Nahumchapter 3
19 verses · Nahum · 663 to 612 BC · The Twelve
Key verse
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.
It stands in Woe to the bloody city, full of lies and plunder, verses 1 to 7.
The chapter
Chapter summary
'Woe to the bloody city! it is all full of lies and rapine.' The battle noise stacks syllable on syllable: the whip, the rattling wheels, prancing horses, bounding chariots, the charging horseman, flashing sword and glittering spear, and 'a great heap of corpses; and there is no end of the bodies.' Nineveh is arraigned as a sorceress and a harlot who sold nations, and will be publicly stripped before them. Then the historical argument: Thebes sat among the rivers with Ethiopia and Egypt for strength, and went into captivity all the same. Her fortresses are fig trees that drop their first-ripe fruit into the eater's mouth at a shake; her hurt has no assuaging.
Context
Prophecy · Nahum · Nahum overview
The world behind this chapter
Nahum 3The history
The chapter's argument turns on one comparison. "Art thou better than populous No?", No-Amon is Thebes, the great religious capital of Egypt on the Nile, protected by the river and allied with powerful neighbors. Ashurbanipal's army sacked it in 663 BC and carried off staggering plunder; the Assyrians recorded it themselves. Nahum's point is simple: you did that to a city stronger than you, in living memory. Look at yourself.
The rest of the history, and what it meant to them
The commercial jab is sharp too. Nineveh's merchants are compared to locusts that strip a field and then fly away. A capital that lived on trade and tribute would find its traders gone the moment it stopped paying.
The defenses are mocked with a specific detail: the strongholds are like fig trees with ripe fruit, shake them and the fruit falls into the eater's mouth. And "fire shall devour thy bars", the great gates of a Mesopotamian city were timber, barred and reinforced, and burning them was the standard way in.
The last line of the book is a question with no answer offered: "upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually?" Everyone clapped, is the implication.
One quiet postscript. Nineveh fell so completely that its location was forgotten and later travelers doubted the site, until excavations in the 1840s uncovered the palaces and the library under the mounds across the river from Mosul. "There is no healing of thy bruise" turned out to be exact.
What it meant to them
To Judeans this said that empires are judged by the same standard they applied to everyone else. Assyria had taught the region what conquest costs; the bill came back with its own name on it.
It was also, for a small nation, permission to stop being afraid. The thing Judah had feared its entire national life was going to be a mound of dirt with nobody left to mourn it.
Sources cited
- Austen Henry Layard, Nineveh and Its Remains (public domain)
- K. A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament
Where the chapter sits
Nahum 3 falls in Nineveh's siege and destruction (chapters 2–3). The attack described in vivid battle-poetry; the woe over the ‘bloody city’; the finality of her fall.
The bloody city. The woe over Nineveh; the city's fall announced.
Before it: The LORD's character and Nineveh's fall announced, chapters 1.
The whole shape of Nahum→The structure of this chapter
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
A. Woe to the bloody city, full of lies and plunder
1. (v. 1)
Nahum 3:1
“Woe to the bloody city - Literally, “city of bloods” , i. e., of manifold bloodshedding, built and founded in blood Hab 2:12; Jer 22:13, as the prosperity of the world ever is.”
2 more voices on this verseWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
Nahum 3:1
“Though hv, 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 kchs 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.”
John Calvin· Commentaries (1554)reformed
Nahum 3:1
“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.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Woe to the bloody city!: The chapter opens on the indictment the whole book has been building toward, the bloody city named outright after two chapters of siege and theophany. Full of lies and robbery, the prey that never departs, is the bench's summary of an empire built on plunder taken and kept, tribute in from every conquered nation and returned to none. The woe form itself, familiar from the prophets against Israel and Judah, is turned here on the empire that had crushed them both.
2. (vv. 2-3)
Nahum 3:2
“The reader is transported into the midst of the fight (compare Jer 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.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 more voice on this verse
Nahum 3:2
“The noise (literally, “voice”) of the whip - There is cry against cry; the voice of the enemy, brought upon them through the voice of the oppressed. Blood hath a voice which crieth Gen 4:10 to heaven; its echo or counterpart, as it were, is the cry of the destroyer. All is urged on with terrific speed. The chariot-wheels quiver in the rapid onset; the chariots bound, like living things; the earth echoes with the whirling swiftness of the speed of the cavalry.”
Nahum 3:3
“The horseman lifteth up - Rather, “leading up : the flash of the sword, and the lightning of the spear.” Thus, there are, in all, seven inroads, seven signs, before the complete destruction of Nineveh or the world; as, in the Revelations, all the forerunners of the Judgment of the Great Day are summed up under the voice of seven trumpets and seven vials.”
