Nahum 3:14-19
3:14 a Get ready ... Strengthen: Nahum used sarcasm to stress that no amount of preparation would make the Assyrians able to withstand God’s wrath (note also the sarcastic tone of 2:11-13 b).3:15 c The Old Testament often uses locusts as a metaphor for armies (see Joel 2:1-11 d).
3:16 e Assyrian merchants had spread throughout the Near East like locusts, filling Nineveh with untold wealth. But just as locusts desire only to satisfy their insatiable appetites and then fly off, the merchants would take their goods and go in the time of Nineveh’s distress, leaving a needy populace behind.
3:18 f shepherds: With the leaders gone, Nineveh’s people would be scattered like sheep.
• lie dead (literally sleep; see John 11:11-14 g): Assyria’s leaders, asleep during Nineveh’s crisis, would sleep in death. By contrast, Israel’s Shepherd does not slumber (Ps 121:3 h), and he will gather Israel’s lost sheep (Jer 23:3 i; Ezek 36:35 j).
3:19 k Nineveh deserved destruction rather than healing. Although God had been patient with Nineveh in Jonah’s day (Jon 3:10 l), the Assyrians had returned to cruelty and would reap the harvest of their own evil (see Prov 11:16-19 m; Isa 66:5-6 n; Hos 8:7 o). Those who had suffered under Assyria’s cruelty would welcome this message with joy.
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