thy Warriours

where very Cowards use to be valiant, or where necessity makes Cowards valiant, where they sho'd shew most valour,

weak, afraid, flee away, and hide themselves, Ier. 48.41. and 51.30. God wo'd fill them with terrour, and they shall not dare to keep their Gates shut against the Enemy.

The Cities, but especially the strong fortified Frontiers which should keep out the Enemy,

shall either through fear or treachery be opened, wide opened to admit the Enemy.

Chaldeans, and their Confederates.

When the Enemy is thus admitted, he shall burn either the City or the Gates and Bars, he will never trust, nor spare thee.

With which the Gates were both shut and strengthened, 1 Sam. 23.7. Psal. 147.13.

Marginal references: Jer. 5[illegible: 1 letter].37.

14 Draw thee waters for the siege , fortify thy strong holds: go into clay, and tread the morter , make strong the brick-kill .

Fill all thy Cisterns, and make more, that thou want not for drink, ye draw the waters into the ditches, or graft about every Fort

which thine Enemies will lay against thee.

Repair all decays, and strengthen all that is weak.

Set thy Brick-makers on work to prepare store of strongest Bricks,

that the materials for thy Fortifications may be firm and good, all this is spoken with an Ironie, or derision of their fruitless labour.

15 There shall the fire devour thee: the sword shall cut thee off: it shall eat thee up like the canker worm : make thy self many as the canker worm, make thy self many as the locusts.

In the very Fortresses.

Either literally, or figuratively, the wrath of the Enemy hot as fire, or the Pestilence, or all together

Of the Chaldeans, their Wars (after all that the Scythians have done against thee) these shall utterly destroy thee.

This tells us the manner how the Ninevites shall be destroyed, they shall be eaten up:

Either the Enemy shall as easily eat thee up, as the Canker worm eats the green Herb; or thou shalt as soon be devoured as Canker worms are destroyed by storms, rain, fire, or change of weather.

They are innumerable, be thou so if thou canst be, all will be to no purpose.

The same Ironie repeated, when the Ninevites have done all they can, they shall as fully, and s[illegible: 1 letter]ddenly be destroyed as these Vermin are.

16 Thou hast multiplyed thy merchants above the stars of heaven: the canker worm spoileth and fleeth away.

For number; and as the word may import▪ thou hast greatned them, thou reliest on their purse, and interest.

Either literally or figuratively, thy great men, Princes and Rulers, which sold and bought, chap. 3. ver. 4. or thy Confederates, who by vertue of such Leagues have free Commerce with thee, and this most like to be the meaning.

Proverbially taken for a very great number,

This seems an abrupt speech, and may be thus made up, whatever thou thinkest of these, which thou both multiplyest, and magnifiest; I tell thee, O Nineveh! They are like the Canker worm, and Locu[illegible: 1 letter]t

wh[illegible: 1 letter]ch spoil where ever they come, and do the greater mischief where they are greater in number, for they come for spoil, while they get by thee, they continue with thee.

When no more is to be gotten, they take wing, and flee away, leaving waste, and stench behind them, so will these serve thee O Nineveh.

Marginal references: Or spreadeth [illegible: 1 word].

17 Thy crowned are as the locusts, and thy captains as the great grasshoppers, which camp in the hedges in the cold day , but when the sun ariseth they flee away , and their place is not known where they were.

Thy rich and wealthy Citizens, or thy Confederate Kings and Princes, or thy Tributary Princes.

Hired▪ or homeborn, rather the former, Commanders and Officers for numb[illegible: 1 letter]r, and briskness, are like Locusts and great Grasshoppers, but [illegible: 1 word] all for shew, nothing for help to thee;

As if they would guard the Grounds, about which they settle.

This lasts while the season suits them.

When Trouble, War▪ and Danger, like the parching Sun scalds them.

They shift from the hedge they eat up.

Thou shalt never know where to find them when thou needest, and they should help thee.

18 Thy shepherds slumber , O king of Assyria : thy nobles shall dwell in the dust : thy people is scattered upon the mountains , and no man gathereth them.

Subordinate Magistrates, Rulers, and Counsellors, or Officers set over the Kingdom.

Are remiss, or mistake, or are heartless or dead, they cannot, or will not mind the publick concerns,

His Name I meet not with, Asaradinus, or as the Scripture calls him Esarhaddon, may possibly be the Name and Man intended

The brave, valiant, and famous men.

Either be buried as dead, or ly on the dust as faint, and weary, or be trampled on as worthless and useless,

Thy Citizens, and Subjects in their great numbers.

Partly through fear, shame, and astonishment; partly by violence of the invading Enemy.

Where is neither safety nor provision against danger and want.

No one that will concern himself to preserve thy dispersed ones; so thou and they are left hopeless, and ruined, for the shepherds are some dead, and cannot, the rest slumber and will not, lay to heart their condition.

Marginal references: Or, valiant ones.

19 There is no healing of thy bruise : thy wound is grievous : all that hear the bruit of thee shall clap the hands over thee: for upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually .

In a word, thou Nineveh! must die, thy bruise he will not heal who gave it, and others cannot. God by the Chaldeans hath wounded thee, and thy friends cannot bind up the wound.

Shiver'd, and broken State.

Hath brought a weakness on thee, thou art sick with thy wound, and faintest, not able to bear a cure.

Of thy former carriage, and present calamities,

insulting and rejoycing over thee.

No Kingdom, State, City or Family almost round about thee; not one can be named.

Thy Sins, thy Idolatry, Luxury, &c. Thy Tyranny, Pride, Oppression and Cruelty; Thy illegal, unpresidented violence

without any bounds, and in most vehement and fierce manner,

either alwaies treading down, and trampling upon those whom thou hadst subdued, or else having conquered and spoiled one State, didst forthwith fall upon some other. Thus all suffered by thee, and all rejoyce at thy utter downfal; and as none have cause to befriend thee, so none will find hearts to pity thee, or hands to help thee, but every one is ready to wish, that all who are, as thou wer[illegible: 1 letter], Enemy to Mankind, and Justice, may, as thou, perish without help or pity.

Marginal references: Heb. wrinkling.

Nah 3:1

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 dâmı̄m, 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 מלאה. 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). לא ימישׁ, 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 ‛ı̄r (the city) were the subject, we should have tâmı̄sh.

Nah 3:2-4

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. כּבד, the heavy multitude. The chethib יכשׁלו is to be read יכּשׁלוּ (niphal), in the sense of stumbling, as in Nah 2:6. The keri וכשׁלוּ is unsuitable, as the sentence does not express any progress, but simply exhibits the infinite number of the corpses (Hitzig). גויּתם, 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 zenūnı̄m, 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” (keshâphı̄m), 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 טובת חן, 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 keshâphı̄m, devoted to witchcrafts, mistress of them. Keshâphı̄m (witchcrafts) connected with zenūnı̄m, 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). מכר, 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). בּזנוּניה, with (not for) their whoredoms. Mishpâchōth, families, synonymous with עמּים, are smaller peoples or tribes (cf. Jer 25:9; Eze 20:32).

Nah 3:5-7

The Lord will plunge Nineveh into shameful misery in consequence. Nah 3:5. “Behold, I come to thee, is the saying of Jehovah of hosts; and uncover thy skirts over thy face, and let nations see they nakedness, and kingdoms thy shame. Nah 3:6. And cast horrible things upon thee, and shame thee, and make thee a gazing-stock. Nah 3:7. And it comes to pass, every one who sees thee will flee before thee, and say, Is Nineveh laid waste? Who will bewail her? whence do I seek comforters for thee?” Nah 3:5. a as in Nah 2:13. The punishment of Nineveh will correspond to her conduct. Her coquetry shall be repaid to her by the uncovering of her nakedness before the nations (cf. Jer 13:26; Isa 47:3; Hos 2:5). Gillâh, to uncover. Shūlı̄m, fimbriae, the skirts, borders, or lower end of the long sweeping dress (cf. Exo 28:33-34; Isa 6:1). על פּניך, over thy countenance, so that the train when lifted up is drawn over the face. מער, a contraction of מערה, from ערה, signifies in 1Ki 7:36 an empty space, here nakedness or shame equivalent to ערוה. This thought is carried out still further in literal terms in Nah 3:6, Nah 3:7. Shiqqutsı̄m, objects of abhorrence, is used most frequently of idols; but here it is used in a more general sense for unclean or repulsive things, dirt and filth. Throwing dirt upon any one is a figurative expression for the most ignominious treatment or greatest contempt. Nibbēl, to treat contemptuously, not with words, as in Mic 7:6, but with deeds, equivalent to insult or abuse (cf. Jer 14:21). To make it כּראי, the object of sight, i.e., to give up to open shame, παραδειγματίζειν (Mat 1:19). ראי, a pausal form of ראי, the seeing, here the spectacle, like θέατρον in 1Co 4:9. This is evident from Nah 3:7, where ראיך contains a play upon ראי. Every one who looks at her will flee from her as an object of disgust. שׁדּדה, a rare form of the pual for שׁדּדה (for the fact, compare Jer 48:20). The last two clauses express the thought that no one will take pity upon the devastated city, because its fate is so well deserved; compare Isa 51:19, where the same words are used of Jerusalem. Nineveh will not be able to protect herself from destruction even by her great power. The prophet wrests this vain hope away from her by pointing in Isa 51:8. to the fall of the mighty Thebes in Egypt.

Nah 3:8-10

Nineveh will share the fate of No-Ammon. - Nah 3:8. “Art thou better than No-amon, that sat by rivers, waters round about her, whose bulwark was the sea, her wall of sea? Nah 3:9. Ethiopians and Egyptians were (her) strong men, there is no end; Phut and Libyans were for thy help. Nah 3:10. She also has gone to transportation, into captivity; her children were also dashed in pieces at the corners of all roads; upon her nobles they cast the lot, and all her great men were bound in chains.” התיטבי for התיטבי, for the sake of euphony, the imperfect kal of יטב, to be good, used to denote prosperity in Gen 12:13 and Gen 40:14, is applied here to the prosperous condition of the city, which was rendered strong both by its situation and its resources. נא אמון, i.e., probably “dwelling (נא contracted from נוא, cf. נאות) of Amon,” the sacred name of the celebrated city of Thebes in Upper Egypt, called in Egyptian P-amen, i.e., house of the god Amun, who had a celebrated temple there (Herod. i. 182, ii. 42; see Brugsch, Geogr. Inschr. i. p. 177). The Greeks called it Διὸς πόλις, generally with the predicate ἡ μεγάλη (Diod. Sic. i. 45), or from the profane name of the city, which was Apet according to Brugsch (possibly a throne, seat, or bank), and with the feminine article prefixed, Tapet, or Tape, or Tepe, Θήβη, generally used in the plural Θῆβαι. This strong royal city, which was described even by Homer (Il. ix. 383) as ἑκατόμπυλος, and in which the Pharaohs of the 18th to the 20th dynasties, from Amosis to the last Rameses, resided, and created those works of architecture which were admired by Greeks and Romans, and the remains of which still fill the visitor with astonishment, was situated on both banks of the river Nile, which was 1500 feet in breadth at that point, and was built upon a broad plain formed by the falling back of the Libyan and Arabian mountain wall, over which there are now scattered nine larger or smaller fellah-villages, including upon the eastern bank Karnak and Luxor, and upon the western Gurnah and Medinet Abu, with their plantations of date-palms, sugar-canes, corn, etc. היּשׁבה בּיארים, who sits there, i.e., dwells quietly and securely, on the streams of the Nile. The plural יארים refers to the Nile with its canals, which surrounded the city, as we may see from what follows: “water round about her.” אשׁר־חיל, not which is a fortress of the sea (Hitzig), but whose bulwark is sea. חיל (for חילהּ) does not mean the fortified place (Hitzig), but the fortification, bulwark, applied primarily to the moats of a fortification, with the wall belonging to it; then, in the broader sense, the defence of a city in distinction from the actual wall (cf. Isa 26:1; Lam 2:8). מיּם, consisting of sea is its wall, i.e., its wall is formed of sea. Great rivers are frequently called yâm, sea, in rhetorical and poetical diction: for example, the Euphrates in Isa 27:1; Jer 51:36; and the Nile in Isa 18:2; Isa 19:5; Job 41:23. The Nile is still called by the Beduins bahr, i.e., sea, and when it overflows it really resembles a sea.

