There will the fire devour you; the sword will cut you off. It will devour you like the locust. Multiply yourselves like the locust; multiply like the grasshopper!
Nahum 3:14 told Nineveh to draw water, repair her brickwork and brace for siege. God's answer is fire, sword and a swarm that strips a field bare — so can any wall or crowd stand when He has passed sentence?
Preparation Against a Decree
The prophet's instructions to fortify are not encouragement. They set up the verdict that follows.
Arno Clemens GaebeleinThe prophet's call to Nineveh is dramatic. Draw water for the siege. Get clay for brick to repair the breaches in the wall. But all would be useless, for the Almighty had decreed her downfall. The fire would devour the proud city, the sword cut them off. Let them be as numerous as the cankerworm. Make yourself as many as the locusts, which come in immense swarms. It will all be to no avail.
Nineveh's problem was never a shortage of walls or soldiers. The sentence falls on every class in the city.
William KellyPrepare as they might — and the crisis called for it — fire and sword should take their course over the doomed city. Merchants, princes, governors, deputies, nobles and common people should all vanish. Those left would remain only to sink beyond recovery.
The Locust Picture
Older translations call the insect in this verse a "cankerworm." A Bible dictionary identifies it.
Morrish Bible DictionaryThis is thought to be the 'hedge-chafer,' a kind of locust. It "spoils, or spreads itself out, and flees away." It eats a great deal of plant growth, and it pictures the enemies that would destroy Nineveh.
The same insect stands on both sides of the verse. It pictures the enemy who eats Nineveh bare. It also pictures Nineveh's own crowds, told to multiply like locusts — and told it will do them no good.
Fire, Lit From Inside
Nineveh did burn, and in the very place she had fortified. One writer points out whose hand lit it.
William KellyDo what they might, the prophetic sentence is, "There will the fire devour you." And history records exactly that: when the king found he could not defend himself, he set fire to the place himself. It was not the enemies who did it, as it was at Babylon, the Chaldean capital... Nineveh fell, not only never to rise again, but not even to survive in any measure. The hand that mainly set it burning was the unhappy prince's own. He saw there was no hope of escape. So he gathered his wives and concubines, his jewels, gold and silver, and every other valuable around him, and in desperation set fire to the whole.
Why the Sword Came
Why does the sword come at all? The chapter gives the reason.
William KellyThe prophet traces this carnage and ruin to the idolatry of Nineveh, and to their efforts — too successful — to draw others in. "And all for the countless whorings of the prostitute, graceful and of deadly charms, who betrays nations with her whorings, and peoples with her charms."
Nineveh had turned once, at Jonah's preaching. That earlier change did not settle her future.
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 remnant in this far later day of Nahum. But Nineveh, as a city or kingdom, had gone back like a washed sow to her wallowing in the mud. She had ripened herself for being cut off from the land.
A Judgment Larger Than One City
The fall of the ancient city is not the whole story.
J. N. DarbyThe ruin should be entire. Fire should devour them. No doubt this had a historical fulfilment in the fall of Nineveh. But its complete accomplishment will take place when the Assyrian returns. I do not mean this city itself, which is gone, but the power that will hold the territory and inherit the pride of the land of Nimrod.
Yet God's dealings with that region do not end in fire. One writer looks on to the coming age of blessing.
William KellyStill, there is this difference: Assyria will certainly have a place in the millennium, and a distinguished place — not Nineveh, but Assyria... The Lord will remember mercy in the middle of His judgment. Scripture names Egypt and Assyria in particular as having a leading place along with Israel in that day.
Summary
- Decreed — The call to fortify is irony. God had settled the outcome, so every wall and every brick was wasted work.
- Devoured — Fire, sword and locust say one thing three ways. Nothing is left standing and nothing is left to eat.
- Delivered by her own hand — The fire came from Nineveh's own desperate king, not from the army outside. The city never rose again.
- Deserved — The sentence rests on her idolatry, and on the nations she drew into it. Her turning under Jonah did not last.
- Deferred, not finished — Commentators see the full accomplishment still ahead in the returning Assyrian. Assyria itself will have a place in the age of blessing.