Nahum 3:13

There is no need to dwell in detail on the various forms of Nineveh's wickedness brought here before the mind of the prophetic Spirit. "You also will be drunken; you will go into hiding; you will seek refuge from the enemy. All your fortresses are like fig trees with first-ripe figs — if shaken they fall into the mouth of the eater. Behold, your troops are women in your midst. The gates of your land are wide open to your enemies; fire has devoured your bars." So great would Nineveh's weakness be when the hour struck for her doom.

Isaiah uses the same figure for weakness and fear in the nation of Egypt: "In that day the Egyptians will be like women, and tremble with fear before the hand that the LORD of hosts shakes over them" (Isa. 19:16). "Woman" as a figure of unmanly weakness also occurs in Isa. 3:12; Jer. 51:30; Nahum 3:13.

The gates of the land would be left open for their enemies. … Fire is spoken of several times, and the excavations at the ruins of Nineveh give ample proof that fire did its destructive work. … The ruins show how complete and lasting God's judgment on the guilty city was.

Prepare as they might — and the crisis called for it — fire and sword would take their course over the doomed city. "Draw water for the siege; strengthen your forts; go into the clay; tread the mortar; take hold of the brick mould!" Merchants, princes, satraps, viceroys, nobles, people — all would vanish, except those left only to sink beyond recovery.

If God allowed the total devastation and ruin of Jacob, it was because the time of judgment had come — a judgment that would not stop there. He began, no doubt, at His own house, but would He stop there? No. What, then, would be the end of the enemies of God's people, if He no longer tolerated evil in His own people? Let Nineveh now defend herself, if she could. But no. That den of lions would be invaded, and the young lions destroyed and unable to defend themselves. … The strongholds of the Assyrians would be like figs that fall at the first shaking, and their people, without strength, would be only as women. The ruin would be complete. Fire would devour them.

Like Babylon afterwards, Nineveh is never to reappear as a capital city. But the kind of power that prevailed in the Assyrian and Babylonian monarchies will each have its representative in the last days. At that time the order will be exactly the reverse, as prophecy shows, of what it was in history. And this is a very important way of showing how completely mistaken it is to think that Babylon and Nineveh belong only to the past.

No doubt, this had a historical fulfilment in the fall of Nineveh. But its complete fulfilment will come when the Assyrian returns — I do not mean this city itself, which has been destroyed, but the power that will hold the territory and inherit the pride of the land of Nimrod.