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Nahum 3

Chapter 3 in 30 seconds

Woe to the city of blood. Nineveh is told to remember Thebes, the great Egyptian city it had crushed. Its soldiers will fold, its merchants will fly away like locusts, and when the news of its fall spreads, the whole world claps. Jonah ended with a question, and so does Nahum.

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In this chapterField Notes · ArchaeologyThe Fall of Nineveh Chronicle · after verse 10 Field Notes · ArchaeologyThebes · after verse 9

Judgment on Nineveh

¹Woe to the city of blood,

full of lies,

full of plunder,

never without prey.

NAH 3:1[NOTE]THE CITY OF BLOOD. Assyrian kings boasted in their own records about skinning, impaling and burning their enemies.

²The crack of the whip,

the rumble of the wheel,

galloping horse

and bounding chariot!

³Charging horseman,

flashing sword,

shining spear;

heaps of slain,

mounds of corpses,

dead bodies without end—

they stumble over their dead—

⁴because of the many harlotries of the harlot,

the seductive mistress of sorcery,

who betrays nations by her prostitution

and clans by her witchcraft.

NAH 3:4[DEMONIC]Nineveh is called the mistress of sorcery who enslaves nations

⁵“Behold, I am against you,”

declares Yahweh of Hosts.

“I will lift your skirts over your face.

I will show your nakedness to the nations

and your shame to the kingdoms.

⁶I will pelt you with filth

and treat you with contempt;

I will make a spectacle of you.

⁷Then all who see you

will recoil from you and say,

‘Nineveh is devastated;

who will grieve for her?’

Where can I find

comforters for you?”

NAH 3:7[ARCHAEOLOGY]Babylon's own record says Nineveh was taken in 612 BC, plundered and turned into a heap of ruins, see The Fall of Nineveh Chronicle Field Notes page
NAH 3:7[NOTE]WHO WILL GRIEVE FOR HER? God quotes what the nations will say, so the whole verse is red. See The Fall of Nineveh Chronicle.

⁸Are you better than Thebes,

stationed by the Nile with water around her,

whose rampart was the sea,

whose wall was the water?

NAH 3:8[ARCHAEOLOGY]The temples of Karnak and Luxor still stand at Thebes, the Egyptian city Assyria plundered about 663 BC, see the Thebes Field Notes box
NAH 3:8[NOTE]THEBES. The great city of southern Egypt, which Assyria itself had sacked about 663 BC. See Thebes.

⁹Cush and Egypt were her boundless strength;

Put and Libya were her allies.

¹⁰Yet she became an exile;

she went into captivity.

Her infants were dashed to pieces

at the head of every street.

They cast lots for her dignitaries,

and all her nobles were bound in chains.

Field Notes · Archaeology

The Fall of Nineveh Chronicle

Nahum 2:9 · 3:7 · 3:13 · 3:19

The Fall of Nineveh Chronicle, a Babylonian clay tablet, British Museum, BM 21901. Photo Zunkir, CC BY SA 4.0.

