Nahum 3:16

(Verse 13 onwards) Behold, your people, women in your midst: the gates of your land will be opened wide to your enemies: fire will devour your bars. Draw water for the siege: build your fortifications, go into the mud, and trample: force the brick. There the fire will consume you; you will perish by the sword, you will be devoured like the chigoe: gather therefore like the chigoe: multiply like the locust. You have made more deals than there are stars in the sky: the chigoe has spread out and flown away.

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.

Thou hast multiplied thy merchants above the stars of heaven,....

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 Phœnicians carried its wares everywhere. Hence its merchandise is so much spoken of. the cankerworm spoileth, and fleeth away--that is, spoiled thy merchants.

quarantine:debris (2026-07-29) — unbalanced-curly-quotes

Thou hast multiplied thy merchants above the stars of heaven - Not numerous only but glorious in the eyes of the world, and, as thou deemest, safe and inaccessible; yet in an instant all is gone. The commerce of Nineveh was carried back to prehistoric times, since its rivers bound together the mountains of Armenia with the Persian gulf, and marked out the line, by which the distant members of the human family should supply each others’ needs. “Semiramis” they say , “built other cities on the Euphrates and the Tigris, where she placed emporia for those who convey their goods from Media and Paraetacene. Being mighty rivers and passing through a populous country, they yield many advantages to those employed in commerce; so that the places by the river are full of wealthy emporia.” The Phoenicians traced back their Assyrian commerce (and as it seems, truly) to those same prehistoric times, in which they alleged, that they themselves migrated from the Persian gulf. They commenced at once, they said , the long voyages, in which they transported the wares of Egypt and Assyria. The building of “Tadmor in the wilderness” 1Ki 9:18 on the way to Tiphsach (Thapsacus) the utmost bound of Solomon’s dominions (1Ki 5:4 1Ki 4:24), connected Palestine with that commerce. The great route for couriers and for traffic, extending for 1,500 or 1,600 miles in later times, must have lain through Nineveh, since, although no mention is made of the city which had perished, the route lay across the two rivers , the greater and lesser Zab, of which the greater formed the Southern limit of Nineveh. Those two rivers led up to two mountain-passes which opened a way to Media and Agbatana; and pillars at the summit of the N. pass attest the use of this route over the Zagros chain about 700 b.c. . […]