Yet she became an exile; she went into captivity; her infants were dashed in pieces at the head of every street; for her honored men lots were cast, and all her great men were bound in chains.
Nahum points Nineveh to another world-famous city that had already fallen, where enemies killed the infants in the streets and cast lots for the nobles. The question is whether Nineveh had any reason to expect a better end.
The city held up as a mirror
The "she" of this verse is No-Amon, named in the verse before. Commentators name the city and date both its fall and Nineveh's own.
Arend RemmersChapter 3:8-10 mentions the destruction of No of Amon (Thebes), capital of Upper Egypt. This happened in 663 BC under Assurbanipal, king of the Assyrians. The Medes under Cyaxares and the Babylonians under Nabopolassar destroyed Nineveh in 612 BC. Nahum's time of work would lie between these two events.
That date gives the warning its edge. Nineveh had not just heard of this ruin from far off.
William KellyVerses 8-10 set forth as a warning to Nineveh the awful desolation of the famous No-Amon. This was not Alexandria, and not Egypt as a whole, but Thebes with its hundred gates. The warning was all the sharper because the Assyrians themselves ravaged the city, both before the prophet's days and later, until Cambyses made it suffer the full measure of Persian arrogance.
Strength and allies that could not save
The word "yet" carries the weight of the verse. The verses before list her defences and her allies. The verse then tells how she went into captivity anyway.
Arno Clemens GaebeleinThe strong men of Ethiopia, Egypt, Phut and Libya defended her, yet nothing could prevent her doom. She was carried into captivity, and her young children were dashed in pieces... Could Nineveh then hope to escape? The fate of No-Amon was a prophecy of Nineveh's fate. She was even more wicked than the Egyptian city.
Ruin that reached every rank
The verse climbs from the smallest to the greatest: infants in the street, then honoured men shared out by lot, then great men in chains. One writer sees the same sweep in Nineveh's own fall, from the top of society to the bottom.
William KellyMerchants, princes, governors, deputies, nobles, people — all would vanish, except those left behind only to sink beyond recovery.
Nineveh would fare no better
Nahum does not tell the story of Thebes for its own sake. It sets up the sentence he passes in verse 11.
William KellyThen from verse 11 the prophet addresses Nineveh once more, and declares that she must fare no better... Indeed Nineveh would fall even more easily, as verses 12 and 13 tell them.
What the ruins show
Nineveh's own fall left evidence in the ground, and what excavators found there fills out the picture.
H. H. SnellLook, for instance, at one of the finest cities the world ever knew, and one that existed very early after the flood — Nineveh. The modern excavations prove the magnificence of the past and the fallen greatness of Nineveh.
Why an earlier mercy did not hold
Nineveh had repented once, in the day of Jonah. Yet Nahum announces an end with no recovery. So what was that earlier turning worth?
J. G. BellettThe repentance in the day of Jonah, like the Reformation in the Christian world, 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 few people even in this distant day of Nahum. But Nineveh, as a city or kingdom, had gone back, like a washed pig to the mud, and had ripened herself for being cut off from the land.
Summary
- Precedent. No-Amon is Thebes. Assyria destroyed it in 663 BC, so Nineveh helped cause the very ruin now held up to her.
- Defences. Thebes had the strong men of Ethiopia, Egypt, Phut and Libya behind her. None of them could turn the judgment aside.
- Reach. The ruin reached infants in the street and nobles in chains alike. Nineveh's fall would sweep the same way: merchants, princes and people all vanish together.
- Verdict. Thebes is not told as a story. Nineveh "must fare no better," and would fall even more easily.
- Warning. The repentance under Jonah secured nothing for a city that went back to its old ways. One mercy is not a promise of the next.