To the natural strength of Thebes there was also added the strength of the warlike nations at her command. Cush, i.e., Ethiopians in the stricter sense, and Mitsraim, Egyptians, the two tribes descended from Ham, according to Gen 10:6, who formed the Egyptian kingdom before the fall of Thebes, and under the 25th (Ethiopian) dynasty. עצמה, as in Isa 40:29; Isa 47:9, for עצם, strength; it is written without any suffix, which may easily be supplied from the context. The corresponding words to עצמה in the parallel clause are ואין קצה (with Vav cop.): Egyptians, as for them there is no number; equivalent to an innumerable multitude. To these there were to be added the auxiliary tribes: Put, i.e., the Libyans in the broader sense, who had spread themselves out over the northern part of Africa as far as Mauritania (see at Gen 10:6); and Lubim = Lehâbhı̄m, the Libyans in the narrower sense, probably the Libyaegyptii of the ancients (see at Gen 10:13). בּעזרתך (cf. Psa 35:2) Nahum addresses No-amon itself, to give greater life to the description. Notwithstanding all this might, No-amon had to wander into captivity. Laggōlâh and basshebhı̄ are not tautological. Laggōlâh, for emigration, is strengthened by basshebhı̄ into captivity. The perfect הלכה is obviously not to be taken prophetically. The very antithesis of גּם־היא הלכה and גּם־אתּ תּשׁכּרי (Nah 3:11) shows to itself that הלכה refers to the past, as תּשׁכּרי does to the future; yea, the facts themselves require that Nahum should be understood as pointing to the fate which the powerful city of Thebes had already experienced. For it must be an event that has already occurred, and not something still in the future, which he holds up before Nineveh as a mirror of the fate that is awaiting it. The clauses which follow depict the cruelties that were generally associated with the taking of an enemy’s cities. For עלליה וגו roF .se, see Hos 14:1; Isa 13:16, and 2Ki 8:12; and for ידּוּ גורל, Joe 3:3 and Oba 1:11. Nikhbaddı̄m, nobiles; cf. Isa 23:8-9. Gedōlı̄m, magnates; cf. Jon 3:7. It must be borne in mind, however, that the words only refer to cruelties connected with the conquest and carrying away of the inhabitants, and not to the destruction of No-amon.

We have no express historical account of this occurrence; but there is hardly any doubt that, after the conquest of Ashdod, Sargon the king of Assyria organized an expedition against Egypt and Ethiopia, conquered No-amon, the residence of the Pharaohs at that time, and, as Isaiah prophesied (Isa 20:3-4), carried the prisoners of Egypt and Ethiopia into exile. According to the Assyrian researches and their most recent results (vid., Spiegel’s Nineveh and Assyria in Herzog’s Cyclopaedia), the king Sargon mentioned in Isa 20:1 is not the same person as Shalmaneser, as I assumed in my commentary on 2Ki 17:3, but his successor, and the predecessor of Sennacherib, who ascended the throne during the siege of Samaria, and conquered that city in the first year of his reign, leading 27,280 persons into captivity, and appointing a vicegerent over the country of the ten tribes. In Assyrian Sargon is called Sar Kin, i.e., essentially a king. He was the builder of the palace at Khorsabad, which is so rich in monuments; and, according to the inscriptions, he carried on wars in Susiana, Babylon, the borders of Egypt, Melitene, Southern Armenia, Kurdistan, and Media; and in all his expeditions he resorted to the removal of the people in great numbers, as one means of securing the lasting subjugation of the lands (see Spiegel, l.c. p. 224). In the great inscription in the palace-halls of Khorsabad, Sargon boasts immediately after the conquest of Samaria of a victorious conflict with Pharaoh Sebech at Raphia, in consequence of which the latter became tributary, and also of the dethroning of the rebellious king of Ashdod; and still further, that after another king of Ashdod, who had been chosen by the people, had fled to Egypt, he besieged Ashdod with all his army, and took it. Then follows a difficult and mutilated passage, in which Rawlinson (Five Great Monarchies, ii. 416) and Oppert (Les Sargonides, pp. 22, 26, 27) find an account of the complete subjugation of Sebech (see Delitzsch on Isaiah, at Isa 20:5-6). There is apparently a confirmation of this in the monuments recording the deeds of Esarhaddon’s successor, whose name is read Assur-bani-pal, according to which that king carried on tedious wars in Egypt against Tirhaka, who had conquered Memphis, Thebes, and sundry other Egyptian cities during the illness of Esarhaddon, and according to his own account, succeeded at length in completely overcoming him, and returned home with rich booty, having first of all taken hostages for future good behaviour (see Spiegel, p. 225). If these inscriptions have been read correctly, it follows from them that from the reign of Sargon the Assyrians made attempts to subjugate Egypt, and were partially successful, though they could not maintain their conquests. The struggle between Assyria and Egypt for supremacy in Hither Asia may also be inferred from the brief notices in the Old Testament (2Ki 17:4) concerning the help which the Israelitish king Hosea expected from So the king of Egypt, and also concerning the advance of Tirhaka against Sennacherib.From the modern researches concerning ancient Egypt, not the smallest light can be obtained as to any of these things. “The Egyptologists (as J. Bumüller observes, p. 245) have hitherto failed to fill up the gaps in the history of Egypt, and have been still less successful in restoring the chronology; for hitherto we have not met with a single well-established date, which we have obtained from a monumental inscription; nor have the monuments enabled us to assign to a single Pharaoh, from the 1st to the 21st, his proper place in the years or centuries of the historical chronology.”

Nah 3:11-13

The same, or rather a worse fate than No-amon suffered, is now awaiting Nineveh. Nah 3:11. “Thou also wilt be drunken, shalt be hidden; thou also wilt seek for a refuge from the enemy. Nah 3:12. All thy citadels are fig-trees with early figs; if they are shaken, they fall into the mouth of the eater. Nah 3:13. Behold thy people, women in the midst of thee; the gates of thy land are thrown quite open to thine enemies; fire consumes thy bolts.” גּם־אתּ corresponds to גּם־היא in Nah 3:10 : as she, so also thou. “The fate of No-amon is a prophecy of thine own” (Hitzig). תּשׁכּרי, thou wilt be drunken, viz., from the goblet of divine wrath, as at Oba 1:16. תּהי נעלמה might mean, “thou wilt be hiding thyself;” but although this might suit what follows, it does not agree with  תּשׁכּרי ,  since an intoxicated person is not in the habit of hiding himself. Moreover, נעלם always means “hidden,” occultus; so that Calvin’s interpretation is the correct one: “Thou wilt vanish away as if thou hadst never been; the Hebrews frequently using the expression being hidden for being reduced to nothing.” This is favoured by a comparison both with Nah 1:8 and Nah 2:12, and also with the parallel passage in Oba 1:16, “They will drink, and be as if they had not been.” This is carried out still further in what follows: “Thou wilt seek refuge from the enemy,” i.e., in this connection, seek it in vain, or without finding it; not, “Thou wilt surely demand salvation from the enemy by surrender” (Strauss), for מאויב does not belong to תּבקשׁי, but to מעוז (cf. Isa 25:4). All the fortifications of Nineveh are like fig-trees with early figs (עם in the sense of subordination, as in Sol 4:13), which fall into the mouth of the eater when the trees are shaken. The tertium compar. is the facility with which the castles will be taken and destroyed by the enemy assaulting them (cf. Isa 28:4). We must not extend the comparison so far, however, as to take the figs as representing cowardly warriors, as Hitzig does. Even in Nah 3:13, where the people are compared to women, the point of comparison is not the cowardliness of the warriors, but the weakness and inability to offer any successful resistance into which the nation of the Assyrians, which was at other times so warlike, would be reduced through the force of the divine judgment inflicted upon Nineveh (compare Isa 19:16; Jer 50:37; Jer 51:30). לאיביך belongs to what follows, and is placed first, and pointed with zakeph-katon for the sake of emphasis. The gates of the land are the approaches to it, the passes leading into it, which were no doubt provided with castles. Tuch (p. 35) refers to the mountains on the north, which Pliny calls impassable. The bolts of these gates are the castles, through which the approaches were closed. Jeremiah transfers to Babel what is here said of Nineveh (see Jer 51:30).

Nah 3:14-17

In conclusion, the prophet takes away from the city so heavily laden with guilt the last prop to its hope, - namely, reliance upon its fortifications, and the numerical strength of its population. - Nah 3:14. “Draw thyself water for the siege! Make thy castles strong! tread in the mire, and stamp in the clay! prepare the brick-kiln! Nah 3:15. There will the fire devour thee, the sword destroy thee, devour thee like the lickers. Be in great multitude like the lickers, be in great multitude like the locusts? Nah 3:16. Thou hast made thy merchants more than the star so heaven; the licker enters to plunder, and flies away. Nah 3:17. Thy levied ones are like the locusts, and thy men like an army of grasshoppers which encamp in the hedges in the day of frost; if the sun rises, they are off, and men know not their place: where are they?” Water of the siege is the drinking water necessary for a long-continued siege. Nineveh is to provide itself with this, because the siege will last a long while. It is also to improve the fortifications (chizzēq as in 2Ki 12:8, 2Ki 12:13). This is then depicted still more fully. Tı̄t and chōmer are used synonymously here, as in Isa 41:25. Tı̄t, lit., dirt, slime, then clay and potter’s clay (Isaiah l.c.). Chōmer, clay or mortar (Gen 11:3), also dirt of the streets (Isa 10:6, compared with Mic 7:10). החזיק, to make firm, or strong, applied to the restoration of buildings in Neh 5:16 and Eze 27:9, Eze 27:27; here to restore, or to put in order, the brick-kiln (malbēn, a denom. from lebhēnâh, a brick), for the purpose of burning bricks. The Assyrians built with bricks sometimes burnt, sometimes unburnt, and merely dried in the sun. Both kinds are met with on the Assyrian monuments (see Layard, vol. ii. p. 36ff.). This appeal, however, is simply a rhetorical turn for the thought that a severe and tedious siege is awaiting Nineveh. This siege will end in the destruction of the great and populous city. שׁם, there, sc. in these fortifications of thine, will fire consume thee; fire will destroy the city with its buildings, and the sword destroy the inhabitants. The destruction of Nineveh by fire is related by ancient writers (Herod. 1:106, 185; Diod. Sic. 2:25-28; Athen. xii. p. 529), and also confirmed by the ruins (cf. Str. ad h. l.). It devours thee like the locust. The subject is not fire or sword, either one or the other, but rather both embraced in one. כּיּלק, like the licker; yeleq, a poetical epithet applied to the locust (see at Joe 1:4), is the nominative, no the accusative, as Calvin, Grotius, Ewald, and Hitzig suppose. For the locusts are not devoured by the fire or the sword, but it is they who devour the vegetables and green of the fields, so that they are everywhere used as a symbol of devastation and destruction. It is true that in the following sentences the locusts are used figuratively for the Assyrians, or the inhabitants of Nineveh; but it is also by no means a rare thing for prophets to give a new turn and application to a figure or simile. The thought is this: fire and sword will devour Nineveh and its inhabitants like the all-consuming locusts, even though the city itself, with its mass of houses and people, should resemble an enormous swarm of locusts. התכּבּד may be either an inf. abs. used instead of the imperative, or the imperative itself. The latter seems the more simple; and the use of the masculine may be explained on the assumption that the prophet had the people floating before his mind, whereas in התכּבּדי he was thinking of the city. Hithkahbbēd, to show itself heavy by virtue of the large multitude; similar to כּבד in Nah 2:10 (cf. כּבד in Gen 13:2; Exo 8:20, etc.).

The comparison to a swarm of locusts is carried still further in Nah 3:16 and Nah 3:17, and that so that Nah 3:16 explains the תּאכלך כּיּלק in Nah 3:15. Nineveh has multiplied its traders or merchants, even more than the stars of heaven, i.e., to an innumerable multitude. The yeleq, i.e., the army of the enemy, bursts in and plunders. That Nineveh was a very rich commercial city may be inferred from its position, - namely, just at the point where, according to oriental notions, the east and west meet together, and where the Tigris becomes navigable, so that it was very easy to sail from thence into the Persian Gulf; just as afterwards Mosul, which was situated opposite, became great and powerful through its widely-extended trade (see Tuch, l.c. p. 31ff., and Strauss, in loc.).“The point,” says O. Strauss (Nineveh and the Word of God, Berl 1855, p. 19), “at which Nineveh was situated was certainly the culminating point of the three quarters of the globe - Europe, Asia, and Africa; and from the very earliest times it was just at the crossing of the Tigris by Nineveh that the great military and commercial roads met, which led into the heart of all the leading known lands.”

