Nahum 3:10

(Verse 8 and following) Are you better than Amon ((Vulgate: Alexandria of the nations)), who lived by the rivers? Her water was like a sea, her walls were like fortifications, Ethiopia and Egypt were her strength, and there was no end to her wealth; Africa and Libya were her allies. But she too was led into captivity, her young children were dashed to pieces at every street corner, her nobles were cast lots upon, and all her dignitaries were bound in chains.

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.

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.

Yet was she - (also ) carried away, literally, “She also became an exile band,” her people were carried away, with all the barbarities of pagan war. All, through whom she might recover, were destroyed or scattered abroad; “the young,” the hope of another age, cruelly destroyed (see Hos 14:1-9; Isa 13:16; 2Ki 8:12); “her honorable men” enslaved (see Joe 3:3), “all her great men prisoners.” God’s judgments are executed step by step. Assyria herself was the author of this captivity, which Isaiah prophesied in the first years of Hezekiah when Judah was leaning upon Egypt (see Isa 20:1-6). It was repeated by all of the house of Sargon. Jeremiah and Ezekiel foretold fresh desolation by Nebuchadnezzar Jer 46:25-26; Eze 30:14-16. God foretold to His people, “I gave Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee” Isa 43:3; and the Persian monarchs, who fulfilled prophecy in the restoration of Judah, fulfilled it also in the conquest of Egypt and Ethiopia. Both perhaps out of human policy in part. But Cambyses’ wild hatred of Egyptian idolatry fulfilled God’s word. Ptolemy Lathyrus carried on the work of Cambyses; the Romans, Ptolemy’s. Cambyses burned its temples ; Lathyrus its four-or five-storied private houses ; the Roman Gallus leveled it to the ground . A little after it was said of her , “she is inhabited as so many scattered villages.” A little after our Lord’s Coming, Germanicus went to visit, not it, but “the vast traces of it.” : “It lay overwhelmed with its hundred gates” and utterly impoverished. No was powerful as Nineveh, and less an enemy of the people of God. For though these often suffered from Egypt, yet in those times they even trusted too much to its help (see Isa. 30). If then the judgments of God came upon No, how much more upon Nineveh! […]