All your fortresses are like fig trees with first-ripe figs — if shaken they fall into the mouth of the eater.
Nahum pictures ripe figs dropping straight into an open mouth. He is describing the fortresses of the greatest military power of his day. What happens to human strength when God moves against it?
The ease of the fall
Nineveh's forts would give way at a touch. One commentator follows the argument from verse 11 on:
William KellyFrom verse 11 the prophet turns to Nineveh once more. He declares that she must fare no better... Indeed Nineveh should fall more easily still, as verses 12 and 13 say... Prepare as they might — and the crisis called for it — fire and sword should take their course over the doomed city. Merchants, princes, officials, nobles, people — all should vanish.
Why "first ripe" figs
The comparison turns on a detail of the tree. Fig crops do not all ripen at once:
Morrish Bible DictionaryThe trees bear figs at different times, so we get the expressions "first-ripe figs" and also "untimely figs." Nahum 3:12; Revelation 6:13.
The warning of Thebes
Just before this verse, Nahum sets Nineveh beside another famous capital — one the Assyrians themselves had ruined:
William KellyVerses 8-10 set out, as a warning to Nineveh, the terrible desolation of the famous No-Amon. This was neither Alexandria nor Egypt, but Thebes with its hundred gates. The warning cut deeper because the Assyrians themselves had ravaged it, both before the prophet's days and later... "Are you better than Thebes that sat by the Nile, with water around her, her rampart a sea, and water her wall? Cush was her strength; Egypt too, and that without limit; Put and the Libyans were her helpers. Yet she became an exile; she went into captivity."
Walls, frontiers and armies
One writer states the principle behind the picture:
W. W. FeredayGreat fortifications, strong natural frontiers, and every possible build-up of military force will be worthless when the day of the Lord opens. He is wiser and stronger than men. Everything will collapse before Him.
Why judgment fell on Assyria
Nineveh does not fall at random. William Kelly gives the reason:
William KellyThe Assyrians carried out God's judgment on Israel. But they did it in a way that insulted God Himself, not merely chastened His guilty people. So they must be prepared for their own doom... The Lord does judge Israel. And if He judges His own people, who at least had the knowledge of righteousness and much of the responsibility for it, how will the ungodly and the sinner appear?
A hundred and fifty years of patience
Fruit falls when it is ready, and the delay before the shaking is itself part of the message. Nineveh had heard a warning long before Nahum:
The Barker Minor ProphetsA hundred and fifty years before, God had sent warning to the guilty city by His servant Jonah. Nineveh received the message and turned to God in repentance. But the generation Jonah preached to had passed away, and Nineveh had gone back to her vileness and wickedness... God waited a century and a half before stepping in with judgment, and that proved He was longsuffering in grace. But the time for judgment was near, and those whom Nineveh had oppressed and afflicted could lift up their heads and rejoice.
Still ahead of us
One writer reads the fall of Nineveh as more than a closed chapter of history:
The Barker Minor ProphetsAll this is, no doubt, figurative of what will take place on a still larger scale at the end of the age. The "Assyrian" of the last days will be Israel's great foe. Nahum's prophecy undoubtedly looks on to his destruction... and to the deliverance of the people of God that follows.
Summary
- Ripeness — figs ripen at different times, and the first ones drop at a shake. That is Nahum's picture of Assyria's forts.
- Patience — the fruit took a century and a half to ripen after Jonah, and the long wait was grace, not indifference.
- Precedent — Thebes had water for a wall and endless allies. She still went into captivity, and Nineveh had no better claim.
- Collapse — when the Lord acts, walls, frontiers and armies count for nothing. No amount of preparation could save the city.
- Reach — the prophecy did its work in Nahum's day. Writers here see a fuller fulfilment ahead: the fall of Israel's last great foe, and the rescue of God's people.