The meaning of this verse has been differently interpreted, according to the explanation given to the verb pâshat. Many, following the ὥρμησε and expansus est of the lxx and Jerome, give it the meaning, to spread out the wing; whilst Credner (on Joel, p. 295), Maurer, Ewald, and Hitzig take it in the sense of undressing one’s self, and understand it as relating to the shedding of the horny wing-sheaths of the young locusts. But neither the one nor the other of these explanations can be grammatically sustained. Pâshat never means anything else then to plunder, or to invade with plundering; not even in such passages as Hos 7:1; 1Ch 14:9 and 1Ch 14:13, which Gesenius and Dietrich quote in support of the meaning, to spread; and the meaning forced upon it by Credner, of the shedding of the wing-sheaths by locusts, is perfectly visionary, and has merely been invented by him for the purpose of establishing his false interpretation of the different names given to the locusts in Joe 1:4. In the passage before us we cannot understand by the yeleq, which “plunders and flies away” (pâshat vayyâ‛ōph), the innumerable multitude of the merchants of Nineveh, because they were not able to fly away in crowds out of the besieged city. Moreover, the flying away of the merchants would be quite contrary to the meaning of the whole description, which does not promise deliverance from danger by flight, but threatens destruction. The yeleq is rather the innumerable army of the enemy, which plunders everything, and hurries away with its booty. In Nah 3:17 the last two clauses of Nah 3:15 are explained, and the warriors of Nineveh compared to an army of locusts. There is some difficulty caused by the two words מנּזריך and טפסריך, the first of which only occurs here, and the second only once more, viz., in Jer 51:27, where we meet with it in the singular. That they both denote warlike companies appears to be tolerably certain; but the real meaning cannot be exactly determined. מנּזרים with dagesh dir., as for example in מקּדשׁ in Exo 15:17, is probably derived from nâzar, to separate, and not directly from nezer, a diadem, or nâzı̄r, the crowned person, from which the lexicons, following Kimchi’s example, have derived the meaning princes, or persons ornamented with crowns; whereas the true meaning is those levied, selected (for war), analogous to bâchūr, the picked or selected one, applied to the soldiery. The meaning princes or captains is at variance with the comparison to 'arbeh, the multitude of locusts, since the number of the commanders in an army, or of the war-staff, is always a comparatively small one. And the same objection may be offered to the rendering war-chiefs or captains, which has been given to taphsar, and which derives only an extremely weak support from the Neo-Persian tâwsr, although the word might be applied to a commander-in-chief in Jer 51:27, and does signify an angel in the Targum-Jonathan on Deu 28:12. The different derivations are all untenable (see Ges. Thes. p. 554); and the attempt of Böttcher (N. Krit. Aehrenl. ii. pp. 209-10) to trace it to the Aramaean verb טפס, obedivit, with the inflection ־ר for ־ן, in the sense of clientes, vassals, is precluded by the fact that ar does not occur as a syllable of inflection. The word is probably Assyrian, and a technical term for soldiers of a special kind, though hitherto it has not been explained. גּוב גּובי, locusts upon locusts, i.e., an innumerable swarm of locusts. On גּובי, see at Amo 7:1; and on the repetition of the same word to express the idea of the superlative, see the comm. on 2Ki 19:23 (and Ges. §108, 4). Yōm qârâh, day (or time) of cold, is either the night, which is generally very cold in the East, or the winter-time. To the latter explanation it may be objected, that locusts do not take refuge in walls or hedges during the winter; whilst the expression yōm, day, for night, may be pleaded against the former. We must therefore take the word as relating to certain cold days, on which the sky is covered with clouds, so that the sun cannot break through, and zârach as denoting not the rising of the sun, but its shining or breaking through. The wings of locusts become stiffened in the cold; but as soon as the warm rays of the sun break through the clouds, they recover their animation and fly away. Nōdad, (poal), has flown away, viz., the Assyrian army, which is compared to a swarm of locusts, so that its place is known no more (cf. Psa 103:16), i.e., has perished without leaving a trace behind. איּם contracted from איּה הם. These words depict in the most striking manner the complete annihilation of the army on which Nineveh relied.

Nah 3:18-19

Such an end will come to the Assyrian kingdom on the overthrow of Nineveh. Nah 3:18. “The shepherds have fallen asleep, king Asshur: thy glorious ones are lying there: thy people have scattered themselves upon the mountains, and no one gathers them. Nah 3:19. No alleviation to thy fracture, thy stroke is grievous: all who hear tidings of thee clap the hand over thee: for over whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually?” The king of Asshur addressed in Nah 3:18 is not the last historical king of that kingdom, but a rhetorical personification of the holder of the imperial power of Assyria. His shepherds and glorious ones ('addı̄rı̄m, as in Nah 2:6) are the princes and great men, upon whom the government and defence of the kingdom devolved, the royal counsellors, deputies, and generals. Mâmū, from nūm, to slumber, to sleep, is not a figurative expression for carelessness and inactivity here; for the thought that the people would be scattered, and the kingdom perish, through the carelessness of the rulers (Hitzig), neither suits the context, where the destruction of the army and the laying of the capital in ashes are predicted, nor the object of the whole prophecy, which does not threaten the fall of the kingdom through the carelessness of its rulers, but the destruction of the kingdom by a hostile army. Nūm denotes here, as in Psa 76:6, the sleep of death (cf. Psa 13:4; Jer 51:39, Jer 51:57 : Theodoret, Hesselb., Str., and others). Shâkhan, a synonym of shâkhabh, to have lain down, to lie quietly (Jdg 5:17), used here of the rest of death. As the shepherds have fallen asleep, the flock (i.e., the Assyrian people) is scattered upon the mountains and perishes, because no one gathers it together. Being scattered upon the mountains, is easily explained from the figure of the flock (cf. Num 27:17; 1Ki 22:17; Zec 13:7), and implies destruction. The mountains are mentioned with evident reference to the fact that Nineveh is shut in towards the north by impassable mountains. Kēhâh, a noun formed from the adjective, the extinction of the wound (cf. Lev 13:6), i.e., the softening or anointing of it. Shebher, the fracture of a limb, is frequently applied to the collapse or destruction of a state or kingdom (e.g., Psa 60:4; Lam 2:11). נחלה מכּתך, i.e., dangerously bad, incurable is the stroke which has fallen upon thee (cf. Jer 10:19; Jer 14:17; Jer 30:12). Over thy destruction will all rejoice who hear thereof. שׁמעך, the tidings of thee, i.e., of that which has befallen thee. Clapping the hands is a gesture expressive of joy (cf. Psa 47:2; Isa 55:12). All: because they all had to suffer from the malice of Asshur. רעה, malice, is the tyranny and cruelty which Assyria displayed towards the subjugated lands and nations.

Thus was Nineveh to perish. If we inquire now how the prophecy was fulfilled, the view already expressed by Josephus (Ant. x. 2), that the fall of the Assyrian empire commenced with the overthrow of Sennacherib in Judah, is not confirmed by the results of the more recent examinations of the Assyrian monuments. For according to the inscriptions, so far as they have been correctly deciphered, Sennacherib carried out several more campaigns in Susiana and Babylonia after that disaster, whilst ancient writers also speak of an expedition of his to Cilicia. His successor, Esarhaddon, also carried on wars against the cities of Phoenicia, against Armenia and Cilicia, attacked the Edomites, and transported some of them to Assyria, and is said to have brought a small and otherwise unknown people, the Bikni, into subjection; whilst we also know from the Old Testament (2Ch 33:11) that his generals led king Manasseh in chains to Babylon. Like many of his predecessors, he built himself a palace at Kalah or Nimrud; but before the internal decorations were completely finished, it was destroyed by so fierce a fire, that the few monuments preserved have suffered very considerably. His successor is the last king of whom we have any inscriptions, with his name still legible upon them (viz., Assur-bani-pal). He carried on wars not only in Susiana, but also in Egypt, viz., against Tirhaka, who had conquered Memphis, Thebes, and other Egyptian cities, during the illness of Esarhaddon; also on the coast of Syria, and in Cilicia and Arabia; and completed different buildings which bear his name, including a palace in Kouyunjik, in which a room has been found with a library in it, consisting of clay tablets. Assur-bani-pal had a son, whose name was written Asur-emid-ilin, and who is regarded as the Sarakos of the ancients, under whom the Assyrian empire perished, with the conquest and destruction of Nineveh (see Spiegel in Herzog’s Cycl.). But if, according to these testimonies, the might of the Assyrian empire was not so weakened by Sennacherib’s overthrow in Judah, that any hope could be drawn from that, according to human conjecture, of the speedy destruction of that empire; the prophecy of Nahum concerning Nineveh, which was uttered in consequence of that catastrophe, cannot be taken as the production of any human combination: still less can it be taken, as Ewald supposes, as referring to “the first important siege of Nineveh, under the Median king Phraortes (Herod. i. 102).” For Herodotus says nothing about any siege of Nineveh, but simply speaks of a war between Phraortes and the Assyrians, in which the former lost his life. Nineveh was not really besieged till the time of Cyaxares (Uwakhshatra), who carried on the war with an increased army, to avenge the death of his father, and forced his way to Nineveh, to destroy that city, but was compelled, by the invasion of his own land by the Scythians, to relinquish the siege, and hasten to meet that foe (Her. i. 103). On the extension of his sway, the same Cyaxares commenced a war with the Lydian king Alyattes, which was carried on for five years with alternating success and failure on both sides, and was terminated in the sixth year by the fact, that when the two armies were standing opposite to one another, drawn up in battle array, the day suddenly darkened into night, which alarmed the armies, and rendered the kings disposed for peace. This was brought about by the mediation of the Cilician viceroy Syennesis and the Babylonian viceroy Labynetus, and sealed by the establishment of a marriage relationship between the royal families of Lydia and Media (Her. i. 74). And if this Labynetus was the same person as the Babylonian king Nabopolassar, which there is no reason to doubt, it was not till after the conclusion of this peace that Cyaxares formed an alliance with Nabopolassar to make war upon Nineveh; and this alliance was strengthened by his giving his daughter Amuhea in marriage to Nabopolassar’s son Nebuchadnezzar (Nabukudrossor). The combined forces of these two kings now advanced to the attack upon Nineveh, and conquered it, after a siege of three years, the Assyrian king Saracus burning himself in his palace as the besiegers were entering the city. This is the historical kernel of the capture and destruction of Nineveh, which may be taken as undoubted fact from the accounts of Herodotus (i. 106) and Diod. Sic. (ii. 24-28), as compared with the extract from Abydenus in Euseb. Chron. Armen. i. p. 54; whereas it is impossible to separate the historical portions from the legendary and in part mythical decorations contained in the elaborate account given by Diodorus (vid., M. v. Niebuhr, Geschichte Assurs, p. 200ff.; Duncker, Geschichte des Alterthums. i. p. 793ff.; and Bumüller, Gesch. d. Alterth. i. p. 316ff.).

The year of the conquest and destruction of Nineveh has been greatly disputed, and cannot be exactly determined. As it is certain that Nabopolassar took part in the war against Nineveh, and this is indirectly intimated even by Herodotus, who attributes the conquest of it to Cyaxares and the Medes (vid., i. 106), Nineveh must have fallen between the years 625 and 606 b.c. For according to the canon of Ptolemy, Nabopolassar was king of Babylon from 625 to 606; and this date is astronomically established by an eclipse of the moon, which took place in the fifth year of his reign, and which actually occurred in the year 621 b.c. (vid., Niebuhr, p. 47). Attempts have been made to determine the year of the taking of Nineveh, partly with reference to the termination of the Lydio-Median war, and partly from the account given by Herodotus of the twenty-eight years’ duration of the Scythian rule in Asia. Starting from the fact, that the eclipse of the sun, which put an end to the war between Cyaxares and Alyattes, took place, according to the calculation of Altmann, on the 30th September b.c. 610 (see Ideler, Handbuch der Chronologie, i. p. 209ff.), M. v. Niebuhr (pp. 197-8) has assumed that, at the same time as the mediation of peace between the Lydians and Medes, an alliance was formed between Cyaxares and Nabopolassar for the destruction of Nineveh; and as this treaty could not possibly be kept secret, the war against Assyria was commenced at once, according to agreement, with their united forces. But as it was impossible to carry out extensive operations in winter, the siege of Nineveh may not have commenced till the spring of 609; and as it lasted three years according to Ctesias, the capture may not have been effected before the spring of 606 b.c. It is true that this combination is apparently confirmed by the fact, that during that time the Egyptian king Necho forced his way into Palestine and Syria, and after subduing all Syria, advanced to the Euphrates; since this advance of the Egyptian is most easily explained on the supposition that Nabopolassar was so occupied with the war against Nineveh, that he could not offer any resistance to the enterprise of Necho. And the statement in 2Ki 23:29, that Necho had come up to fight against the king of Asshur on the Euphrates, appears to favour the conclusion, that at that time (i.e., in the year of Josiah’s death, 610 b.c.) the Assyrian empire was not yet destroyed. Nevertheless there are serious objections to this combination. In the first place, there is the double difficulty, that Cyaxares would hardly have been in condition to undertake the war against Nineveh in alliance with Nabopolassar, directly after the conclusion of peace with Alyattes, especially after he had carried on a war for five years, without being able to defeat his enemy; and secondly, that even Nabopolassar, after a fierce three years’ conflict with Nineveh, the conquest of which was only effected in consequence of the wall of the city having been thrown down for the length of twenty stadia, would hardly possess the power to take the field at once against Pharoah Necho, who had advanced as far as the Euphrates, and not only defeat him at Carchemish, but pursue him to the frontier of Egypt, and wrest from him all the conquests that he had effected, as would necessarily be the case, since the battle at Carchemish was fought in the year 606; and the pursuit of the defeated foe by Nebuchadnezzar, to whom his father had transferred the command of the army because of his own age an infirmity, even to the very border of Egypt, is so distinctly attested by the biblical accounts (2Ki 24:1 and 2Ki 24:7; Jer 46:2), and by the testimony of Berosus in Josephus (Ant. x. 11, 1, and c. Ap. i. 19), that these occurrences are placed beyond the reach of doubt (see comm. on 2Ki 24:1). These difficulties would not indeed be sufficient in themselves to overthrow the combination mentioned, provided that the year 610 could be fixed upon with certainty as the time when the Lydio-Median war was brought to a close. But that is not the case; and this circumstance is decisive. The eclipse of the sun, which alarmed Cyaxares and Alyattes, and made them disposed for peace, must have been total, or nearly total, in Central Asia and Cappadocia, to produce the effect described. But it has been proved by exact astronomical calculations, that on the 30th September 610 b.c., the shadow of the moon did not fall upon those portions of Asia Minor, whereas it did so on the 18th May 622, after eight o'clock in the morning, and on the 28th May 585 (vid., Bumüll. p. 315, and M. v. Niebuhr, pp. 48, 49). Of these two dates the latter cannot come into consideration at all, because Cyaxares only reigned till the year 594; and therefore, provided that peace had not been concluded with Alyattes before 595, he would not have been able to carry on the war with Nineveh and conquer that city. On the other hand, there is no valid objection that can be offered to our transferring the conclusion of peace with the Lydian king to the year 622 b.c. Since, for example, Cyaxares became king as early as the year 634, he might commence the war with the Lydians as early as the year 627 or 628; and inasmuch as Nabopolassar was king of Babylon from 625 to 605, he might very well help to bring about the peace between Cyaxares and Alyattes in the year 622. In this way we obtain the whole space between 622 and 605 b.c. for the war with Nineveh; so that the city may have been taken and destroyed as early as the years 615-610.

