And all who look at you will shrink from you and say, “Wasted is Nineveh; who will grieve for her?” Where shall I seek comforters for you?
Nineveh was the capital of Assyria and a fierce oppressor of God's people. Nahum pictures her fall: onlookers run instead of weeping. Why does a city that size die without a single mourner? And who left her with no comfort?
The Hand Behind the Ruin
Nineveh's collapse was not just bad politics. One writer traces it to God Himself, and to a change from the way He once treated this city.
William KellyNext comes the stern condemnation of Jehovah. He once spared Nineveh. Now He would have her know that this was no mere jealousy of others, but His own resolve to disgrace her — the city that had enjoyed herself so much and misled others.
Punishment That Fits the Crime
Why does nobody grieve for her? The answer lies in what Nineveh had been, and in the kind of punishment God chose for her.
Arno Clemens GaebeleinShe had acted the harlot, and now she receives a harlot's punishment: public exposure. Nations and kingdoms would stare at her, as the righteous God stripped her of everything and exposed her shame. No one would mourn the vile mistress of witchcraft.
Her sin did not stay at home. She worked to draw others in.
William KellyThis slaughter and ruin are traced to the idolatry of Nineveh, and to their efforts, all too successful, to entice others.
Mercy First
Nineveh's story did not begin with judgment. It began with a warning, and with a repentance that did not last.
H. P. BarkerA 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 died out. Nineveh had gone back to her vileness and wickedness, as a sow goes back to wallowing in the mud. God waited a century and a half before He stepped in with judgment, and that proved He was longsuffering in grace.
Another writer asks what that turning actually won for the city.
J. G. BellettThe repentance in the day of Jonah secured nothing, just as the Reformation in the Christian world secured nothing. It did not prepare Nineveh for glory, or for a place in the kingdom of God.
Comfort, But Not for Nineveh
This verse can find no comforter for Nineveh. Yet the prophet's own name means comfort, and that comfort was meant for someone else.
H. P. BarkerNahum was the Barnabas of the Old Testament, for his name means "consolation," and the great object of his prophecy was to comfort the sorrowing and downcast hearts of the people of God.
The City and Its Ruins
Nineveh was one of the great cities of the ancient world. Today diggers find her greatness buried in the ground.
H. H. SnellLook at one of the finest cities the world ever knew, a city that existed very early after the Flood — Nineveh. Historians tell us it ran about eighteen miles in length. A wall more than a hundred feet high surrounded it, wide enough to drive three chariots side by side, and decorated with fifteen hundred towers. The modern excavations prove the magnificence of the past and fallen greatness of Nineveh.
Still Ahead
Commentators read Nahum on two levels. One writer takes the fall of the ancient city as real history, and also as a pattern for something still to come.
J. N. DarbyNo doubt this had a historical fulfilment in the fall of Nineveh. But its full accomplishment will come when the Assyrian returns. I do not mean this city itself, which was destroyed, but the power that will hold the territory and inherit the pride of the land of Nimrod.
Summary
- Warned — God sent Jonah to this city, and it listened; then He waited about a century and a half before acting.
- Wasted — that response secured nothing lasting; the city went back to her old ways like a washed sow returning to the mud.
- Weighed — the sentence answers the sin: she played the harlot and enticed others, so God strips her and makes her a public spectacle.
- Willed — the ruin is God's own decision, not the spite of rival powers; He who once spared now resolves to disgrace her.
- Without comfort — the prophet whose name means comfort brings it to God's hurting people; for Nineveh there is no mourner at all.