Albert Barnes Commentary Nahum 3

Woe to the bloody city—Literally, "city of bloods," that is, of manifold bloodshedding, built and founded in blood (Habakkuk 2:12; Jeremiah 22:13), as the prosperity of the world always is.

Murder, oppression, perversion of justice, war out of covetousness, and the oppression or neglect of the poor make it "a city of bloods." Nineveh, or the world, is a city of the devil, as opposed to the "city of God."

For it is said: "Two sorts of love have made two sorts of cities: the earthly, love of self even to contempt of God; the heavenly, love of God even to contempt of self. The one glories in itself, the other in the Lord."

And also: "Amid the manifold differences of the human race—in languages, habits, rites, arms, dress—there are but two kinds of human society, which, according to our Scriptures, we may call two cities. One is of those who wish to live according to the flesh; the other of those who wish to live according to the Spirit."

Furthermore: "Of these, one is predestined to live forever with God; the other, to undergo everlasting torment with the devil."

Of this city, or evil world, Nineveh, the city of bloods, is the type.

It is all full of lies and robbery—Better, "it is all lie; it is full of robbery" (rapine). "Lie" includes all falsehood—in word or act, denial of God, hypocrisy; toward man, it speaks of treachery and treacherous dealing, in contrast with open violence or rapine.

The whole being of the wicked is one lie, toward God and man: deceiving and deceived; leaving no place for God who is the Truth; seeking through falsehood things which fail.

Man loves vanity and seeks after leasing (Psalms 4:2). All were gone out of the way. A commentator (Alb.) notes: "There were none in so great a multitude, for whose sake the mercy of God might spare so great a city."

It is full, not so much of booty as of rapine and violence. The sin remains when the profit is gone.

Yet it does not cease, but perseveres to the end; the prey departs not; they will neither leave the sin, nor will the sin leave them; they neither repent nor are weary of sinning.

Avarice especially gains vigor in old age and grows by being fed. The prey departeth not, but continues as a witness against it, as a lion’s lair is defiled by the fragments of his prey.

The noise (literally, “voice”) of the whip — There is cry against cry; the voice of the enemy, brought upon them through the voice of the oppressed. Blood has a voice which cries to heaven (Genesis 4:10); its echo or counterpart, as it were, is the cry of the destroyer.

All is urged on with terrific speed. The chariot-wheels quiver in the rapid onset; the chariots bound, like living things; the earth echoes with the whirling swiftness of the speed of the cavalry.

The prophet within, with the inward ear and eye which hears the mysteries of the Kingdom of God (Matthew 13:11, Matthew 13:16) and sees things to come, as they shall come upon the wicked, sees and hears the scourge coming. The words in Hebrew are purposely chosen with rough “r” sounds: רעשׁ ra‛ash — דהר dâhar — מרקדה m^eraqēdâh — a great noise, impetuously; and so he describes it as present.

Wars and rumors of wars are among the signs of the Day of Judgment. The “scourge,” though literally relating to the vehement onset of the enemy, suggests to the thoughts the scourges of Almighty God, with which He chastens the penitent, punishes the impenitent; the wheel, the swift changes of man’s condition in the rolling-on of time. O God, make them like a rolling thing (Psalms 83:14).

The horseman lifts up – Rather, “leading up: the flash of the sword, and the lightning of the spear.” Thus, there are, in all, seven inroads, seven signs, before the complete destruction of Nineveh or the world; as, in Revelation, all the forerunners of the Judgment of the Great Day are summed up under the voice of seven trumpets and seven vials.

Rup.: “God shall not use horses and chariots and other instruments of war, such as are here spoken of, to judge the world. Yet, as is just, His terrors are foretold under the name of those things with which this proud and bloody world has sinned. For so all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword” (Matthew 26:52).

“They who, abusing their power, have used all these weapons of war, especially against the servants of God, shall themselves perish by them, and there shall be no end of their corpses, for they shall be corpses forever: for, dying by an everlasting death, they shall, without end, be without the true life, which is God.” And there is a multitude of slain. Death follows on death. The prophet views the vast field of carnage, and everywhere he encounters only some new form of death: slain, carcasses, corpses. These are in multitudes, an oppressive heavy number, without end, so that those still living stumble and fall upon the carcasses of the slain. So great the multitude of those who perish, and such their foulness; but what foulness is like sin?

Because of the multitude of the whoredoms of the well-favored harlot - There are “multitudes of slain” because of the “multitude of whoredoms” and love of the creature instead of the Creator. So to Babylon Isaiah says, “they (loss of children and widowhood) shall come upon you in their perfection for the multitude of your sorceries, for the great abundance of your enchantments” (Isaiah 47:9). The actual use of “enchantments,” for which Babylon was so infamous, is not elsewhere attributed to the Assyrians. But neither is the word elsewhere used figuratively; nor is Assyria, in its intimate relation to Babylon, likely to have been free from the longing, universal in paganism, to obtain knowledge about the outcome of events that would affect her.

