Nah 3:14-19 | KingComments | STEP | Finally, the prophet deprives the guilty city of the last support for its hope: the confidence in its fortifications and its numerous population. The following description is again intended to be ironic. In view of the long siege, the prophet advises them to take every precaution to keep the enemy out of the gate. The first need is water. Furthermore, she must strengthen the city wherever possible. To this end she has to work with clay and turn it into stones. A supply has to be made to close the gaps that the enemy makes.

‏ Nahum 3:14-19

Ironic Call to Defense

Finally, the prophet deprives the guilty city of the last support for its hope: the confidence in its fortifications and its numerous population. The following description is again intended to be ironic. In view of the long siege, the prophet advises them to take every precaution to keep the enemy out of the gate. The first need is water. Furthermore, she must strengthen the city wherever possible. To this end she has to work with clay and turn it into stones. A supply has to be made to close the gaps that the enemy makes.

Nineveh Completely Destroyed

Despite all measures, the enemy will burn the city with fire. Also the sword of the enemy will do its devastating work. The result will be that it will look as if a plague of locusts has hit the city. Where locusts have been rooting around, everything has been eaten away and there is nothing green left.

The call to multiply like the locusts is again ironic. The Assyrians have constantly expanded. Now that this expansion has come to a definitive end, this call sounds like a mockery.

All Trade Is Gone

The increase in the number of traders is like the multiplication of the locusts of the previous verse. Nineveh is famous for its economic growth. She has even compared it with the stars in the sky. Because of the Tigris, Nineveh has a connection with the sea and therefore a great trading opportunity. Also because of this, the city has come to great prosperity. But everything the traders have gathered will be robbed. Those same locusts that serve as a symbol of their multiplication will disappear as soon as their prosperity is over. They will turn out to be ‘good-weather friends’.

Nineveh Disappeared From the Face of the Earth

Princes and the whole civil service, as numerous as the traders (Nah 3:16), will disappear without leaving a trace.

The way in which Nahum describes the judgment on Nineveh in Nah 3:15-17 shows that he is a word artist. The Assyrians built their empire by multiplying power, wealth and people in crowds like locusts, all for their own satisfaction. Now their empire is sinking as a victim of the self-interest they have pursued. Nothing is left of it, there is not even a trace of it. It is definitively lost.

Wealth is relative. It can just get wings and fly away (Pro 23:4-5). That is why we must look at it in the right way and deal with it in the right way. We use our earthly possessions in the right way if we use them with an eye to the future. What we give away for God’s kingdom is not lost, but is an investment that will pay off when Christ comes to establish His kingdom.

The Leaders Killed, the People Scattered

Nah 3:18-19 are addressed directly to the “king of Assyria”. He is the soul of the evil of Nineveh. In him all evil is concentrated and he is the executor of it. It is said to him that also the cohesion of the noble class – the “shepherds” or rulers and the “nobles” – collapses. Their fate is described with ironic ambiguity by Nahum. “Lying down” has the meaning of lying down dead (cf. Psa 76:6; Isa 56:10; Jer 51:39).

The shepherds of the king of Assyria only pastured themselves. They led the flock, the Assyrian people, into evil and scattered them. The mountains of northern Assyria will be filled with scattered inhabitants (cf. Num 27:17; 1Kgs 22:17; Zec 13:7). “He will come to his end, and no one will help him” (Dan 11:45).

Nineveh Is Irreparably Destroyed

The book ends (cf. Nah 1:15) with the reaction of those who hear of these events. About half a century after Nahum’s prophecy his prophecy was fulfilled. The city fell in 612 BC and was destroyed by the alliance of Medes and Babylonians. There will be joy over the destruction of Nineveh among all those who have suffered from her. And who did not suffer from her? But it will never happen again, because the “evil” that has “continually” passed on everyone has come to an end.