Even the twenty-eight years’ duration of the Scythian supremacy in Asia, which is recorded by Herodotus (i. 104, 106, cf. iv. 1), cannot be adduced as a well-founded objection. For if the Scythians invaded Media in the year 633, so as to compel Cyaxares to relinquish the siege of Nineveh, and if their rule in Upper Asia lasted for twenty-eight years, the expedition against Nineveh, which led to the fall of that city, cannot have taken place after the expulsion of the Scythians in the year 605, because the Assyrian empire had passed into the hands of the Chaldaeans before that time, and Nebuchadnezzar had already defeated Necho on the Euphrates, and was standing at the frontier of Egypt, when he received the intelligence of his father’s death, which led him to return with all speed to Babylon. There is no other alternative left, therefore, than either to assume, as M. v. Niebuhr does (pp. 119, 120), that the war of Cyaxares with the Lydians, and also the last war against Nineveh, and probably also the capture of Nineveh, and the greatest portion of the Median conquests between Ararat and Halys, fell within the period of the Scythian sway, so that Cyaxares extended his power as a vassal of the Scythian Great Khan as soon as he had recovered from the first blow received from these wild hordes, inasmuch as that sovereign allowed his dependent to do just as he liked, provided that he paid the tribute, and did not disturb the hordes in their pasture grounds; or else to suppose that Cyaxares drove out the Scythian hordes from Media at a much earlier period, and liberated his own country from their sway; in which case the twenty-eight years of Herodotus would not indicate the period of their sway over Media and Upper Asia, but simply the length of time that they remained in Hither Asia generally, or the period that intervened between their first invasion and the complete disappearance of their hordes. If Cyaxares had driven the Scythians out of his own land at a much earlier period, he might extend his dominion even while they still kept their position in Hither Asia, and might commence the war with the Lydians as early as the year 628 or 627, especially as his wrath is said to have been kindled because Alyattes refused to deliver up to him a Scythian horde, which had first of all submitted to Cyaxares, and then fled into Lydia to Alyattes (Herod. i. 73). Now, whichever of these two combinations be the correct one, they both show that the period of the war commenced by Cyaxares against Nineveh, in alliance with Nabopolassar, cannot be determined by the statement made by Herodotus with regard to the twenty-eight years of the Scythian rule in Asia; and this Scythian rule, generally, does not compel us to place the taking and destruction of Nineveh, and the dissolution of the Assyrian empire, as late as the year 605 b.c., or even later.

At this conquest Nineveh was so utterly destroyed, that, as Strabo (xvi. 1, §3) attests, the city entirely disappeared immediately after the dissolution of the Assyrian kingdom (ἡ μὲν οὖν Νῖνος πόλις ἠφανίσθη παραχρῆμα μετὰ τὴν τῶν Σύρων κατάλυσιν). When Xenophon entered the plain of Nineveh, in the year 401, on the retreat of the ten thousand Greeks, he found the ruins of two large cities, which he calls Larissa and Mespila, and by the side of the first a stone pyramid of 200 feet in height and 100 feet in breadth, upon which many of the inhabitants of the nearest villages had taken refuge, and heard from the inhabitants that it was only by a miracle that it had been possible for the Persians to conquer those cities with their strong walls (Xenoph. Anab. iii. 4, 7ff.). These ruined cities had been portions of the ancient Nineveh: Larissa was Calah; and Mespila, Kouyunjik. Thus Xenophon passed by the walls of Nineveh without even learning its name. Four hundred years after (according to Tacitus, Annal. xii. 13), a small fortress stood on this very spot, to guard the crossing of the Tigris; and the same fortress is mentioned by Abul-Pharaj in the thirteenth century (Hist. Dynast. pp. 266, 289, 353). Opposite to this, on the western side of the Tigris, Mosul had risen into one of the first cities of Asia, and the ruins of Nineveh served as quarries for the building of the new city, so that nothing remained but heaps of rubbish, which even Niebuhr took to be natural heights in the year 1766, when he was told, as he stood by the Tigris bridge, that he was in the neighbourhood of ancient Nineveh. So completely had this mighty city vanished from the face of the earth; until, in the most recent times, viz., from 1842 onwards, Botta the French consul, and the two Englishmen Layard and Rawlinson, instituted excavations in the heaps, and brought to light numerous remains of the palaces and state-buildings of the Assyrian rulers of the world. Compare the general survey of these researches, and their results, in Herm. J. C. Weissenborn’s Ninive u. sein Gebiet., Erfurt 1851, and 56, 4.

But if Nahum’s prophecy was thus fulfilled in the destruction of Nineveh, even to the disappearance of every trace of its existence, we must not restrict it to this one historical event, but must bear in mind that, as the prophet simply saw in Nineveh the representative for the time of the power of the world in its hostility to God, so the destruction predicted to Nineveh applied to all the kingdoms of the world which have risen up against God since the destruction of Asshur, and which will still continue to do so to the end of the world.

The Judgment of Nineveh. (b. c. 710.)

1 Woe to the bloody city! it is all full of lies and robbery; the prey departeth not; 2 The noise of a whip, and the noise of the rattling of the wheels, and of the pransing horses, and of the jumping chariots. 3 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: 4 Because of the multitude of the whoredoms of the well-favoured harlot, the mistress of witchcrafts, that selleth nations through her whoredoms, and families through her witchcrafts. 5 Behold, 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. 6 And I will cast abominable filth upon thee, and make thee vile, and will set thee as a gazing-stock. 7 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? whence shall I seek comforters for thee?

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, v. 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. xxiii. 15, 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! v. 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, v. 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 (v. 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.

2. Nineveh had with her whoredoms and witchcrafts drawn others to shameful wickedness, and therefore God will load her with shame and contempt (v. 5-7): The Lord of hosts is against her, and then she shall be exposed to the highest degree of disgrace and ignominy, shall not only lose all her charms, but shall be made to appear very odious. When it shall be seen that while she courted her neighbours it was with design to ruin their liberty and property, when all her wicked artifices shall be brought to light, then her shame is discovered to the nations. When her proud pretensions are baffled, and her vain towering hopes of an absolute and universal dominion brought to nought, and she appears not to have been so strong and considerable as she would have been thought to be, then to see the nakedness of the land do they come, and it appears ridiculous. Then do they cast abominable filth upon her, as upon a carted strumpet, and make her vile as the offscouring of all things; that great city, which all nations had made court to and coveted an alliance with, has become a gazing-stock, a laughing stock. Those that formerly looked upon her, and fled to her, in hopes of protection from her, now look upon her and flee from her, for fear of being ruined with her. Note, Those that abuse their honour and interest will justly be disgraced and abandoned, and, because miserable, will be made contemptible, and thereby be made more miserable. When Nineveh is laid waste who will bemoan her? Her trouble will be so great, and her sense of it so deep, as not to admit relief from sympathy, or any comforting considerations; or, if it would, none shall do any such good office: When shall I seek comforters for thee? Note, Those that showed no pity in the day of their power can expect to find no pity in the day of their fall. When those about Nineveh, that had been deceived by her wiles, come to be undeceived in her ruin, every one shall insult over her, and none bemoan her. This was Nineveh's fate, when she was made a spectacle, or gazing-stock. Note, The greater men's show was in the day of their abused prosperity the greater will their shame be in the day of their deserved destruction. I will make thee an example; so Drusus reads it. Note, When proud sinners are humbled and brought down it is designed that others should take example by them not to lift up themselves in security and insolence when they prosper in the world.

The Judgment of Nineveh. (b. c. 710.)

8 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? 9 Ethiopia and Egypt were her strength, and it was infinite; Put and Lubim were thy helpers. 10 Yet was she carried away, she went into captivity: her young children also were dashed in pieces at the top of all the streets: and they cast lots for her honourable men, and all her great men were bound in chains. 11 Thou also shalt be drunken: thou shalt be hid, thou also shalt seek strength because of the enemy. 12 All thy strong holds shall be like fig trees with the first-ripe figs: if they be shaken, they shall even fall into the mouth of the eater. 13 Behold, thy people in the midst of thee are women: the gates of thy land shall be set wide open unto thine enemies: the fire shall devour thy bars. 14 Draw thee waters for the siege, fortify thy strong holds: go into clay, and tread the mortar, make strong the brick-kiln. 15 There shall the fire devour thee; the sword shall cut thee off, it shall eat thee up like the cankerworm: make thyself many as the cankerworm, make thyself many as the locusts. 16 Thou hast multiplied thy merchants above the stars of heaven: the cankerworm spoileth, and flieth away. 17 Thy crowned are as the locusts, and thy captains as the great grasshoppers, which camp in the hedges in the cold day, but when the sun ariseth they flee away, and their place is not known where they are. 18 Thy shepherds slumber, O king of Assyria: thy nobles shall dwell in the dust: thy people is scattered upon the mountains, and no man gathereth them. 19 There is no healing of thy bruise; thy wound is grievous: all that hear the bruit of thee shall clap the hands over thee: for upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually?

