Previous article in this series: March 2025, p. 202

Thou also shalt be drunken: thou shalt be hid, thou also shalt seek strength because of the enemy. All thy strong holds shall be like fig trees with the firstripe figs: if they be shaken, they shall even fall into the mouth of the eater. Behold, thy people in the midst of thee are women: the gates of thy land shall be set wide open unto thine enemies: the fire shall devour thy bars. Draw thee waters for the siege, fortify thy strong holds: go into clay, and tread the morter, make strong the brickkiln. There shall the fire devour thee; the sword shall cut thee off, it shall eat thee up like the cankerworm: make thyself many as the cankerworm, make thyself many as the locusts. Thou hast multiplied thy merchants above the stars of heaven: the cankerworm spoileth, and flieth away. Thy crowned are as the locusts, and thy captains as the great grasshoppers, which camp in the hedges in the cold day, but when the sun ariseth they flee away, and their place is not known where they are. Thy shepherds slumber, O king of Assyria: thy nobles shall dwell in the dust: thy people is scattered upon the mountains, and no man gathered them. There is no healing of thy bruise; thy wound is grievous: all that hear the bruit of thee shall clap the hands over thee: for upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually?—Nahum 3:11-19

The last verses of Nahum begin with “thou also,” God telling Nineveh that what happened to Thebes would also happen to Nineveh and her citizens. Nineveh’s end would in fact be more complete than that of Thebes. The ruins of the Egyptian city still stand as a monument to her greatness and are a major tourist attraction today, but no trace of Nineveh could be found until recent times when some of the ruins of Nineveh were discovered and excavated.

God’s judgment, however, continues to be fulfilled in that much of what was found at Nineveh and other Assyrian cities was carried off to the world’s museums, especially the British Museum in London, and some of what remained has been blown up, bulldozed, stolen, or sold by ISIS, the radical Muslim group that controlled for a time what used to be the kingdom of Assyria. Nevertheless, the remains of Nineveh have never been much more than piles of dirt.

Verses 11 through 13 are a series of five figures describing Nineveh’s weakness in the face of the Lord’s coming judgments. Robertson describes them thus:

• like a staggering drunk
• like a panicked fugitive
• like a trembling fig tree
• like a feeble woman
• like a city with gates thrown open.1

The figures all show Nineveh’s helplessness but each has its own emphasis. The first figure, comparing Nineveh to a drunken man fallen into a roadside ditch and lost from view, includes the first two statements of verse 11: “Thou also shalt be drunken: thou shalt be hid.” It prophesies Nineveh’s helplessness in the face of her enemies, something that would have been incredible in the days of Nahum, when Nineveh and Assyria, under the leadership of Ashurbanipal had just returned from the siege and conquest of Thebes.

The second figure describes the effect of Nineveh’s fall on her king and citizens, a word of God that was fulfilled literally in her last (uncrowned) king who, having claimed the throne after the reigning king burned himself and his servants in the palace of Nineveh, fled to Harran to try to organize some resistance to the Babylonian armies, but who was killed by the Babylonians there. His name, almost the only thing known of him, was Ashur-uballit II.

The third figure, verse 12, describes how easily the cities of Nineveh would fall to the Babylonians, who would be like an animal devouring figs as they fell from the tree in a wind storm: “all thy strong holds shall be like fig trees with the firstripe figs: if they be shaken, they shall even fall into the mouth of the eater.” Mane, Sahiri, Balihu, names all but unknown to history, as well as Nimrud, Akkad, Assur, Erech, and other cities mentioned in Genesis 10:10-12, would all be devoured.

The figure of firstripe figs reminds the hearers and readers of Nahum’s prophecy of God’s judgment in Nineveh’s downfall. In His sight Nineveh was ripe for judgment and that judgment would come, as will the judgment of this present creation when even the stars will fall as figs (Rev. 6:13).

Nineveh’s weakness at the time of her downfall is the subject of the fourth figure (v. 13a), where she and her people, especially her soldiers, are compared to a weak woman: “Behold, thy people in the midst of thee are women.” As Robertson points out, in spite of the efforts of the feminist movement to deny it, the testimony of Scripture is that women are weaker than men (1 Pet. 3:7), especially in battle, and Nineveh would find herself weak indeed.

The fifth figure depicts Nineveh as a city with her gates wide open to the enemy (v. 13b). If the historical accounts of Nineveh’s fall are accurate, the gates themselves would not be open, but nearly two miles of Nineveh’s walls would be as a result of the flooding of the Tigris River, allowing her enemies to walk unhindered into the city. Indeed, not only Nineveh but the whole land of Assyria would be open to her enemies and much of Nineveh would be burned with fire.

Nahum 3:14 is similar to chapter 2:5, both of which describe the futility of Nineveh’s efforts to defend herself against God’s judgments. Nahum 3:14, however, is a mocking call to Nineveh to attempt her defense: “Draw thee waters for the siege, fortify thy strong holds: go into clay, and tread the morter, make strong the brickkiln.” The reference to clay, mortar, and brickkiln refers to the fact that Nineveh and other cities of the Fertile Crescent, palaces, temples, walls and houses were built of mud bricks. God says to Nineveh, “Rebuild, repair, strengthen, fortify: it is all in vain.”

Nahum’s words remind us of Psalm 33 and its versification:

Jehovah from His throne on high
Looks down with clear and searching eye
On all that dwell below;
And He that fashioned heart and mind
Looks ever down on all mankind,
The works of men to know.