She is, by a rare idiom, entitled “mistress of enchantments,” having them at her command as instruments of power. Mostly, idolatries and estrangement from God are spoken of as “whoredoms,” only in respect of those who, having been taken by God as His own, forsook Him for false gods.

But Jezebel too, of whose offenses Jehu speaks under the same two titles (2 Kings 9:22), was a pagan. And such sins were only part of that larger, all-comprehending sin: that man, being made by God for Himself, when he loves the creature instead of the Creator, divorces himself from God. Of this sin, world empires such as Nineveh were the concentration.

Their existence was one vast idolatry of self and of “the god of this world.” All means—art, fraud, deceit, protection of the weak against the strong (2 Kings 16:7–9; 2 Chronicles 28:20–21), promises of good (Isaiah 36:16–17)—were employed, together with open violence, to absorb all nations into it.

The sole end of all this was to form one great idol-temple, of which the center and end was man—a rival worship to God, that would enslave all to itself and the things of this world. Nineveh and all conquering nations used fraud as well as force, enticed and entangled others, and so sold and deprived them of freedom .

Nor are people less sold and enslaved because they have no visible master. False freedom is the deepest and most abject slavery. All sinful nations or persons extend to others the infection of their own sins.

But, chiefly, the “wicked world,” arrayed in manifold ways with fair forms and “beautiful in the eyes of those who will not think or weigh how much more beautiful the Lord and Creator of all,” spreads her enticements on all sides: “the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eye, and the pride of life,” “her pomps and vanities,” worldly happiness and glory and majesty, and ease and abundance. In this way, she deceives and sells mankind into the power of Satan.

It is called “well-favored” (literally, good of grace) because the world possesses a real beauty; indeed, “unless there were a grace and beauty in the things we love, they could not draw us to them.” They have their beauty because they are from God; they become deformed, then, when “things hold us back from God, which, unless they were in God, would not exist at all.”

We deform them if we love them for our own sakes, not in Him, or for the intimations they give of Him:

“Praise given to foul things has an intensity of blame. It is as if one were to speak of a skilled thief, or a courageous robber, or a clever cheat. So although he calls Nineveh a well-favored harlot, this will not be for her praise (far from it!), but conveys the heavier condemnation. Just as such people, when they wish to attract, use flattering words, so Nineveh was a skilled craftsman of evil deeds, well equipped with means to capture cities and lands and to persuade them to do what pleased her.”

She sells not only nations but families, drawing mankind after her, both as a mass and one by one, so that scarcely any escape.

The adultery of the soul from God is the more grievous, the nearer God has brought anyone to Himself; it is worse in priests than in the people, in Christians than in Jews, in Jews than in pagans. Yet God espoused mankind to Himself when He made them. His dowry was the gifts of nature. If this is adultery, how much more grievous it is when one is betrothed by the Blood of Christ and endowed with the gift of the Spirit!

Behold I am against you, says the Lord of Hosts—Jerome comments: “I will not send an Angel, nor give your destruction to others; I Myself will come to destroy you.” Cyril adds: “She does not have to do with man, or war with man: He who is angered with her is the Lord of hosts. But who would meet God Almighty, who has power over all, if He would war against him?”

In the Medes and Persians, it was God who was against them. Behold I am against you—literally, “toward you.” It is a new thing which God was about to do. Behold! God in His long-suffering had seemed to overlook her. Now, He says, I am toward you, looking at her with His all-searching eye, as her Judge.

Violence is punished by suffering; deeds of shame by shame. All sin is a whited sepulchre, fair without, foul within.

God will strip off the outward fairness and lay bare the inward foulness. The deepest shame is to lay bare what the sinner or the world veiled within. I will discover your skirts, that is, the long-flowing robes which were part of her pomp and dignity, but which were only the veil of her misdeeds.

Through the greatness of your iniquity have your skirts been discovered, says Jeremiah in answer to the heart’s question, “Why have these things come upon me?” Upon your face, where shame is felt, the conscience of your foulness shall be laid bare before your face, your eyes, your memory continually, so that you shall be forced to read in it whatever you have done, said, or thought.

I will show the nations your nakedness, that all may despise, avoid, take example by you, and praise God for His righteous judgments upon you.

The Evangelist heard much people in heaven saying Alleluia to God that He hath judged the whore which did corrupt the earth with her fornication (Revelation 19:1–2). And Isaiah says, They shall go forth and look upon the carcasses of the men that hath transgressed against Me (Isaiah 66:24).