Nineveh has been told that God is against her, and then none can be for her, to stand her in any stead; yet she sets God himself at defiance, and his power and justice, and says, I shall have peace. Threatened folks live long; therefore here the prophet largely shows how vain her confidences would prove and insufficient to ward off the judgment of God. To convince them of this,

I. He shows them that other places, which had been as strong and as secure as they, could not keep their ground against the judgments of God. Nineveh shall fall unpitied and uncomforted (for miserable comforters will those prove who speak peace to those on whom God will fasten trouble), and she shall not be able to help herself: Art thou better than populous No? v. 8. He takes them off from their vain confidences by quoting precedents. The city mentioned is No, a great city in the land of Egypt (Jer. xlvi. 25), No-Ammon, so some read it both there and here. We read of it, Ezek. xxx. 14-16. Some think it was Diospolis, others Alexandria. As God said to Jerusalem, Go, see what I did to Shiloh (Jer. vii. 12), so to Nineveh that great city, Go, see what I did to populous No. Note, It will help to keep us in a holy fear of the judgments of God to consider that we are not better than those that have fallen under those judgments before us. We deserve them as much, and are as little able to grapple with them. This also should help to reconcile us to afflictions. Are we better than such and such, who were in like manner exercised? Nay, were not they better than we, and less likely to be afflicted? Now, concerning No, observe, 1. How firm her standing seemed to be, v. 8. She was fortified both by nature and art, was situate among the rivers. Nile, in several branches, not only watered her fields, but guarded her wall. Her rampart was the sea, the lake of Mareotis, an Egyptian sea, like the sea of Tiberias. Her wall was from the sea; it was fenced with a wall which was thought to make the place impregnable. It was also supported by its interests and alliances abroad, v. 9. Ethiopia, or Arabia, was her strength, either by the wealth brought to her in a way of trade or by the auxiliary forces furnished for military service. The whole country of Egypt also contributed to the strength of this populous city; so that it was infinite, and there was no end of it (so it might be rendered); She set no bounds to her ambition and knew no end of her wealth and strength; people flocked to her endlessly, and she thought there never would be any end of it; but it is God's prerogative to be infinite. Put and Lubim were thy helpers, two neighbouring countries of Africa, Mauritania and Libya, that is, Libya Cyrenica, a country that Egypt had much dependence upon. No, thus helped, seemed to sit as a queen, and was not likely to see any sorrow. But, 2. See how fatal her fall proved to be (v. 10): Yet was she carried away, and her strength failed her; even she that was so strong, so secure, yet went into captivity. This refers to some destruction of that city which was then well-known, and probably fresh in memory, though not recorded in history; for the destruction of it by Nebuchadnezzar (if we should understand this prophetically) could not be made an example to Nineveh; for the reducing of Nineveh was one of the first of his victories and that of Egypt one of the last. The strength and grandeur of that great city could not be its protection from military execution. (1.) Not from that which was most barbarous; for her young children had no compassion shown them, but were dashed in pieces at the top of all the streets by the merciless conquerors. (2.) Not from that which was most inglorious and disgraceful: They cast lots for her honourable men that were made prisoners of war, who should have them for their slaves. So many had they of them that they knew not what to do with them, but they made sport with throwing dice for them; all her great men, that used to be adorned on state-days with chains of gold, were now bound in chains of iron; they were pinioned or handcuffed (so the word properly signifies), not only as slaves, but as condemned malefactors. What a mortification was this to populous No, to have her honourable men and great men, that were her pride and confidence, thus abused! Now hence he infers against Nineveh (v. 11), "Thou also shalt be intoxicated, infatuated; thou also shalt reel and stagger, as drunk with the cup of the Lord's fury, that shall be put into thy hand" (see Jer. xxv. 17, 27); "Thou shalt fall and rise no more. The cup shall go round, and come to thy turn, O Nineveh! to drink off at last, and shall be to thee as the waters of jealousy."

II. He shows them that all those things which they reposed a confidence in should fail them. 1. Did the men of Nineveh trust to their own magnanimity and bravery? Their hearts should sink and fail them. They shall be hid, shall abscond for shame, being in disgrace, abscond for fear, being in distress and danger, and not able to face the enemies, because of whose strength and terror, having no strength of their own, they shall seek strength, shall come sneaking to their neighbours to beg their assistance in a time of need. Thus God can cut off the spirit of princes, and take away their heart. 2. Did they depend upon their barrier, the garrisons and strongholds they had, which were regularly fortified and bravely manned? Those shall prove but paper-walls, and like the first-ripe figs, which, if you give the tree but a little shake, will fall into the mouth of the eater that gapes for them; so easily will all their strongholds be made to surrender to the advancing enemy, upon the first summons, v. 12. Note, Strongholds, even the strongest, are no fence against the judgments of God, when they come with commission. The rich man's wealth is his strong city, and a high wall, but only in his own conceit, Prov. xviii. 10. They are supposed to make their strongholds as strong as possible, and are challenged to do their utmost to make them tenable, and serviceable to them against the invader (v. 14): Draw thee water for the siege; lay in great quantities of water, that that which is so necessary to the support of human life may not be wanting; it is put here for all manner of provision, with which Nineveh is ironically told to furnish herself, in expectation of a siege. "Take ever so much care that thou mayest not be starved out, and forced by famine to surrender, yet that shall not avail. Fortify the strongholds, by adding out-works to them, or putting men and arms into them," as with us by planting cannon upon them. "Go into clay, and tread the mortar, and make strong the brick-kiln; take all the pains thou canst in erecting new fortifications; but it shall be all in vain, for (v. 15) there shall even the fire devour thee if it be taken by storm." It is by fire and sword that in time of war the great devastations are made. 3. Did they put confidence in the multitude of their inhabitants? Were they, from their number and valour, reckoned their strongest walls and fortifications? Alas! these shall stand them in no stead; they shall but sink the sooner under the weight of their own numbers (v. 13): Thy people in the midst of thee are women; they have no wisdom, no courage; they shall be fickle, feeble, and faint-hearted, as women commonly are in such times of danger and distress; they shall be at their wits' end, adding to their griefs and fears by the power of their own imagination, and utterly unable to do any thing for themselves; the valiant men shall become cowards. O verè Phrygiæ, neque enim Phryges—Phrygian dames, not Phrygian men. Though they make themselves many (v. 15), as the canker-worm and as the locust, that come in vast swarms, though thou hast multiplied thy merchants above the stars of heaven, though thy exchange be thronged with wealthy traders, who, having so much money to stand up in defence of and so much to lay out in the means of their defence, should, one would think, give the enemy a warm reception, yet their hearts shall fail them too; though they be numerous as caterpillars, yet the fire and sword shall eat them up easily and irresistibly as the canker-worm, v. 15. They are as numerous as those wasting insects, but their enemies shall be mischievous like them. He adds (v. 16), The canker-worm spoils, or spreads herself, and flies away. Both the merchants and the enemies were compared to canker-worms. The enemies shall spoil Nineveh, and carry away the spoil, without opposition, or any hope of recovering it. Or the rich merchants, who have come from abroad to settle in Nineveh, and have raised vast estates there, out of which it was hoped they would contribute largely for the defence of the city, when they see the country invaded and the city likely to be besieged, will send away their effects, and remove to some other place, will spread their wings and fly away where they may be safe, and Nineveh shall be never the better for them. Note, It is rare to find even those that have shared with us in our joys willing to share with us in our griefs too. The canker-worms will continue upon the field while there is any thing to be had, but they are gone when all is gone. Those that men have got by they do not care to lose by. Nineveh's merchants bid her farewell in her distress. Riches themselves are as the canker-worms, which on a sudden fly away as the eagle towards heaven, Prov. xxiii. 5. 4. Did they put a confidence in the strength of their gates and bars? What fence will those be against the force of the judgments of God? v. 13. The gates of thy land shall be set wide open unto thy enemies, the gates of thy rivers (ch. ii. 6), the flood-gates, or the passes and avenues, by which the enemy would make his entrance into the country, or the gates of the cities; these, though ever so strong and well-guarded, shall not answer their end: The fire shall devour thy bars, the bars of thy gates, and then they shall fly open. 5. Did they put a confidence in their king and princes? They should do them no service (v. 17): Thy crowned heads are as the locusts; those that had pomp and power, as crowned heads, were enfeebled, and had no power to make resistance, when the enemy came in like a flood. "Thy captains, that should lead thy forces into the field, are great indeed, and look great, but they are as the great grasshoppers, the maximum quod sic—the largest specimens of that species; still they are but grasshoppers, worthless things, that can do no service. They encamp in the hedges, in the cold day, the cold weather, but, when the sun arises, they flee away, and are gone, nobody knows whither. So these mercenary soldiers that lay slumbering about Nineveh, when any trouble arises, flee away, and shift for their own safety. The hireling flees, because he is a hireling." The king of Assyria is told, and it is a shame he needs to be told it (who might observe it himself), that his shepherds slumber; they have no life or spirit to appear for the flock, and are very remiss in the discharge of the duty of their place and the trust reposed in them: Thy nobles shall dwell in the dust, and be buried in silence. 6. Did they hope that they should yet recover themselves and rally again? In this also they should be disappointed; for, when the shepherds are smitten, the sheep are scattered; the people are dispersed upon the mountains and no man gathers them, nor will they ever come together of themselves, but will wander endlessly, as scattered sheep do. The judgment they are under is as a wound, and it is incurable; there is no relief for it, "no healing of thy bruise, no possibility that the wound, which is so grievous and painful to thee, should be so much as skinned over; thy case is desperate (v. 19) and thy neighbours, instead of lending a hand to help thee, shall clap their hands over thee, and triumph in thy fall; and the reason is, because thou hast been one way or other injurious to them all: Upon whom has not thy wickedness passed continually? Thou hast been always doing mischief to those about thee; there is none of them but what thou hast abused and insulted; and therefore they shall be so far from pitying thee that they shall be glad to see thee reckoned with." Note, Those that have been abusive to their neighbours will, one time or another, find it come home to them; they are but preparing enemies to themselves against their day comes to fall: and those that dare not lay hands on them themselves will clap their hands over them, and upbraid them with their former wickedness, for which they are now well enough served and paid in their own coin. The troublers shall be troubled will be the burden of many, as it is here the burden of Nineveh.

CHAP. III.

Verſe 1. WOe to the bloody city] Nineveh, that delighteth in warre, which One well calleth, [non-Latin text not transcribed]. the ſlaughter-houſe of mankinde, and Hell of this preſent world, Eſay 95. the Greek word [non-Latin text not transcribed], warre, ſignifieth muſh blood. Beſides that, many murthers were committed in her, and connived at, if not countenanced by a pretence of juſtice. Such a ſanguinary city is Rome: not onely drunk with the blood of ſaints,Jacob. Rev de vita Pontif. pag. 119. but alſo of her own children. Brazutus, ſet on by Hildebrand, was the death of ſix Popes ſucceſſively, within the ſpace of thirteen yeers. Pope John the 22. (who ſat Anno Dom. 1316.) flead a Biſhop, who had ſome way offended him,Ibid. 270. Spec. Europ. and afterwards burned him. Pope Paul the third, poyſoned two Cardinalls, Fulgoſus, and Contarenus, a Biſhop alſo, and Johannes Baptiſta Vergerius, becauſe he ſuſpected them of Lutheraniſme. The Italians generally, as they blaſpheme oftener then ſwear. ſo they murther more then revile or ſlander. Such another citie of bloods is Paris in France: witneſſe that barbarous Maſſacre, wherein they poyſoned the Qeen of Navarre, murthered the moſt part of the peerleſſe Nobility of France, with their wives and children, with a gre[illegible: 1 letter] [illegible: 1 word] of the common people, an hundred thouſand in one year, in divers parts of [illegible: 2 letters] Realm. Beſides 6000. Gentlemen, ſlain there in private quarrels, within the ſpace of ten years, as it appears by the kings pardons. Now if the blood of one Abel had ſo many tongues as drops, Gen. 4.8. the voice of they brothers bloods crieth unto me, what ſhall we think will be the woe of ſuch bloody Cities and States? Luther rendreth this Text.Aug. in Pſal. & Libera me de ſanguin. Woe to the murtherous State. Auſtin interpreteth it of all hainous offences, wherewith Nineveh was polluted. But ſurely if other ſinnes have a woe hanging at their heels, according to that of Job, chap. 10.15. If I be wicked, woe unto me; bloody men ſhall have a woe with a witneſſe, as thoſe that walk in the way of Cain, Jude 11. See Ezech. 24.6. Hab. 3.12. and remember that it was the ruin of that great city Nineveh.

It is all full of lies] [non-Latin text not transcribed] ſo the Seventy render it, Ʋniverſa, mendacium. ſhe is wholly made up of fraud and falſhood, mendacio[illegible: 1 letter]um loquaciſſima; no truth in her private contracts, no truſt in her publike tranſactions, and capitulations with other nations; be they never ſo ſtrongly concluded, or never ſo ſolemnly confirmed, yet had they no longer force with them, then ſtood with their own profit. This was ſides Ninivetica, as it was afterwards Punica, and is now Turcica: which will at length prove their downfall; as it befell Nineveh, and Carthage.

and robbery] Or, ravage; ſuch as lions exerciſe, Pſal. 7.3. Liars are commonly theeves: fraudulency is no better then robbery. If I have beguiled any man, Laceratio. ſaith Zacheus, I reſtore him foure-fold, Luke 19.9. as having wronged him no leſſe, then if I had robbed him. Hence they go here coupled. Violence is ſeldome ſundred from conning contrivance; in thoſe eſpecially that hunt after Monarchy, as N[illegible: 1 letter]mrod, Julius Caeſar, Pellem vulpinam leoninae. aſſuere Lyſander (whoſe counſell and practiſe was to eek out the lions hide, with the foxes skin, if need were) Jeroboam, Jehu, Herod, that fox, Julian, Caeſar Borgia, whom Machiavel propounds for a partern to Princes; telling them, that Juſtice it ſelf ſhould not be ſought after, but onely the appearance: becauſe the credit is a help, the uſe a cumber. That great Elixer, called Reaſon of State (though falſely ſo called, unleſſe it be ſeaſoned with Juſtice and Truth) hath ſo tranſmutative a faculty, as to make copper ſeem gold, right wrong, and wrong right: yea, when all pleas fail, it will ſtand for good, whiles there are forces to ſupport it.