1 more voice on this verse
Nahum 3:3
“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.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
The noise of a whip: The assault is heard before it is seen, the whip, the rattling wheels, the prancing horses, the jumping chariots, each named sound stacked on the last until the noise becomes the attack itself. Then the sword and spear, the slain in a multitude, the corpses so many the survivors stumble over them, the same battle poetry the second chapter used carried here at its fullest pitch. The bench reads the piling of short clauses as the Hebrew's own device, sound made to match the chaos it describes.
3. (v. 4)
Nahum 3:4
“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.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 more voices on this verse
Nahum 3:4
“These were her whoredoms, like those of Tyre, Isa. xxiii. 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.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Nahum 3:4
“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.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
the multitude of the whoredoms: The cause behind the carnage is given as harlotry and witchcraft, the standard prophetic idiom for a power that draws nations into ruinous alliance and then sells them, the bench reading it as political and commercial seduction rather than a charge against any people as such. Well favoured names the attraction itself, the empire's wealth and culture as the lure that drew smaller nations into vassalage they could not escape. The witchcrafts stand beside the whoredoms as two names for one thing, control gained by deception rather than by open strength.
4. (vv. 5-7)
Nahum 3:5
“Behold I am against thee, saith the Lord of Hosts - Jerome: “I will not send an Angel, nor give thy destruction to others; I Myself will come to destroy thee.” Cyril: “She has not to do with man, or war with man: He who is angered with her is the Lord of hosts.”
1 more voice on this verse
Nahum 3:5
“I will treat thee not as a matron, but as a harlot whose shame is exposed; her gaudy finery being lifted up off her (Isa 47:2, 3). So Nineveh shall be stripped of all her glory and defenses on which she prides herself.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Nahum 3:6
“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.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Nahum 3:6
“And I will cast abominable filth upon thee,.... As dirt and dung, or any or everything that is abominable and filthy; and which is thrown at harlots publicly disgraced, and as used to be at persons when carted.”
Nahum 3:7
“All they that look upon thee shall flee from thee - through terror, lest they should share her plagues, as Israel did, when the earth swallowed up Korah, Dathan and Abiram; and they who “had been made rich by Babylon, stand ajar off, for the fear of her torment. All they who look on thee” Rev 18:15. She was set as a thing to be “gazed at.” He tells the effect on the gazers. “Each one who so gazed” at her should flee; one by one, they should gaze, be scared, flee (compare Psa 31:11; Psa 64:8).”
Behold, I am against thee: The sentence already given at 2:13 returns here as the chapter's own hinge, behold, I am against thee, saith the Lord of hosts, the Lord himself the party bringing the shame the empire spread on others back onto her. Discovering her skirts and showing her nakedness to the nations is the ancient penalty for the very harlotry just named, public exposure answering secret seduction. The result is total isolation, all that look on her flee, and the question who will bemoan her, whence shall I seek comforters for thee, is left standing unanswered until the book's own final verse answers it in full.
B. Are you better than No-amon? Your forts are ripe figs
1. (vv. 8-10)
Nahum 3:8
“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.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
3 more voices on this verse
Nahum 3:8
“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.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Nahum 3:8
“Art thou better than populous No,.... Or No Amon, a city in Egypt so called, not because the kings of Egypt were nursed and brought up there, as Jarchi and Abarbinel; see Pro 8:30 but from Ham the son of Noah, whose land Egypt was; or from Jupiter Ammon, worshipped there. No Amon signifies the mansion or palace of Ham, or Hamon; the Egyptians, as Herodotus says (h), call Jupiter by the name of Ammon.”
Nahum 3:8
“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.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Nahum 3:9
“Ethiopia and Egypt were her strength - Literally, “Egypt was strength , and Ethiopia, and boundless.” He sets forth first the imperial might of No; then her strength from foreign, subdued power. The capital is a sort of impersonation of the might of the state; No, of Egypt, as Nineveh, of Assyria. When the head was cut off or the heart ceased to beat, all was lost. The might of Egypt and Ethiopia was the might of No, concentrated in her. They were strength, and that strength unmeasured by any human standard.”
2 more voices on this verse
Nahum 3:9
“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.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Nahum 3:9
“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.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Nahum 3:10
“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.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 more voices on this verse
Nahum 3:10
“Yet was she carried away, she went into captivity,.... Not by Nebuchadnezzar; though this city was afterwards taken, and its inhabitants carried captive, by that monarch, as was foretold, Jer 46:25 but the prophet here does not predict an event to be accomplished, and instance in that, and argue from it, which could have no effect on Nineveh and its inhabitants, or be an example or terror to them; but refers to what had been done, a recent fact, and which they were well acquainted with.”
