8 Are
you better than Thebes that sat by the Nile, with water around her, her rampart
a sea, and water her wall? 9 Cush was her strength; Egypt
too, and that without limit; Put and the Libyans were her helpers. 10 Yet she became
an exile; she went into captivity; her infants were dashed in pieces at the
head of every street; for her honored men lots were cast, and all her great men
were bound in chains. 11 You also will be drunken; you
will go into hiding; you will seek a refuge from the enemy. 12 All your
fortresses are like fig trees with first-ripe figs—if shaken they fall into the
mouth of the eater. 13 Behold, your troops are women in
your midst. The gates of your land are wide open to your enemies; fire has
devoured your bars. 14 Draw water for the siege;
strengthen your forts; go into the clay; tread the mortar; take hold of the
brick mold! 15 There will the fire devour you;
the sword will cut you off. It will devour you like the locust. Multiply
yourselves like the locust; multiply like the grasshopper! 16 You increased
your merchants more than the stars of the heavens. The locust spreads its wings
and flies away. 17 Your princes are like
grasshoppers, your scribes like clouds of locusts settling on the fences
in a day of cold— when the sun rises, they fly away; no one knows where they
are. 18 Your shepherds are asleep, O king of Assyria; your
nobles slumber. Your people are scattered on the mountains with none to gather
them. 19 There is no easing your hurt; your wound is
grievous. All who hear the news about you clap their hands over you. For upon whom has not come your unceasing
evil?
Thebes is actually No-Amon in Hebrew. It is
the Egyptian name for Thebes in Upper Egypt, named after the Egyptian sun-god
Amun. The prefix “No” means “belonging to.” The Egyptian god, Amon, was
represented as a human figure with the Rams head (Jer. 46:25; Eze. 30:14-16). The
defeat of Thebes at the hands of Assyria, described in Nahum 3:10 was a picture
to Assyria of what she would experience at the hands of Babylon. The Received
Text has the word, “populous.” If this is correct, as I assume it to be, it is
a further warning to Nineveh that Thebes’ large population did not save her
from destruction anymore then Nineveh’s large population would save her from
destruction.
Thebes was located near channels where the
Nile divides thus the city lay on both sides of the Nile River. It is mentioned
in Homer’s Iliad, with special attention given to its hundred gates [Iliad,
9.381]. The ruins of the city as now found in Egypt still fill a location with
a circumference of about 27 miles. There are many temples in this location,
Luxor and Carnac being the most famous. On one wall in the temple of Carnac
there is an engraving which represents the expedition of the Pharaoh Shishak
against Jerusalem during the reign of Rehoboam (1 Kings 14:25; 2 Chron. and
12:2-9).
When the text mentions its rampart being the
sea, this would probably be nothing more than a repetition of the previous
clause. The Nile is what is spoken of here, and it is called a sea most likely
because of its appearance during the annual floods (Isa. 19:5).
Verse 9. The passage says, “Cush” in the
Hebrew, which is the Jewish name for Ethiopia. It is believed by scholars that
Ethiopia was in league with Upper Egypt at the time under question. When the
text says “Egypt,” is referring to the southern tribes residing in the area we
now know is Egypt.
Put, or Phut (Gen. 10:6), was a descendent of
Noah’s son Ham (Ezekiel 27:10). The name comes from a root word which means a
bow and historical records tell us that these men were famous archers. The
Libyans mentioned in the text were probably the wandering tribes which the Jews
called the Ludim. In Scripture and in history the Ludim are always connected
with the Egyptians and Ethiopians which means they are probably distinct from
the people we know today as Libyans they were probably first wandering tribes
who later settled in the area around Carthage under the name Libyans.
Verse 10. We are told in verse 10 that
despite all of the strength, population, political allies, and natural
defenses, Thebes was destroyed, its people went into captivity and its noble
class were sold into slavery.
The mention of these details is particularly
poignant because Nineveh is being told that the measure she measured out upon
Thebes is going to be measured back upon herself. I mentioned a few weeks ago
the underlying sarcasm of this passage. And I compared it to the 10 plagues of
Egypt. Each one of those 10 plagues was a direct face on attack against a
specific Egyptian deity. Nineveh had delighted in her violent, abusive
treatment of other nations, cities and peoples, and most recently, her crushing
blow against Thebes. In this passage, the very treatment she had subjected
Thebes to, she was going to have dealt back to her. On more than one occasion
in Scripture, not merely the Exodus, does God appear to delight in flouting the
weaknesses of the false gods of the nations. One recalls the confrontation
between Elijah and the prophets of Baal. After the prophets of Baal had failed
to elicit a response, Elijah began to mock them, going so far as to suggest
that their God might be sitting on the toilet. That is what is meant by the
Hebrew idiom “covering his feet.”
Verse 11. The details in verse 11 to details
of verse let us stand out to me in particular. The first is the reference to
being drunk. We all know from Scripture that this is always a reference to facing
the wrath of God. Isaiah 51:17 says, “Wake yourself, wake yourself, stand up, O
Jerusalem, you who have drunk from the hand of the LORD the cup of his wrath,
who have drunk to the dregs the bowl, the cup of staggering.” Verse 21
continues the motif saying, “… hear this, you who are afflicted, who are drunk,
but not with wine…” In Jeremiah 25:15 reads “Thus the LORD, the God of Israel,
said to me: “Take from my hand this cup of the wine of wrath, and make all the
nations to whom I send you drink it.” However, the notion of drinking a cup of
the wrath of God is most prominent when Christ faces it on the cross. And we
must remember that all references to judgment, God’s wrath and destruction in
the Old Testament are merely types and shadows of what we see in the final
outpouring of wrath in the New Testament. This is a two-fold outpouring, mind
you: for the people of God the wrath of God was poor out upon Christ; he
suffered in their stead. He bore the punishment that their sins deserved. For
everyone else, there remains the anticipation of the great and final Day of
Judgment in which God’s wrath will be poured out upon all who are outside of
Christ and they must bear the full brunt of it eternally because it is infinite
eternal wrath against sin -sin which will never be atoned for because it was
never atoned for and once a person is in hell he’s there eternally forever
separated from the saving efficacy of the substitutionary atonement of Christ.
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