Not human strength or mighty hosts,
Not charging steeds or war-like boasts
Can save from overthrow;
But God will save from death and shame
All those who fear and trust His Name,
And they no want shall know.2

Verses 15-17 compare both the Babylonians and the Ninevites to insects, three of which are mentioned: the cankerworm, the locust, and the great grasshopper. The cankerworm may be a kind of locust (it is described as flying away), but whatever it was, it is always a picture of devouring judgment. There may have been a plague of locusts in Assyria, part of God’s judgment on her, but it is the Babylonians, with fire and sword who are being compared to cankerworms and locusts. They would eat up Nineveh and all her wealth like a cloud of locusts.

It is interesting that verse 16 makes reference to Nineveh’s merchants, as does Revelation 18. The merchants are mentioned because there are really only two Gods whom men serve, the true God or Mammon. Nineveh had plundered the nations in the service of Mammon, but now her treasures, her wealth, her merchandise would disappear like the green grass during a plague of locusts. The one true God would show that Mammon was no god. He would show that Nineveh’s worship of Mammon was vanity and lies.

Having described the Babylonians and their allies as devouring insects, verse 17 describes the Ninevites, especially the kings and captains, with the same figure: “Thy crowned are as the locusts, and thy captains as the great grasshoppers, which camp in the hedges in the cold day, but when the sun ariseth they flee away, and their place is not known where they are.” The kings and captains, men like Sennacherib and Rabshakeh, victors in so many battles and proud of their conquests would be gone and the citizens of Nineveh would be left defenseless.

Robertson describes the phenomenon of Nahum 3:17 as common to the Near East:

Huddled en masse, grasshoppers coat leaves and branches along a hedge on a cloudy, cold day. But the moment the sun warms their cold-blooded shells, they flee away; and their place is not known! They leave not a trace of their previous presence.3

“Where are they,” Nahum asks? Where are Sargon, killed in battle, Sennacherib, murdered by his own sons, foul-mouthed Rabshakeh, great Shalmaneser, Esarhaddon, Ashurbanipal, in the hour of Nineveh’s need? The last king to rule in Nineveh burned himself and his servants to death in the palace: what help was he to Nineveh in her peril? Like grasshoppers warmed by the sun they all vanished, as will all those who trust in chariots and horses.

Verse 18 is Assyria and Nineveh’s epitaph, an epitaph similar to great Babylon’s in Revelation 18, “And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird” (Rev. 18:2). Fallen and gone forever, that was Nineveh, as it will be for all the kingdoms of this world when at the end even their memory is gone.

Nineveh’s shepherds are her leaders and their slumber is the long sleep of death. Her nobles are dust, neither their bones nor their graves to be found. The Assyrian peoples were so thoroughly scattered by the Babylonians that there is no people today who can trace their origins to the Assyrians. Assyria’s vaunted power, conquests, wealth, and great kings are no more, their only memory a few mounds in the Fertile Crescent and a few broken objects in the world’s museums.

Her bruise, the work of God Almighty, would never be healed, not again after she repented in the days of Jonah. Her wound was to the death and could not be salved and bandaged. The rumor (bruit) of her demise and the cheering of those who suffered under her oppression would never be stilled. That is verse 19. The “never” of Nineveh’s disappearance, however, refers not only to the fall and destruction of that ancient city but to the fall of all the kingdoms of this world.

Nahum 3:19 is an Old Testament echo of Revelation 18:21-24:

And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all. And the voice of harpers, and musicians, and of pipers, and trumpeters, shall be heard no more at all in thee; and no craftsman, of whatsoever craft he be, shall be found any more in thee; and the sound of a millstone shall be heard no more at all in thee; And the light of a candle shall shine no more at all in thee; and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee: for thy merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived. And in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth.

Yet here in this description of Nineveh’s incurable wound and bruise the prophet comes closest in these final chapters to preaching the gospel of grace and prophesying the coming of a Savior, for there is healing for spiritual bruises and wounds, though Nineveh did not find it again. “He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed” (Is. 53:5). There is an end of the kind of wickedness that Nahum describes, but only in Him, and that requires an overthrow of violence, depravity, and lies that can be accomplished only by grace and that will be greater than Nineveh’s overthrow.

Surely when Nahum prophesied in chapter 1:15 of Him that brings good tidings and publishes peace, he was thinking of Isaiah’s words, who had prophesied not long before and who also spoke of good tidings and peace. Surely in speaking of Nineveh’s incurable wound and bruise, he was thinking of Him who was delivered for our offenses and raised again for our justification. In Him alone we have not only deliverance from Nineveh’s oppression but from the sins that brought down on Israel and us the oppression and chastisement we deserve, and ever so much more. The Great Physician alone is able to cure the incurable and to provide balm for every wound. Knowing our own wounds are as incurable as Nineveh’s, we fly to Him in faith and find healing, peace, everlasting righteousness, and blessedness. If we do not, we are no better off with our accomplishments, conquests, wealth, and strength than Nineveh. Indeed, we will then perish as did Nineveh, for we have Nineveh, each of us, in our hearts.

1 O. Palmer Robertson, The Books of Nahum, Habakkuk and Zephaniah (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1990), 118.
2 The Psalter (2024 ed.). #33a, stanzas 7, 8.
3 Robertson, The Books of Nahum, Habakkuk and Zephaniah, 126.