The river gates are opened; the palace melts away;
In the verse before, Nineveh's soldiers stumble as they rush to the wall. Here the blow falls — and it comes not from the army outside, but from the city's own river.
River gates, not city gates
Nahum does not say the gates of the city were opened. Commentators say the difference is the whole point:
Morrish Bible DictionaryNahum 2 concerns the city of Nineveh directly. God had let Jacob be disciplined and "emptied out"; but now God would deal with Nineveh. The city is urged to make good its defence, yet the river gates would open, and the palace would melt away. Here it is not the "gates of the city," as when Babylon fell, but "the gates of the rivers." This may refer to the Tigris and the canals that watered the city. The overflowing river, it is said, caused a breach in the sun-dried brick walls.
The exact reverse of Babylon's fall
Both capitals sat on a great river. In both, the river decided the outcome — but in opposite ways. One commentator sets them side by side:
William KellyAt Babylon it was a gate of the city that opened... The Persians entered the imperial city through the dried bed of the Euphrates, which they had turned into another channel. They killed the drunken guards and opened the doors to the rest of the army. But at Nineveh it was the waters of the river that dissolved the palace buildings and defences. No army crept quietly up an emptied river bed here and then let the main body in through the gates. The opposite happened. Persia turned the Euphrates away from Babylon; at Nineveh the Tigris burst its banks. It flooded a vast part of the city and destroyed it in other ways too. The very foundations, and not the walls only, were swept away.
Every preparation made, and all of it useless
In verse 5 the king musters his best men and they rush to the wall. Verse 6 undoes it all: the water works under the foundations, not over the walls:
Arno Clemens GaebeleinIn verse 5 the Assyrian king turns to his army. He sees the chariots dashing along the highways and broad streets that lead to the city. He counts his worthies, his generals and captains. The army, called out at short notice, hurried and stumbled along in disorder to reach the walls. Verse 6 was fulfilled when the river became a flood. It undermined the foundations of the walls, so the besiegers could get in.
What history records
The siege had already failed twice before the river settled it:
Morrish Bible DictionaryCyaxares, the king of Media, laid siege to the city with help from the Babylonians under Nabopolassar. At first his efforts came to nothing. The Assyrians drove him back again and again. Then reinforcements reached him, he overcame the Assyrian army, and shut it up inside the city. He next tried to wear the city down by blockade. For two years that failed. Then unexpected help came: an extraordinary rise of the Tigris swept away part of the walls and let the Medes in. The Assyrian king Saracus, in despair, burned himself in his palace.
Announced already in chapter 1
Nahum's opening chapter had already named the means. The same source notes an old saying that matched it:
Morrish Bible DictionaryDiodorus says an ancient prophecy held that Nineveh would not fall until the river became an enemy to the city. That happened in the third year of the siege, when the river partly overflowed it. Nahum's prophecy says, "with an overflowing flood he will make a complete end of the adversaries" (Nahum 1:8), and "the river gates are opened, the palace melts away" (Nahum 2:6). It was to be totally destroyed and not rise again.
Note: the older translation this writer used reads Nahum 1:8 as "an utter end of the place" — that is, of Nineveh itself.
Why this city
One writer reads Nineveh as standing for something wider than one city:
J. N. DarbyEgypt is the world in its natural condition, out of which the people have come. Babylon is corruption working through power, which enslaves the people. Nineveh is the arrogant glory of the world, and it recognises nothing but its own importance. It is the world as the open enemy of God's people, simply through its pride. She shall be judged like all the rest, and disappear for ever under the judgment of the Almighty.
Summary
- Gates. Nahum names river gates, not city gates. The breach comes through the Tigris and its canals.
- Reversal. At Babylon the attackers drained the river and walked in. At Nineveh the river rose and tore the foundations out. Same element, opposite method.
- Palace. The walls were sun-dried brick, and water dissolves them. What the king counted on in verse 5 is gone by verse 6.
- Foretold. Chapter 1 promised an overflowing flood. Chapter 2 names the gates it would come through. History records the Tigris doing it in the third year of the siege.
- Pride. Nineveh stands for a world that recognises nothing but its own importance. That pride is what the flood dissolved.