The prey departeth not] They fetch in booty continually, they ſpoil and prey upon others without end or meaſure. Once they ſeemed to repent of their luxury and cruelty, at the preaching of Jonas; but now they are [illegible: 1 letter] bad again, or worſe then ever. They tear in pieces (our Engliſh ſeems to bee made of the Hebrew here) and greedily feed upon thoſe murthering morſels of ſin,Tureph. which they muſt di[illegible: 1 letter]geſt in hell, without better repentance, then they were ever yet acquainted with.

Verſe 2. The noiſe of a whip, and the noiſe of the ratling of the wheels] A moſt elegant and lively hypotypoſis or deſcription, of the Chaldees coming to take Nineveh, Tam pulchra, ſaith Hierom, & picture ſimilis, ut omnis meus Jermo ſit vilior, ſo gallant and picture-like a repreſentation of an advancing Army, that no words of mine can come neer it. Virgil is commended for his excellent expreſſions, ſutable to the matter he treateth of. As when he ſets forth the cutting down of trees, by —Son a icta ſecuribus ilex: the ferrimans trade, by —fremit ictibus aerea puppis: the gliding of his boat, by —Labitur uncta vadis abies, &c. But all this is but dull ſhuffe to the divine Rhetorike here to be read. Let thoſe that refuſe to hear Gods ſweet words, fear leſt they be forced to hear the noiſe of the whip, the ratling of the wheels, &c Pſal. 7.12, 13. Luk. 19.42, 44. Prov. 1.24, &c. The enemy is ſent to revenge the quarrell of Gods Covenant: the red horſe is at the heels of the white, Rev. 6.4.

Verſ. 3. The horſeman liſteth up both the bright ſword] Heb. the flame of the ſword, brandiſhed againſt the Sunne, which maketh it ſeem flaming. Such a ſword is mans tongue, thin, broad, long, and of a red ſiery colour. See Pſal. 42.10. and 64.3. Prov. 12.18. David cries out of this murthering-weapon in his bones, whereby they killed him alive, as with a tuck, or rapier; and buried him in their throats, thoſe gaping graves, open ſepulchres.

and the glittering ſpear] Heb. the lightening of the ſpear, becauſe of its bright and ſwift motion. Thus the Prophet perpetuis metapheris & periphraſibus luxuriat (as One ſaith of Apul[illegible: 1 letter]ius) aboundeth with Rhetoricall expreſſions,Turk. hiſt. and continued meraphers. Bajazer the Great Turk, for his valour and skill in handling his arms, was firna[illegible: 1 letter]ed Gilderum, or lightening.

and there is a mul[illegible: 1 letter]tude of ſlain. So that it is not fulgur ex vitro, an empty terrour, a bare fright onely, as a fools dagger, that ratleth and inappeth, but without an edge. [illegible: 1 letter]ide his effectum. See here the ſad effect, loe the tragedy repreſented, behold a multitude of ſlain, and a great number of carkaſſes, &c. This the Prophet ſpake, not with any delight, further then made for the glory of God, and the Churches deliverance: but that hee may ſet forth by this example, what they muſt look for that imitate Ninevites in their practiſes; for ſinne ever ends tragically:Miror te quorum mores imitaris corum exitus non perhor reſcere. Cic. De Naboth Cap. and God is ſtill the ſame, as He is ſet forth Chap. 1.2. I wonder, ſaith Cicero to Verres, that thou ſhunneſt not their vices whoſe fearfull ends thou art much afraid of. And St. Amhroſe, cloſing up the ſad ſtory of Ahab and Iezabel, whom God deſtroied for their wickedneſſe, Fuge ergò dives ejuſmodi exitum, ſaith he Tremble at ſuch di[illegible: 1 letter]mall ends, and be carefull to avoid them: ſuch ends ye ſhall avoyd, if ye carefully flie from ſuch flagitious practiſes.

and agreat number of carkaſſes] Heb. the heavineſſe of dead carkaſſes which lie ſo thick. that the earth ſeemeth to groane under the burthen of them.

there is none end of their corpſes] that lie on heapes like ſo many mountaines: as they did after the fight betweene Amurath king of Turks, and Lazarus Deſpot of Servia.Turk hiſt. 200 which whiles Amurath took a view of, he was ſuddenly ſtabbed to daath by a half-dead ſouldier, ſtarting up from among the carkaſles.

they ſtumble upon their corpſes] And afterwards, perhaps, uſe them inſtead of ſtooles and tables,Lanquet: Chro. as the Suiſſers did the Thuric[illegible: 1 letter]nſes their adverſaries An[illegible: 1 letter]. 1443. banquetting in the place where they won the victory.

Verſe 4. Becauſe of the multitude of the whoredomes of the well-favored harlot] Specious, and therefore gracious with her paramours: of a faire countenance, but foule condition: like Aurelia Oreſtilla, that had beauty, but no good property. Chryſippus cailed beauty the flower of vertue;Cujus praeter formam nihil unquam bonus laudauit. Saluft. but that is not generally true. Diogenes ſaw cauſe to ſay to ſome faire women in his time, O quam bona domus, ſed malus hoſpes; Here's a faire hcuſe, but an ill inhabitant. Niniveh is the well-favored harlot here ſpoken of; her very name ſignifieth a faire habitation. Hierome and others interpret it, ſhe was indeed Vrbs formoſa et famoſ[illegible: 1 letter], faire and famous, but fooliſh and filthy, Meretrix meretriciſſima; ſhe multiplied her whoredomes both corporall and ſpir ituall; for theſe are ſeldome fundred: as we ſee in that once well-favored, but now withered whore of Rome, Rev. 17.1. Roma inverted is Amor, prepoſtrerous love, unnaturall filthineſſe is there as commonly practiſed, as Idolatry. And as a common harlot paints and deckes herſelf to pleaſe her lovers; ſo did Niniveh, ſo doth Rome in her pompous and men-pleaſing worſhips: I have read of a Lady in Paris, that when ſhe ſaw the bravery of a Proceſlion to a Saint, ſhe cried out, Oh how fine is our religion bepond that of the Huguenots. And Sir Walter Rawleigh was wont ſay, that were he to chuſe a religion for fleſhly liberty, and laſciviouſneſſe, he would chuſe Popery: which is indeed an alluring, tempting, bewitching religion, none like it.

the miſtreſſe of witch-crafts] Harlots are many of them enchantreſſes; and have their philtra, their love potions, wherewith to enſnare men, and to draw them on to lewdneſſe, and to take away their hearts. Hoſ. 4.11. Athenaeus brings in Plato bewailing himſelf, that he was taken ſo much with a filthy harlot. And Elian telles of a whore that boaſted to Socrates, that ſhe could eaſily get followers from him; not he from her. Of Sampſon and Hercules (whom ſome think to have been the ſame) thoſe two verſes verified, Nam potuit lenam, potuit ſuperare leaenam: Quem fera non potuit vincere; vicit hera.

Think the ſame of idolatry alſo; and if thoſe forceries, whereby the purple whore hath deceived all nations, as St. John (in alluſion to this place) ſaith of her Rev. 18.23. For in that book of the Revelation the holy Ghoſt borrowes all the elegancies and flowers in the ſtory of the old Teſtament: thereby to ſet out the ſtory of the New in ſucceeding ages.

That ſelleth nations through her whordoms] maketh prize of them, as thoſe impoſtours did, 2 Tim. 3.6. and then make ſale of them as her ſlaves 2 Pe[illegible: 1 letter]. 2.3. or otherwiſe uſe them at her pleaſure, as homely as the whore of Babylon now doth thoſe her ſlaves, and ſoules of men Rev. 18.13. whom ſhe ſits upon, even upon peoples, nations, multitudes and tongues, Rev. 17.15. tyrannizing over their conſciences, and appointing them to very meane offices: as that poſture of hers, in ſitting upon them, ſeemeth to import.

Verſe 5. Behold I am againſt thee ſaith the Lord] And I need ſay no more; wert thou but ſenſible of thy miſery herein. Be not thou a terrour to me O Lord, ſaith Jeremiah, and then let what will elſe befall me: I ſhall the better beare it. Doe not you fall upon me your ſelves, ſaid Sampſon to his country men,Judg. 15.12. that came to bind him: and then for the Philiſtines I ſhall order them well enough: ſo faith the good ſoul, Let not God ſet againſt me &c. Tyrants and Oppreſſours ſhal be ſure to have him thei enemy: and this he telles them here againe and againe: to beat downe their vaine conſidence in their greatneſſe: whereby they think to beare down all before them.

And I will diſcover thy ſkirts upon thy face] i.e. I will turne up thy clothes about thy eares: and ſo ſhew all to, thine utter diſgrace; a fit puniſhment for ſo filthy a harlot. Eſa. 47.3. Ier. 13, 22. Eze. 16.37.

And I will ſhew the nations thy nakedneſſe] which nature teacheth to cover:therefore when a man hath committed a ſinne, he bluſheth:Acts & Mon. Honos ſit auri-bus. the bloud as it were would cover the ſinne, that mother of ſhame Rev. 3.18. that the ſhame of thy nakedneſſe may not appeare. The whore of Babylon is, and more and more ſhall be ſerved on this ſort: Rev. 17.16. Aſore God, ye are all bare-toul'd ſaid Mr. Philpot Martyr to the Popiſh Synod, before whom he was convented. The kings of the earth ſhall make Rome deſolate and naked. Luther and many other Proteſtant writers have done it already, by laying her open in her colours to the world: taking the the ſame boldneſſe and liberty to diſcover her lewdneſſe, that ſhe did to commit it.

And the kingdoms, thy ſhamo] who ſhall therehence ſlight thee and hate thee, together with all thy policies and ſuperſtitions, wherby thou haſt enſlaved them.

Verſe 6. And I will caſt abominable filth upon thee] As they do chamber-pots and worſe, upon harlots that are carted. I have read of a heathen people that put the adniterers and adultereſſes heads into the paunch of a beaſt, where all the f[illegible: 2 letters]th lieth; and ſo ſtifled them to death.

And make thee vile] Conſpurcabo, deturpabo to, I will beſpattle thee and make thee ſtink above ground, as lothſome carrion doth; ſo the word ſignifieth. It was long ſince complained of by one of her own ſonnes, that the ſtench of the Church of Rome was gone up to heaven. And by another,Mat. Paris. that of gold ſhe was become ſilver, of ſilver iron, of iron earth, ſupereſſe ut in ſtercus abiret, and now there remained no more, but that ſhe ſhould be looked upon as dung.Theodoricus Vrias Auguſtinianus. Accordingly it followeth.

And I willſet thee as a gazing-ſtock] The Septuagint renders it for an example, others a looking-glaſſe, but Calvin (after R. Salomon and Aber.-Ezra) ponam t[illegible: 1 letter] quaſi ſtercus, I will ſet thee as dung, which men gladly look beſide. [non-Latin text not transcribed]. Luther rendereth it Ponam te in terriculamentum, I will make thee a bug-beare. All this was done to Niniveh that great city: and all was done by God, not by Fate, or Fortune, or any neceſſity of Nature, that ſtates and kingdoms muſt have their times and their turnes, their riſe and their ruine, as Politicians dote.Oſorius'de Nobil. l.3.

Ver. 7. And it ſhall come to paſs that all they [illegible: 1 letter]hat look upon thee ſhall flee from thee] Thou ſhalt be a very Magor-miſſabib a terrour to all that are round about thee: ſo that they ſhall decline thee and ſtand a loof off. Reſilient à te, they ſhall leape back from thee (faith the Vulgar tranſlation) as if they had trod upon a ſnake. Vbi ſimul hominum mores exprimit ſaith Gualther. This is the manner of moſt people: they meaſure friendſhip by profit, and ſhamefully forſake thoſe in adverſity, whom they were wont to follow and fawne upon in proſperity. David complaines of ſuch dealing, and Ovid, and many others.

And ſay, Niniveh is laid waſt] which moſt men held impoſſible,Tempera fuerint nubila ſolus eris. Cum fortuna per[illegible: 1 letter]t nulius amicus erit. and never looked to have ſeen ſuch a day. So Rome was called Aurea, and AEterna and the Romans once thought (as it is ſaid Dionyſius did) that the monarchy of the world had been tied unto them with chaines of adamant. But God confuted their golden dreames by breaking their Empire, and giving up their city ſix ſeverall times in one hundred thirty nine yeares, into the hands of the Barbarians: who exerciſed therein all kind of cruelty. Beſides that, it is obſerved that Rome ſince it became Papall was never beſieged by any enemy, but it was taken. The finall ruine of it is daily expected, according to that prophecy of St. John, Rev. 18.2. Lib. 8. Babylon is fallen, is fallen: and that other of Sibylla afore recited, Tota eris in cineres; quaſi nunquam Roma fuiſſes.

