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?
The 2nd detail I find interesting
is the reference to being hidden or hiding. There are scholars who see here a
prediction remarkably fulfilled in the state in which the ruins of Nineveh were
found. Centuries past in which there was no visible record at such a place as
Nineveh ever even existed. And I have reference this fact several times during
our study that skeptical scholars doubted the existence of Nineveh, and
therefore doubted the veracity of Scripture. And it was only in the mid-19th
century when Nineveh was in fact discovered. Nonetheless, it is very likely that
the reference to being hidden or hiding predicts the fact that Nineveh will
seek help from political allies in much the same way Thebes sought help from
her political allies when she was attacked by Nineveh.
Verse 12. We have in verse 12 indication of
how easy the fall of Nineveh will be. It is compared to a tree with ripe figs
they can simply be shaken and fruit will fall off the tree. It seems to be the
consensus among scholars that the reference to the first ripe figs expresses
the rapidity and ease of the capture of Nineveh. We seem to have an indication
of this from other passages, such as Isaiah 28:4 and Revelation 6:13.
Verse 13. Earlier I mentioned the underlying
sarcasm in the passage, and in verse 13 this is very clearly seen. The passage
reads, “Behold, your troops are women in your midst.” This is an archaic way of
saying, “You throw like a girl!” By comparing their soldiers to women a prophet
is insulting the city. It is a very snarky way of saying, “you have no one up
to the challenge.” This language appears in other passages of Scripture as well
(Isa. 19:16; Jer. 50:37; 51:30).
You will recall that several weeks ago I
mentioned that the Assyrian king, rather than be captured by the enemy and
subjected to who knows what humiliation, chose to burn himself and his family
alive along with all his treasures. This effectively set the gates of the city
on fire and this is a fact attested to by ancient historians.
The sarcasm is ramped up in verses 14, 15 and
16. Here we find Nineveh being told to get their act together and put up a
fight. Yet they are told that nothing they will do will be of any avail. You’ll
notice in this passage several references to locusts. If you have ever seen any
documentaries or read anything about the devastation which locusts have wreaked
upon him of the African nations you will understand how poignant this language
is. In the ancient world nothing was feared more than a horde of locusts. In
fact, the Hebrew language has 10 words for locust. You’ll remember that one of
the devastating plagues in Egypt was a plague of devouring locusts. They travel
in swarms numbering in the hundreds of millions. They have been measured in
densities up to 500 tons of locusts per square mile. Swarms like this can
travel hundreds of miles eating every leaf in their path. In 1954 a series of
50 swarms of locusts invaded Kenya. The largest of the Kenyan swarms covered
200 km² and had an estimated population of 10 billion individual locusts. In
total hundred thousand tons of locusts descend upon the nation of Kenya
covering an area of 1000 km². We’re talking a locust population in excess of 50
billion. What is interesting in this passage is that Nineveh is being warned
that even if she were to multiply herself to such gigantic proportions this
will avail her nothing. She will fall and she will fall hard. Not only will she
fall, but it will be easy. A 2nd reference to locusts deals with the
way the swarm mysteriously vanishes after taking its fill. In the days before
Doppler radar, a swarm of locusts could descend upon an area and move on, and
no one knew where it had gone. Nahum tells us that this is what the nobility of
Nineveh will look like. They will be there one day and gone the next and no one
will know where they have gone.
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