Nahum 2 − Commentary
1 Nineveh, someone will come against you to scatter you! (So) guard your city. Watch the road! Strip for action and gather all your strength together!
2 The LORD will make Jacob splendid again, as splendid as Israel. Wasters have wasted them. And the wasters have destroyed their vines.
3 His soldiers have red shields. His men-of-war have scarlet uniforms. Their chariots flash like shining metal as they ride in them. They wave their spears in the air.
4 The chariots speed through the streets. They rush round the (city) squares. They look like torches of fire, like flashes of lightning.
5 (Nineveh’s king) sends for the special soldiers that he has picked. But they fall on their way (to him). They rush to the wall (of the palace). And they put in place the shields that protect it.
6 (But) the gates of the rivers are open wide. The palace falls down!
7 And they strip (the goddess) Huzzab and they carry her away. Her slave girls cry. As they beat their breasts, they make a noise like birds (make).
8 (And) Nineveh is like a pool of water. The water just drains away! ‘Stop! Stop!’ they shout, but nobody turns back.
9 Steal (their) silver. Steal (their) gold! (There is) no end to the treasure. (There are) heaps of precious things.
10 (They) robbed (it). They stole (from it). They took everything away (from it). (Every) heart was very afraid and (every) knee shook. Bodies could not keep still and every face became pale.
These verses describe the time when enemies seized Nineveh in 612 BC. But Nahum wrote the verses before that. Nowhere does the book describe Nahum as a prophet, but he was a prophet. He told people what God thought. And he told people what God would do. We need to know whom these verses are about. If we do not know that, these verses will confuse us. That is why our translation puts extra words in brackets (…). Not all Bible students agree, but this is a sensible way to make the meaning clear. So we have this:
Verse 1 God is warning Nineveh. Someone will attack the city, so its soldiers must be ready.
Verses 3-4 These verses describe the enemy. The enemy is the armies of Babylon. We say armies, because there were three of them: Scythians, Medes and Persians. Together we call them Babylon. They had red shields and uniforms. Scarlet is a colour very like red. Soldiers protected themselves with shields. Spears were long sticks with points on the end. They could kill an enemy. The soldiers rode in chariots.
Verse 5 The King of Nineveh sends for his best soldiers. They run to his palace. But many of them fall (or trip) on the way. The Hebrew Bible says ‘they rush to her wall’. We think that ‘her’ means the palace. The King of Nineveh lived in the palace. But maybe it was the temple where their goddess was. A goddess is a female god. There were many gods and goddesses in the temple at Nineveh also. One goddess was Ishtar, or Huzzab. The people in Assyria thought that she was goddess of the whole world. And they thought that she was the goddess of love.
Verse 6 They had built the city called Nineveh on a river. It was a river that flowed into the River Tigris. At this time, rains made the rivers flood. The flood knocked down part of Nineveh’s wall. Nahum prophesied that this would happen. He said, ‘the gates of the rivers are open wide.’ It means that the floods in the rivers made gates (holes) in the city’s walls. Soldiers from Babylon came in through these gates. The floods also knocked down buildings like the palace of the King of Nineveh.
Verse 7 So the soldiers from Babylon carry away Ishtar, or Huzzab. Her female slaves cry and they are very sad. They make noises like birds called doves.
Verse 8 The people in Nineveh flow away like water. The leaders shout ‘Stop!’ but nobody does stop! The people in Nineveh all run away.
Verses 9-10 Steal their silver and gold (their treasure) says the prophet. So they robbed it. ‘It’ means the capital of Assyria, called Nineveh. This made Assyria’s people very frightened. In the Hebrew Bible, there are just three words at the start of verse 10. The verse should start, ‘Robbed, stolen, taken’. This gives us an idea of the Hebrew poetry in the book of Nahum. Our English words have not so much poetry in them.
11 The place where lions sleep (has gone). The place where the young lions feed (has gone). (That was the place that) the lion and lioness went to. And the baby lions did not disturb anybody (there).
12 The lion tears because the baby lions need (food). He kills for his lioness. He fills his secret places with what he has caught. He fills these caves with bodies that he has torn.
13 Look, I am against you, says the LORD of everything! I will burn your chariots with (a lot of) smoke. The sword will eat up your young lions. I will take away the things that you catch in the world. Nobody will hear again the voice of the people that you send (to collect taxes).
These verses are a ‘taunt song’. This means that the prophet is laughing at Assyria with these words. Assyria is the lion in the song. The place where he slept has gone. The place where young lions fed has gone. Once that place was Nineveh and Assyria. Now it is nowhere! A lioness is a female lion. The lions and lionesses and the baby lions have gone because Nineveh and Assyria have gone. Babylon has destroyed them!
Verse 12 tells us what Assyria was like. Assyria’s soldiers tore and killed. They were very cruel to the people that they defeated. They took people away from their own countries … or ‘fills these caves with the bodies that he has torn’.
Verse 12 says ‘he’ because it tells us about a male lion. ‘The LORD of everything’ is a name for God. It means this: God is King of everything that we can see. And he is King of everything that we cannot see.