Who will bemoane her?] Heb. Who will move (his lips) for her. Some perhaps will ſhake his head, or ſhoot his bolt at her: but none open his mouth to bemone her. It was the juſt hand of God to ſet off all hearts, and ſhut up all mouthes from her, that had been ſo unreaſonably mercileſſe and hard-hearted. Iam. 2.13.

Whence ſhall I ſeek comforters for thee] q.d. So odious thou art, that none will do thee that good office: or if they would, ſo calamitous thou art that no comſort will faſten; For as to ſore eyes the gentleft medicine is troubleſome: ſo is comſort miniſtred to ſuch as are in an hopeleſſe condition. The care that taſteth words, as the mouth doth meat, is at ſuch a time imbittred, and out of taſt.

Ver. 8. Art thou better then populous No?] Heb. No Amon a great corn-countrey, and therefore populous:Amon i.e. Nu. tritia Alma mater for where victuall and good trading is to be had, thither people will repaire apace. No (that is Alexandria) was the nurfing mother of Egypt: and Egypt was called the worlds barn or ſtorehouſe, horreum unde hauriatur Gen. 42.1. It is called Ier. 46.25. Amon de No, and Ezek. 30.11. Hamon No, and Verſe 14.16. No, without any addition. This was the old name of this city, before it was deſtroyed by Nebuchadnezzar: to whom God had given Egypt as his pay for his paines in taking Tyre. It was reedified by Alexander the great, and he called it after his own name Alexandria. Amon it was called, for the reaſons above-given. Though there be that ſech that name of it from Ham the ſon of Noah. Theodoret will have it ſo called from Iupiter Hammon, whoſe ſonne,Lib. 2 p. 51. Pauſan: Lib. 3. Lib. de Iſid. et Oſirid Alexander deſired to be held: and from whom the Egyptian husbandmen were called Ammonii, and their arable Ammonia, as Herodotus writeth. Plutarch alſo telleth us, that the Africans worſhip an unknowne God by the name of Amon, that is (in their language) Heus, tu quis es? This city therefore is called No Amon, probably to diſtinguiſh it from other cities of the ſame name; as Alexandria Egypti, Caeſarea Philippi, Auguſta Vindelicorum. &c. Ioſephus ſaith that it abounded in people,Lib. 2. de bell. Iud. Gap. 16. and wealth: being little leſſe then Hieruſalem in compaſſe. Thinkeſt thou now O Niniveh, (ſaith God here) that thou art in a better or ſafer condition, then this city once was? but I am magnum infoelix nil niſi nomen habet. Let Niniveh go to Ieruſalem, Succurrat illud mutato nomine de te Fabula narratur. to Shiloh Ier. 7.12. and do as Scipio did, when, beholding the downfall of Carthage, he fore-ſaw and bewailed the like future deſtiny of Rome his own countrey.

That was ſituate amnng the rivers] which is held the beſt ſituation for profit, pleaſure,Lib. 17. and ſtrength.

That had the waters round about it [The river Nilus begirt it, (ſaith Strabo,) but could not mott it up from Gods fire. See Pſal. 33.17. Prov. 21.30. with the Note.

Whoſe rampart was the ſea, and her wall was from the ſea] She had the Egyptian ſea on one ſide, and the lake of Mareôtis on the other, which the Hebrews called the Sea.

Verſe 9. Ethiopia and Egypt were her ſtrength] No was the Metropolis of Egypt, and knew no end of her power, as bearing rule over Ethiopia the ſtrong, and Egypt the infinite (ſome read this text) and as having all the reſt of the peoples inhabiting Afrike and Lybia for her confederates.Chus Valida et Egyptij infiniti Druſius See Ier. 46.9. where the Prophet ſpeaketh of ſuch People as brought aide to Egypt againſt the Caldees, but were foiled and worſted: Of the huge armies that Ethiopia was able to raiſe, ſee 2 Chron. 14.9. and 16.8. Egypt for her ſtrength was called Rahab Pſal. 87.4. and 89.11. that is mighty and proud.

Put and Lubim were thy helpers] By Put, Hierome underſtandeth Africa (which was over anent Alexandria, the ſea between) a waſt continent, thrice as big as Europe: and by Lubim Lybia a conſiderable part of that continent, ſomtimes put for the whole. Theſe would have been helpers to No, but could not: becauſe over-powred by Nebuchadnezzar, ſent againſt them by God. Leagues entred into with wicked men, profit not thoſe whom God will puniſh. The Grecian Churches Anno 1438. being afraid of the Turks, ſent and ſubjected themſelves to the Biſhop of Rome; that they might have the help of the Latine Churches: but ſhortly after, they were deſtroyed, and their Empire ſubdued, and ſwallowed up in the Turkiſh greatneſſe. It is gathered by ſome out of Revel. 16.14, 15, 16. that the Pope and his adherents ſhall, towards the end of the world, for the reſtoring of his decayed authority, call in the help, not onely of Popiſh Princes, but of forraign States, out of Aſia, Africa, and America, to ſuppreſſe the heretikes (as they call us) and to root out Religion; but with evil ſucceſſe: for they ſhall aſſociate themſelves onely to be broken in pieces, Eſay 8.9. theſe Auxiliaries ſhall ſpeed no better then thoſe ſubſidiarie Syrians did, 2 Sam. 10.18, 19. they ſhall receive a famous foil at Armageddon; ſuch as Siſera did, at the waters of Megiddo, Judg. 5.19. and a voice from the throne ſhall ſay, It is done; verſ. 16,17.

Verſe 10. Yet was ſhe carried away, ſhe went into captivity] Whereof though there be no other record, yet we ought not to doubt of the truth, ſith it is here alledged by the holy Ghoſt, as a thing either done before, or ſhortly after to bee done, as may be probably gathered from Jerem. 46.25. Ezsk. 30.19, 21. compared with Jer. 20.28. and 44.49. To God (by reaſon of the vaſtneſſe of his being) all things are preſent. As he that ſtands on an high mountain, and looks down, though to the paſſenger that goes by, ſome are before, ſome behinde; yet to him they are all preſent: So here.

her young children alſo were daſhed in pieces, at the top of all the ſtreets] A terrible ſpectacle to thoſe that paſſed by: who were to look for little mercy, when children, in whom there is ſo little guile, or gall, and who are uſually favoured for their innocency, and ignoſcency, met with ſuch hard meaſure. See the Note on Hoſ. 13.16. Warre is an evil; Eſay 45.7. ſuch as no words (how wide ſoever) can ſufficiently ſet forth. Bellum à belluis.

and they caſt lots for her honourable men] whether ſo, for age or authority; the dice were caſt on them for ſlaves, as Obad. 11. A great alteration on the ſuden. Tamberlanes coach-horſes were conquered kings. Adonibezeks doggs, ſeventy kings, gatherings crumbs under his table. Sapores uſed the Emperour Valerian for a footſtool. Craeſus carried captive by Syrus, cries out, O Solon, Procop. lib. 2. de bello Vandal. O Solon. Gilimer led intriumph by Belliſarius, Vanity of vanities, all is vanity: and calls to him for a cruſt to relieve him, a cittern to ſolace him, and a ſpunge to dry his eyes with. Omnia ſunt hominum tenui pendentia ſilo: Et ſubito caſu, quae valuére, ruunt. Henry the fourth Emperour of Germanie, after ten years reigne, was depoſed; and by his enemies driven to that exigent, that he deſired onely a clerkſhip in an houſe at Spire, of his own founding; which was barbarouſly, by the Biſhop of that place, denied him. Our Henry the ſixth, that had been the moſt potent Monarch for dominions that ever England had, was, when depoſed, not the maſter of a Molehill,Dan. hiſt. 189 nor of his own liberty, but beaten, and wounded, &c. to ſhew that mortality is but the ſtage of mutability; when they that were brought up in ſcarlet embrace the dung-hils, Lam. 4.5.

bound in chains] not of gold, as Zenobia was; but of iron, as the word ſignifieth,

Verſe 11. Thou alſo ſhalt be drunken] ſc. with the cup of the wine of Gods wrath, Jer. 25.27. thou ſhalt drink, and be drunk, and ſpue, and fall, and riſe no more, becauſe of the ſword which I will ſend amongst you. This is that [non-Latin text not transcribed], dry drunkenneſſe of them that are drunk, but not with wine, Eſay. 51.21. of them that remember their affliction and their miſery, the wormwood and the gall, Lam. 3.19. If the ſaints ſip ſometimes of the top of Gods cup, the wicked ſhall drink deep of it, yea though it be eternity to the bottom.

thou ſhalt be hid] Or, thou ſhalt lurk, either for fear of the enemy (who waſt once above fear, and thine enemies below hope) or, for ſhame of thine undone condition. See Rev, 6.16. Luke 23.30. Hoſ. 10.8. Or, thou ſhalt vaniſh, and be brought to nothing; as if there never had been any ſuch. Confer Obad 16. Nineveh is nothing elſe now, ſaith One who had been there, but a ſepulture of her ſelf, a little town of ſmall trade, where the Patriarch of the Neſtorians keeps his ſeat at the devotion of the Turk.

thou ſhalt alſo ſeek ſtrength becauſe of the enemy] Or, from the enemie: beg help of them, to whom thou wouldeſt once have ſcorned to be beholden: or of them, againſt whom thou haſt profeſſed, and practiſed open hoſtility.

Verſe 12. All thy ſtrong-holds ſhall be like fig-trees] i. e. tam infirma ac ſificulnea eſſent. Look how the fig-tree caſteth her untimely (or green) figges, when ſhe is ſhaken of a mighty wine, Rev. 6.13. yea, though it be but of a gentle wind, if the figs be ripe, as here, they fall with little ado: ſo ſhall thy munitions, wherein thou truſteſt.

they ſhall even fall into the mouth of the eater] that is, of the Chaldear, who gape for thy deſtruction, and deſires nothing more then to revell in thy ruines. They ſhall take thy fortreſſes as eaſily, as Timotheus did townes; which were ſaid to come into his toyls,Aemuli ipſius dormientem pinxerant, &c. Plut. in Sylla. Introd. to hiſt. by Mat. Paris. O vere Phr[illegible: 1 letter]giae neque enim Phryges Virg. whiles he ſlept. Or, as Charles 5. who in 28. battels in America, waged by his Generalls Cortez, and Pizarro, wan 28. kingdoms.

Verſe 13. Behold thy people in the middeſt of thee are women] i. e. Fearfull, and faint-hearted: [non-Latin text not transcribed]. See Eſay 3.12. Jer. 51.30. and 48.41. And this in the middeſt of thee, where they ſhould be moſt valiant, like cocks on their own dung-hill, as they ſay. Lo, thoſe that formerly faced the heavens, and, by a Cy[illegible: 1 letter]lopical-kind of impiety, ſlighted God, and dared the devil to a duell, how creſt-faln they are and courageleſſe, when the enemy is upon them: the noiſe of a driven leaf, affrights them, Lev. 26. a panick terrour ſeizeth upon them, as it did once upon the Syrians, 2 King. 7. and upon the Imperialiſts, in the warre againſt the Huſſites, ſo that they could not ſtrike a ſtroke: and upon the Burgundians, who expecting a battle, thought long thiſtles were launces, and turned their backs, with thoſe Ephraimites, Pſal. 78.9. It is God that puts mettle into men, that ſtrengthens or weakens the arm of either party, Ezek. 30.24. Theſe lions, as they are called chap. 2.12. that formerly ruſhing out of Nineveh their den, filled it with ravine, tearing and ſpoiling all they met with, are now become Harts and Stagges; that have great horns, but do nothing with them, quia de[illegible: 1 letter]ſt animus, becauſe they want courage: or as thoſe Eretrians, of whom Themiſtocles ſaid, that they were like the ſword-fiſh,Plutarch. that had a ſword indeed, but not an heart to make uſe of it.

the gates of thy land ſhall be ſet wide open] Thy frontier townes and cinqueports, thoſe keyes of the kingdom; aperiendo aperientur ſhall open to give the enemie entrance; as at the ſiege of Jeruſalem, the iron-gate opened of it own accord.

the fire ſhall devoure thy barres] Becauſe God, who is a conſuming fire, ſhall remove out of the enemies way, all obſtacles and impediments: ſo that all ſhall be pervious, and patent to them. Fire God had threatened once before, chap. 2.13. and it may very well be, that the gates were fired without a metaphor. See verſe 15.

