Albert Barnes Commentary Nahum 3:10

"Yet was she carried away, she went into captivity; her young children also were dashed in pieces at the head of all the streets; and they cast lots for her honorable men, and all her great men were bound in chains." — Nahum 3:10 (ASV)

Yet she was also carried away; literally, “She also became an exile band.” Her people were carried away with all the barbarities of pagan war. All those through whom she might recover were destroyed or scattered abroad: “the young,” the hope of another age, were cruelly destroyed (Isaiah 13:16; 2 Kings 8:12); “her honorable men” were enslaved ; and “all her great men” became prisoners. God’s judgments are executed step by step. Assyria herself was the author of this captivity, which Isaiah prophesied in the first years of Hezekiah when Judah was leaning on Egypt . This was repeated by all of the house of Sargon. Jeremiah and Ezekiel foretold fresh desolation by Nebuchadnezzar (Jeremiah 46:25–26; Ezekiel 30:14–16).

God foretold to His people, “I gave Egypt for your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for you” (Isaiah 43:3). The Persian monarchs, who fulfilled prophecy in the restoration of Judah, also fulfilled it in the conquest of Egypt and Ethiopia, both perhaps partly out of human policy.

But Cambyses’ wild hatred of Egyptian idolatry fulfilled God’s word. Ptolemy Lathyrus carried on the work of Cambyses, and the Romans carried on Ptolemy’s work. Cambyses burned its temples; Lathyrus destroyed its four- or five-story private houses; the Roman Gallus leveled it to the ground. A little later it was said of her, “she is inhabited as so many scattered villages.” Shortly after our Lord’s coming, Germanicus went to visit, not the city itself, but “the vast traces of it.” It lay “overwhelmed with its hundred gates” and utterly impoverished.

No was as powerful as Nineveh, and less an enemy of the people of God. For though God's people often suffered from Egypt, yet in those times they even trusted too much in its help . If, then, the judgments of God came upon No, how much more will they come upon Nineveh!

In type, Nineveh is the image of the world oppressing God’s Church, while No is rather the image of those who live for this life, abounding in wealth, ease, and power, and are forgetful of God. If, then, those were punished who took no active part against God and did not fight against God’s truth, yet still were sunk in the cares, riches, and pleasures of this life, what will be the end of those who openly resist God?