Nahum 3:1 - Exposition

The bloody city; literally, city of bloods , where Mood is shed without scruple (comp. Ezekiel 24:6 , Ezekiel 24:9 ; Habakkuk 2:12 ). The cruelty of the Assyrians is attested by the monuments, in which we see or read how prisoners were impaled alive, flayed, beheaded, dragged to death with ropes passed through rings in their lips, blinded by the king's own hand, hung up by hands or feet to die in slow torture. Others have their brains beaten out, or their tongues torn out by the roots, while the bleeding heads of the slain are tied round the necks of the living, who are reserved for further torture. The royal inscriptions recount with exultation the number of the enemies slain and of captives carried away, cities levelled with the ground, plundered, and burnt, lands devastated, fruit trees destroyed, etc. It is all full of lies; ὅλη ψευδής , "all lie". The Assyrians used treachery in furthering their conquests, made promises which they never kept, to induce nations to submit to their yoke. Such, doubtless, were those of Rabshakeh ( Isaiah 36:16 ). Rawlinson, "Falsehood and treachery … are often employed by the strong, as furnishing short cuts to success, and even, where the moral standard is low, as being in themselves creditable (see Thucyd; 3.83). It certainly was not necessity which made the Assyrians covenant breakers; it seems to have been in part the wantonness of power—because they 'despised the cities, and regarded no man' ( Isaiah 33:8 ); perhaps it was in part also their imperfect moral perception, which may have failed to draw the proper distinction between craft and cleverness" ('Ancient Monarchies,' 1.305). Robbery ; rather, rapine, or rending in pieces. The figure applies to the way in which a wild beast kills its prey by tearing it to pieces. So the three crimes of Nineveh here enumerated are bloodshed, deceit, and violence. In the uncertainty concerning the word (pereq). rendered "robbery," which only occurs m Obadiah 1:14 , where it means "crossway," the LXX . translates, ἀδικίας πλήρης , "full of unrighteousness." The Vulgate is correct, dilaceratione plena . The prey departeth not. They go on in the same way, gathering spoil into the city, never ceasing from this crime. The monuments continually record the booty that was brought to Nineveh. Septuagint, οὐ ψηλαφηθήσεται θήρα , which gives a sense contradictory to the text, "Prey shall not be handled."