Verſe 14. Draw the waters, for the ſiege, &c. A moſt bitter and biting taunt, or mock:Sarcaſmus. whereby the Prophet laugheth to ſcorn the fortifications of the Ninevites, and their diligence and providence in defending themſelves, which ſhall nothing avail them, becauſe God will curſe their enterpriſes, Pſal. 127.1, 2. See the like Sarcaſme chap. 2.1. In thoſe Eaſtern countries there was great ſcarcity of water. Draw thee good ſtore for the better holding out the ſiege: for if water fail thee, thou muſt needs yeeld.

fortifie thy ſtrong-holds] But they ſhall ſoon fail thee, verſe 12. as the tower of Shechem did thoſe that fled to it, and as the ſtrong-hold of Zion did the braving Jebuſites, 2 Sam. 5.7. If God bee againſt us, no other help can relieve us. Braſſe and iron can fence a man againſt a ſword, but not againſt fire.

go into clay and tread the morter] viz. to make brick of. For in maritine, and mooriſh places, where ſtones are not to be had, they uſed to wall their cities, and make their munitions with brick. This, proud Nineveh is commanded here to do, by an Irony, as Theophylact noteth: but ſhe ſhall but labour in the very fire, take pains to no purpoſe: for God will deſtroy the works of her hands, Eccleſ. 5.6.

make ſtrong the brick-kilne] Or, repair it, that all may be ready. And theſe things they did no doubt very diligently: neither were they for that to be blamed. But this was their fault; as it was alſo the fault of the Jews in like caſe, Eſay 22. that they looked not to the Maker of all, neither had reſpect unto him that faſhioned it long ago. See. verſe 8, 9, 10, 11. This, if they had done ſeriouſly, though they had made leſſe preparation, the enemy might have been daunted, and diſmayed as much, as that Duke of Saxony was; who having proclaimed warre againſt the Biſhop of Magdeburg, and underſtanding by his intelligencers, that the Biſhop levied no army, made no preparation, but onely gave out, that he would commit his cauſe to God, who would not fail to take up arms for him; Inſaniat alius, Bucholcer. Chronol. ſaid the Duke, It were a mad prank in me to make warre upon ſuch an one as truſteth in God to right and revenge him. Let who will meddle with ſuch a man: I will not.

Verſe 15. There ſhall the ſire devour thee] There, that is, in thy ſtrong-holds, where thou thinkeſt thy ſelf moſt ſafe. Theſe ſhall be to thee pro carcere & piſtrino, for a priſon, or little-eaſe; when the fire of Gods wrath ſhall kindle upon thee, the fire of warre ſhall conſume thee. See Amos 1.4. Joel 1.19. and 2.3, 30. Amos 7.4 with the Notes. Evil ſhall hunt the violent man to deſtroy him, Pſal. 140.11. neither muſt he think to be ſafe any where from divine vengeance, Amos 9.2, 3. Pſal. 139.7, 8, 9, 10. Obad 4. which will not ſuffer them to live, as thoſe Barbarians could tell, Acts 28.4. The Heathens, called Nemeſis, or Vengeance, [non-Latin text not transcribed]; to ſhew that no guilty perſon could ſhun it. Shufle he may for a ſeaſon from ſide to ſide, as Balaams aſſe did, to avoid the Angels ſword;Num. 22.27. but at length lay down under it, and ſo condemned her maſters madneſſe, 2 Pet. 2.16. Running in to God, is the onely beſt way to eſcape him: as to cloſe and get in with him that would ſtrike you, doth avoid the blow.

the ſword ſhall cut thee off] Eſt haec vehemens planè comminatio, ſaith Gualther. This is truely a very vehement threat. See how thick it falls like hail-ſhot upon them, that they can hardly take breath: and all too little to work upon their hard hearts, which could not repent. Theſe uncounſellable Ninevites were like the Smiths dog. whom neither the hammers above him, nor the ſparks of fire falling round about him can awake. Like Leviathan, they eſteemed iron as ſtraw, and braſſe as ro[illegible: 1 letter]ten wood. Darts were counted by them as ſtubble, they laughed at the ſhaking of the ſpear, Job 41.27, 29. It is proper to Gods people to tremble at his word, to ſtand in awe of his judgements, whileſt they yet hang in the threatnings. Wicked men flear, when they ſhould fear; and ſay in their hearts when God threateneth them, as Frederick the ſecond, Emperour of Germany was wont to ſay openly, in the greateſt threatning of his enemies, Minarum ſtrepitus, Aſinorum crepitus.

It ſhall eat thee up as the canker-worm] Which uſeth to make quick diſpatch, and clean work. See Joel 1. & 2. to ſhear all afore it.

make thy ſelf many] Heb. Weighty with multitude: ſo that the axle-tree of the earth may ſeem to groan under thy grandeur and maſſineſſe. Do this thou, O king of Nineveh (for the Hebrew Verb here is Maſculine.) Do the like thou, O city of Nineveh.

make thy ſelf many as the Locuſt] Which hath its name in Hebrew from multitude: becauſe, as that Legion in the Goſpel, they are many: and here the Hebrew V[illegible: 1 letter]rb is [illegible: 1 letter]emini[illegible: 2 letters]. Miniſters muſt lay about them on all hands; and bee ready to turn themſelves, as it were, into all ſhapes and faſhions, both of ſpeech and of ſpirit, to bring people to the knowledge of God, and his will, of themſelves, and their duties.

Verſe 16. Thou haſt multiplied thy merchants above the ſtarres of heaven] And ſo thinkeſt to have a ſtake in ſtore, howſoever the dice chance to turn. For theſe [illegible: 1 word] were very rich, and could furniſh her with money, which is the ſinewes of wa[illegible: 1 letter]re. Beſides, they traded farre and near; and ſo could give intelligence, and if need were, way-lay and intercept the enemies contributions that it came not to them. But would you know, ſaith the Prophet, how theſe merchants will ſerve [illegible: 1 word] your greateſt need?

The canker-worm ſpoileth and fleeth away] q. d. They will ſerve themſelves upon you, and then leave you in the lurch, to make as good ſhift as you can. They are mere canker-worms, which firſt eat up all, and then haſt away. Theſe falſe friends, well they may be the cauſes, but companions they will not be of your calamity: like crowes that flock to a dead carcaſſe, not to defend it, but to devour it: and no ſooner have they bared the bones but they are gone. Such falſe merchants as theſe hath this land been much peſtered with from Rome, in former ages. Matthew Paris telleth us of one Florentinus, the Popes Legate here, in King Johns reigne, Ferentinus the wiſer ſort called him, for bearing away ſo much money. And of another named Otto (one of the Popes merchants,Muſcipulatores. or rather mice-catchers, as he calleth them) who after three years raking together of money, by moſt deteſtable arts, at laſt departing hence, to avoid a ſtorm, he left not ſo much money in the whole kingdome, as he either carried with him, or ſent to Rome before him. In the year 1235. there were ſpread thorow England certain Roman canker-worms, called Caurſim (quaſi capientes urſi, devouring Bears quoth Paris) who had intangled the King, Nobles, and all others that had to deal with the Court of Rome, in their cunning ſnares, and uſurious practiſes, under colour of ſupplying with money ſuch as wanted preſent pay to the Pope.Fol. 613. Theſe were called the Popes merchants, ſaith Speed.

Verſe 17. Thy crowned are as the locuſts] i. e. thy Barons (ſaith Diodate) and great Lords, wearing diadems and wreaths, in token of dignity: ſuch a Nazarite (that's the Hebrew word here) was Joſeph, Gen. 49.26. becauſe ſeparate and exempt from other men, as a Chieſtain. Calvin likewiſe rendreth it, thy Princes: the Vulgar Latin, thy Keepers. Some others, thy Nazarites, or, thy religious perſons, ſet apart from the common ſort, to pray for the cities ſafety. Such were thoſe Chemarims, or Chimney-chaplains among the Jews, Hoſ. 10.5. Zeph. 1.4. Such are the Mailers among the Turks, who call them, the religious brothers of love; and the ſhaveling-Mendicants among the Papiſts. Theſe locuſts are, Rev. 9.7. ſaid to have on their heads, Turk hiſt. 477. as it were crowns like gold.

and thy Captains as the great graſhoppers] Heb. as the graſhoppers of graſhoppers, by an Hebraiſme, like that, King of kings, ſong of ſongs, &c. The word rendred Captains, is foraigne; R. David and others render it, Imperator, Dux, Princeps. It ſeemeth to be a name of dignity among the Aſſyrians, as Zaphnath-paaneah was among the Egyptians, Gen. 41.45. Theſe are called graſhoppers, and locuſts, for their uſeleſneſſe, and fearfulneſſe.

which camp in the hedges] ſc. Of the gardens or vineyards, And they are ſaid to camp, in regard of their multitudes, as if they were an army of them. See Joel 2. The Prophet taxeth here Nineveh's vain confidence in her confederates, and ſuch other hanger-on, as might truly ſay, Nos numeri ſumus, fruges conſumere nati. We are men of no great moment, ſuch as Ariſtophanes in Plutarch prettily played upon, when he ſaid, [non-Latin text not transcribed], i. e. Quaeſtoraes, bubones.

but when the Sun ariſeth, they flee away] So theſe trencher-flies, when they have ſerved their own turns upon thee, and now ſee the tempeſt of warre growing on amain, they worſhip the riſing Sun, keep themſelves on the warm ſide of the hedge, leave thee to ſhift as thou canſt, and ſeek out for themſelves a better fortune.

Verſe 18. Thy ſhepherds ſlumber, O King of Aſſyria] This Apoſtrophe to the king is emphaticall. He is given to know, that his Nobles, and Officers, Mich. 5.4, 5, 6. and 7, 14. his Councellours of State, and greateſt Politicians, ſhould bee benighted, and not know what counſell to give, or courſe to take. Or, they ſlumber, that is, they are dead, as Pſal. 76.6. And this is more agreeable to that which followeth:

thy Nobles ſhall dwell in the duſt] The Vulgar hath it ſepelientur, ſhall be buried. Others, jacebunt, ſhall lie on the ground, like beaſts, through fear and conſternation of mind, 1 Sam. 28.20. Then Saul fell ſtraight way all along on the earth, and was ſore afraid.

thy people is ſcattered upon the mountains] Diffuſed and diſperſed abundantly: as ſheep without a ſhepherd, whereof none being wiſer then other, no man gathereth them, into the ſheep-coats of better order.

Verſe 19. There is no healing of thy bruiſe] Clades & ſtrages tua irreparabilis eſt. Thy diſeaſe is deſperate, thy condition comfortleſſe: thou art utterly to be deſtroyed. When God ſmiteth his own people, it may well be asked as Eſay 27.7. Hath he ſmitten him, as he ſmot thoſe that ſmot him? Or, is he ſlain according to the ſlaughter of them that are ſlain by him? Surely no: there is a manifeſt difference. Hee hath torn, ſaith the Church, and he will heal us: hee hath ſmitten, and hee will bind us up, Hoſ. 6.1. Hence that diſtinction of puniſhment, or pain, in condemnantem, & corrigentem, in poenam vindictae, & poenam medelae. Afflictions, and temporall evils are in the nature, to the wicked of a curſe, to the godly of a cure; to the former, mortall; to the latter, medicinall, When the wicked ſpring as graſſe, and when all the workers of iniquity do flouriſh, it is not for any good will that God beareth to them: but it is, that they ſhall be deſtroyed for ever, Pſal. 92.7. See the Note on chap. 1.9.

thy wound is grievous] Not onely incurable, but full of anguiſh intolerable. Thus, many ſorrows ſhall be to the wicked, Pſal. 32.10. and yet all that they ſuffer here, is but as drops of wrath, fore-running the great ſtorme in hell: or as a crack, preceding the fall of the whole houſe upon them: The leaves only fall on them here; there, the whole tree.

all that hear the bruit of thee ſhall clap the hands, &c.] As rejoycing at thy ruine, and ſubſcribing to Gods juſt judgement upon thee: they ſhall take up this taunting ſpeech againſt thee, and ſay, How hath the oppreſſour ceaſed? the golden city ceaſed? The Lord hath broken the ſtaffe of the wicked, and the ſcepter of the rulers, &c. Eſay 14.4, 5, 6, 7.

For upon whom hath not thy wickedneſſe paſſed continually?] Thy wickedneſſe, that is, thy wicked counſels, edicts, enterprizes, have they not extended farre and near for miſchief to many Nations? and this not for a little while, but jugiter, continually? It hath been thy conſtant trade from thy youth up (neque enim nova eſt aut nupera haec tua crudelitas) to waſt and weary out other nations, with thine inrodes and hoſtilities. Thy deſtruction therefore is of thy ſelf, O Nineveh: the inſultations, and comploſions of others at thy miſery, is no more then thou haſt merited. Os quod in ſorte tua ceciderit, illud rodas, as the Arabian proverb hath it. Bear the reward of thy wickedneſſe, which is now come home to thee; Thy wickedneſſe is the root of thy wretchedneſſe: this the Prophet here repeateth, and inculcateth in the percloſe; that he may leave it as a ſting in the minds of his hearers, as Gualther well obſerveth.