its mistress is stripped; she is carried off, her slave girls lamenting, moaning like doves and beating their breasts.
Nahum announces the fall of Nineveh, the guilty city God once warned through Jonah. This verse turns on one disputed word, "Huzzab", and on what happens to a city that counted itself established.
The Name That Means "Established"
Where the ESV says "its mistress", other Bibles keep the Hebrew word "Huzzab" untranslated. One reading takes it as a name for the city itself, and the irony sits in the meaning:
Morrish Bible DictionaryThis seems to be a symbolical name for Nineveh. The word means 'established,' as the margin says. That which counts itself established shall be carried away captive. Nahum 2:7.
Another writer lists the options, then offers a third:
Arno Clemens GaebeleinThe word "Huzzab" has led to a great deal of discussion. Some claim that it is the name of the queen of Nineveh; others that it is a symbolical name of the city; archaeology throws no light upon its meaning. We believe the word "Huzzab" should be translated, "it is determined." Then the sentence reads, "It is determined; she is made bare and led away captive; and her maids moan like the doves, beating on their breasts."
The Sound of the Mourning
Older versions say the maids were "tabering" on their breasts, where the ESV says "beating their breasts". A Bible dictionary explains the older word:
Morrish Bible Dictionary'To tap or beat.' The word describes the Ninevite maids as they are led into captivity. They would mourn like doves tapping on their breasts. Nahum 2:7.
How the City Fell
The captives in this verse are led out because the river has already done its work. One writer traces how Nineveh's fall differed from Babylon's:
William KellyIn the case of Nineveh it was the waters of the river which dissolved the palace buildings and defences. No army crept up the emptied bed of the river to let the main body in through the gates. The opposite of this happened to Nineveh. The Euphrates was turned away from Babylon. But the Tigris burst its banks and destroyed a vast portion of Nineveh by flood. The very foundations, and not the walls only, were swept away. So the king summons his nobles in vain: they stumble in their march; they hurry to the wall; and the defence is prepared. The flood-gates are opened and the palace is dissolved.
A City Already Spared Once
Nineveh had repented once, when Jonah preached there. That earlier mercy sets the timescale of God's patience:
Other AuthorsA hundred and fifty years before, God had sent warning to the guilty city by His servant Jonah. Nineveh received the message and turned in repentance to God. But the generation to whom Jonah preached had passed away, and Nineveh had returned to her vileness and wickedness as a sow goes back to her wallowing in the mire. God had waited a century and a half before He acted in judgment, and that proved He was longsuffering in grace. But the time for judgment was at hand.
One writer weighs what that repentance was worth in the long run:
J. G. BellettThe repentance in the day of Jonah, like the Reformation in Christendom, secured nothing — it did not prepare Nineveh for glory, or for a place in the kingdom of God. It may have left some moral fruit in a small remnant in Nahum's later day. Even so, Nineveh as a city or kingdom had returned, like a washed sow, to her wallowing in the mire. She had ripened herself for being cut off from the land.
Nineveh as a Pattern
The prophets do not stop with the Assyrian of their own day:
J. G. BellettSurely the Assyrian is a symbolic or representative figure, as well as a real individual. Isaiah looks at him that way. And this was easy and natural. The Assyrian began the captivities of God's people. In his day he represented the hostility of the earth, the hostility of the Gentile world, to God and His people. So the Spirit in the prophets sees the Gentile in him. He looks along the view that then opened, to the very end of the earth's history under the Gentile, the man of the world. Then the full and ripened wickedness of man will call out the closing, clearing judgments of God.
Summary
- Established. Some read the disputed word "Huzzab" as a name for Nineveh meaning "established". What counts itself established is what goes into captivity.
- Determined. Others read it as the queen's name, or as the words "it is determined". Commentators differ, and archaeology settles nothing.
- Dissolved. The river did the work. The Tigris burst its banks, the palace dissolved, and even the foundations were swept away.
- Doves. The maids mourn like doves, tapping on their breasts — the sound of a city being led away captive.
- Delayed, not cancelled. God waited a century and a half after Jonah. The reform secured nothing lasting, and the judgment came. The prophets read that ending as a picture of the closing judgments of God.