Charles Ellicott Commentary Nahum 2:6

"The gates of the rivers are opened, and the palace is dissolved." — Nahum 2:6 (ASV)

The gates of the rivers. This verse is one of great importance. The account of Ctesias, preserved by Diodorus Siculus, states that for over two years the immense thickness of the walls of Nineveh baffled the besiegers' engineering skill. He further recounts that “in the third year, due to continual great storms, the Euphrates (sic), being swollen, inundated part of the city and overthrew the wall for a length of twenty stadia.” The king saw in this the fulfillment of an oracle, which had declared that the city should fall when “the river became an enemy to the city.” Determined not to fall into the hands of his enemies, he shut himself up with all his treasures in the royal citadel, which he then set on fire.

We believe that this account, though inaccurate in detail, may be regarded as based on a foundation of historical fact. So gigantic were the fortifications of Nineveh that, concerning those on the east where the city was most vulnerable to attack, Mr. Layard writes: “The remains still existing ... almost confirm the statements of Diodorus Siculus that the walls were a hundred feet high, and that three chariots could drive upon them abreast” (Nineveh and Babylon, p. 660). Against ramparts such as these, the most elaborate testudo of ancient times may well have been comparatively powerless. On the other hand, the force of a swollen river has often proved suddenly fatal to the strongest modern masonry.

It would be especially destructive where, as in the case of Nineveh, the inundated walls were of sun-dried brick or “clay-bat.” Thus, the fate of the city may well have been precipitated in accordance with the terse prediction of this verse.

The “gates of the rivers” (i.e., the dams that protected the Khausser, which ran through Nineveh, and the Tigris, which was outside it) are forced open by the swelling torrents, and then, suddenly, the city’s fate is sealed! Ramparts against which the battering-ram might have plied in vain are sapped at their very foundations; palace walls are undermined and literally “dissolve.” The besieger quickly takes advantage of the disaster, and (in the single word of Nahum 2:7) it-is-decided.

It is unnecessary to identify the specific “palace” that thus succumbs. Nor is it a reasonable objection that the palaces of Khorsabad and Kouyunjik, lying near the Khausser, bear the marks of fire, not water. If Nahum must have had a particular palace in mind, it can be fairly argued that water is not as evident an agent as its sister element, fire; indeed, nothing would conceal the damage from the inundation as effectively as the subsequent fires set by the victorious besieger.

Therefore, we understand the verb nâmôg, “dissolved,” in its literal sense of a solid substance dissolving through water action, not figuratively, as Dr. Pusey suggests, referring to the “dissolution of the empire itself.”