Nahum 3:10
“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.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Art thou better than populous No: No, populous No, is Thebes on the Nile, and the comparison is the chapter's historical anchor, since Nineveh's own armies under Ashurbanipal had sacked Thebes within living memory of Nahum's audience, a fall the prophet's hearers could verify rather than merely imagine. Her defenses were a river for a rampart and a sea for a wall, her allies Ethiopia, Egypt, Put and Lubim, strength that looked infinite and still failed, her children dashed and her great men bound and cast for by lot. The argument runs from the greater to the lesser precedent, if Thebes with such strength fell, Nineveh's own coming fall is no longer merely threatened but demonstrated.
2. (vv. 11-13)
Nahum 3:11
“Thou also - As thou hast done, so shall it be done unto thee.”
Nahum 3:12
“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.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Nahum 3:12
“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.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Thou also shalt be drunken: The comparison lands directly on Nineveh, thou also shalt be drunken, thou also shalt seek strength because of the enemy, the same fate that met Thebes named as her own future in the same breath. Her strongholds are figured as fig trees loaded with the earliest, softest fruit, shaken once and falling straight into the eater's mouth, an image of defenses that look formidable and give way at the first real pressure. Thy people in the midst of thee are women reads on the bench as a charge of lost courage rather than a slight on women as such, matched by the gates thrown open and the bars burned before the enemy has to force them.
C. Draw water for the siege: all who hear clap their hands
1. (vv. 14-15)
Nahum 3:14
“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.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Draw thee waters for the siege: The city is mockingly ordered to prepare for the siege it cannot survive, draw water, fortify the strongholds, tread the clay and make the brickkiln strong, every practical defense named in turn. The very next clause answers each order with its failure, there shall the fire devour thee, the sword shall cut thee off, the cankerworm eating her up as completely as the insect strips a field. Make thyself many as the cankerworm, as the locusts, closes the verse on an image the next two verses take up and turn against her, numbers that look like strength but vanish overnight.
2. (vv. 16-17)
Nahum 3:16
“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.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Nahum 3:16
“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.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Nahum 3:17
“Thy crowned men are as the locusts,.... Tributary kings, and hired officers, as some think, who might be distinguished by what they wore on their heads; or their own princes and nobles, who wore coronets or diadems; unless their religious persons are meant, their Nazarites and devotees, their priests; these were like locusts for their number, fear, and flight in time of danger, and for their spoil of the poor; and some locusts have been seen with little crowns on their heads, as those in Rev 9:7 "which had on their heads as it were crowns like gold".”
1 more voice on this verse
Nahum 3:17
“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.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Thou hast multiplied thy merchants: Her merchants outnumber the stars, her wealth built on trade across the whole ancient world, and the cankerworm image returns to strip even that away, the insect that spoils and simply flies off with nothing left behind to show for it. Her crowned officials and captains are locusts and grasshoppers camping in the hedges through the cold, gone the moment the sun rises and warms them into flight, leaving no one able to say where they went. The bench reads both verses together as one picture, an empire's apparent abundance and its armed strength alike proving to have no more staying power than an insect swarm.
3. (vv. 18-19)
Nahum 3:18
“Rather, "lie in death's sleep, having been slain" [JEROME] (Ex 15:16; Ps 76:6). shall dwell in the dust-- (Ps 7:5; 94:17). thy people is scattered--the necessary consequence of their leaders being laid low (1Ki 22:17).”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 more voice on this verse
Nahum 3:18
“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.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Nahum 3:19
“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.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 more voice on this verse
Nahum 3:19
“There is no healing of thy bruise,.... Made by the fatal blow given to the empire by the taking of Nineveh; the ruin of it was irreparable and irrecoverable; the city of Nineveh was no more, and the Assyrian empire sunk, and never rose again: or, "there is no contraction of thy bruise" (r); as when a wound is healed, or near it, the skin round about is wrinkled and contracted.”
Thy shepherds slumber: The book closes by naming the king of Assyria directly, his shepherds asleep, his nobles in the dust, his people scattered on the mountains with no one left to gather them, the same abandonment the locusts pictured now stated plainly of the throne itself. There is no healing of thy bruise answers the question left open at verse 7, no comforters are found because none exist to be found, the wound past any remedy. The last line turns outward to every nation that had felt Assyria's cruelty, all that hear the report clap their hands, for her wickedness had passed over all of them continually, the burden ending not in triumph but in the relief of the whole world she had oppressed.
This page carries no textual note on Nahum 3. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes, Notes on the Old Testament; Carl Friedrich Keil, The Twelve Minor Prophets; Edward Bouverie Pusey, The Minor Prophets: A Commentary; John Calvin, Commentaries on the Twelve Minor Prophets; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.
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