WHAT IT IS: A clay tablet from Babylon's own yearly records. It tells the war that ended the Assyrian Empire, from 616 to 609 BC.
HOW OLD IT IS: It is a later Babylonian copy of records kept when it happened.
WHERE AND WHEN FOUND: The British Museum bought it in 1896. C. J. Gadd published it in 1923 in a book called The Fall of Nineveh.
WHAT IT SAYS: In 612 BC Nabopolassar king of Babylon and the king of the Medes joined forces and besieged Nineveh for about three months. They took the city, carried off great spoil from the city and the temple, and turned it into a heap of ruins.
HOW THE WAR WENT: The tablet tells year by year how the enemies closed in. In 614 BC the Medes took Ashur, Assyria's old holy city, and there the kings of Babylon and the Medes made a pact. Two years later they turned on Nineveh.
THE END OF ASSYRIA: The Assyrian king Sin shar ishkun apparently died when the city fell, though the tablet is broken there. A new king, Ashur uballit II, fled west to Harran. He lost Harran in 610 BC and failed to win it back in 609 BC, and Assyria is never heard of again.
IN NAHUM: Plunder the silver! Plunder the gold! 2:9. Nineveh is devastated, 3:7. There is no healing for your injury, 3:19.
WHAT IT DOES NOT SAY: The tablet does not mention a flood or the river gates of 2:6. See How Did Nineveh Fall?
THE MEDES: The Medes came from the mountains of today's Iran. The tablet calls their king Umakishtar, the man Greek writers called Cyaxares. Nahum's attackers with red shields, 2:3, were these two armies.
THE NEXT CHAPTER: Assyria's end moved the Bible story along. In 609 BC Pharaoh Neco marched north to help the last Assyrian king, and King Josiah of Judah died trying to stop him, 2 Kings 23:29.
WHAT IT SHOWS: Nahum's enemy really fell, the way he said, at the hands of Babylon, the next great power.
SEE ALSO: The Babylonian Chronicle, 2 Kings, a tablet from the same series about Jerusalem in 597 BC.

CONFIDENCE: HIGH

¹¹You too will become drunk;

you will go into hiding

and seek refuge from the enemy.

NAH 3:11[PROPHECY]Nineveh would become drunk and go into hiding from the enemy → HISTORY: A Greek writer says the Assyrian soldiers were drunk from a feast when the enemy attacked at night, about 612 BC. Recorded by Diodorus 2.26.MEDIUM

¹²All your fortresses are fig trees

with the first ripe figs;

when shaken, they fall

into the mouth of the eater!

NAH 3:12[NOTE]FIRST RIPE FIGS. Shake the tree and they fall right into your mouth. That is how easily Nineveh's forts would fall.

¹³Look at your troops—

they are like your women!

The gates of your land

are wide open to your enemies;

fire consumes their bars.

NAH 3:13[PROPHECY]The gates of the land would be wide open to the enemy and fire would consume their bars → HISTORY: When Nineveh fell in 612 BC, its Halzi Gate had been quickly narrowed, and fallen fighters lay in the passage. Found by a University of California dig, 1989 to 1990.MEDIUM

¹⁴Draw your water for the siege;

strengthen your fortresses.

Work the clay and tread the mortar;

repair the brick kiln!

¹⁵There the fire will devour you;

the sword will cut you down

and consume you like a young locust.

Make yourself many like the young locust;

make yourself many like the swarming locust!

NAH 3:15[PROPHECY]There the fire shall devour you; the sword shall cut you off → HISTORY: Nineveh was burned when it fell in 612 BC. Found by diggers who uncovered thick burn layers in its palaces, starting with Austen Henry Layard in the 1840s.

¹⁶You have multiplied your merchants

more than the stars of the sky.

The young locust strips the land

and flies away.

¹⁷Your guards are like the swarming locust,

and your scribes like clouds of locusts

that settle on the walls on a cold day.

When the sun rises, they fly away,

and no one knows where.

NAH 3:17[NOTE]LIKE LOCUSTS. Locusts sit still in the cold and fly off when the sun warms them. Nineveh's officials would vanish the same way.

¹⁸O king of Assyria, your shepherds slumber;

your officers sleep.

Your people are scattered on the mountains

with no one to gather them.

NAH 3:18[PROPHECY]Your people are scattered on the mountains, and no one gathers them; there is no healing of your bruise → HISTORY: The last Assyrian king, Ashur uballit II, lost Harran in 610 BC and failed to take it back in 609 BC. Then Assyria disappears from history. Recorded in the Babylonian Chronicle.MEDIUM

¹⁹There is no healing for your injury;

your wound is severe.

All who hear the news of you

applaud your downfall,

for who has not experienced

your constant cruelty?

NAH 3:19[NOTE]ALL WHO HEAR CLAP. The book ends with a question, just like Jonah. Who has not felt your cruelty?

Nahum 3

Judgment on Nineveh

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