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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Nahum 3:8 - 3:8
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Nineveh will share the fate of No-Ammon. - Nah 3:8. “Art thou better than No-amon, that sat by rivers, waters round about her, whose bulwark was the sea, her wall of sea? Nah 3:9. Ethiopians and Egyptians were (her) strong men, there is no end; Phut and Libyans were for thy help. Nah 3:10. She also has gone to transportation, into captivity; her children were also dashed in pieces at the corners of all roads; upon her nobles they cast the lot, and all her great men were bound in chains.†הֲתֵיטְבִי for הֲתִיטְבִי, for the sake of euphony, the imperfect kal of יָטַב, to be good, used to denote prosperity in Gen 12:13 and Gen 40:14, is applied here to the prosperous condition of the city, which was rendered strong both by its situation and its resources. × Ö¹× ×ָמוֹן, i.e., probably “dwelling (× Ö¹× contracted from × ×•Ö¹×, cf. × Ö°×וֹת) of Amon,†the sacred name of the celebrated city of Thebes in Upper Egypt, called in Egyptian P-amen, i.e., house of the god Amun, who had a celebrated temple there (Herod. i. 182, ii. 42; see Brugsch, Geogr. Inschr. i. p. 177). The Greeks called it Διὸς ποÌλις, generally with the predicate ἡ μεγαÌλη (Diod. Sic. i. 45), or from the profane name of the city, which was Apet according to Brugsch (possibly a throne, seat, or bank), and with the feminine article prefixed, Tapet, or Tape, or Tepe, ΘηÌβη, generally used in the plural Θῆβαι. This strong royal city, which was described even by Homer (Il. ix. 383) as ἑκατοÌμπυλος, and in which the Pharaohs of the 18th to the 20th dynasties, from Amosis to the last Rameses, resided, and created those works of architecture which were admired by Greeks and Romans, and the remains of which still fill the visitor with astonishment, was situated on both banks of the river Nile, which was 1500 feet in breadth at that point, and was built upon a broad plain formed by the falling back of the Libyan and Arabian mountain wall, over which there are now scattered nine larger or smaller fellah-villages, including upon the eastern bank Karnak and Luxor, and upon the western Gurnah and Medinet Abu, with their plantations of date-palms, sugar-canes, corn, etc. הַיֹּשְ×בָה בַּיְ×ֹרִי×, who sits there, i.e., dwells quietly and securely, on the streams of the Nile. The plural ×™Ö°×Ö¹×¨Ö´×™× refers to the Nile with its canals, which surrounded the city, as we may see from what follows: “water round about her.†×ֲשֶ×ר־חֵיל, not which is a fortress of the sea (Hitzig), but whose bulwark is sea. חֵיל (for חֵילָהּ) does not mean the fortified place (Hitzig), but the fortification, bulwark, applied primarily to the moats of a fortification, with the wall belonging to it; then, in the broader sense, the defence of a city in distinction from the actual wall (cf. Isa 26:1; Lam 2:8). מִיָּ×, consisting of sea is its wall, i.e., its wall is formed of sea. Great rivers are frequently called yaÌ‚m, sea, in rhetorical and poetical diction: for example, the Euphrates in Isa 27:1; Jer 51:36; and the Nile in Isa 18:2; Isa 19:5; Job 41:23. The Nile is still called by the Beduins bahr, i.e., sea, and when it overflows it really resembles a sea.
To the natural strength of Thebes there was also added the strength of the warlike nations at her command. Cush, i.e., Ethiopians in the stricter sense, and Mitsraim, Egyptians, the two tribes descended from Ham, according to Gen 10:6, who formed the Egyptian kingdom before the fall of Thebes, and under the 25th (Ethiopian) dynasty. עָצְמָה, as in Isa 40:29; Isa 47:9, for עֹצֶ×, strength; it is written without any suffix, which may easily be supplied from the context. The corresponding words to עָצְמָה in the parallel clause are וְ×ֵין קֵצֶה (with Vav cop.): Egyptians, as for them there is no number; equivalent to an innumerable multitude. To these there were to be added the auxiliary tribes: Put, i.e., the Libyans in the broader sense, who had spread themselves out over the northern part of Africa as far as Mauritania (see at Gen 10:6); and Lubim = LehaÌ‚bhı̄m, the Libyans in the narrower sense, probably the Libyaegyptii of the ancients (see at Gen 10:13). בְּעֶזְרָתֵךְ (cf. Psa 35:2) Nahum addresses No-amon itself, to give greater life to the description. Notwithstanding all this might, No-amon had to wander into captivity. LaggoÌ„laÌ‚h and basshebhı̄ are not tautological. LaggoÌ„laÌ‚h, for emigration, is strengthened by basshebhı̄ into captivity. The perfect הָֽלְכָה is obviously not to be taken prophetically. The very antithesis of ×’Ö·Ö¼×Ö¾×”Ö´×™× ×”Ö¸Ö½×œÖ°×›Ö¸×” and ×’Ö·Ö¼×Ö¾×ַתְּ תִּשְ×כְּרִי (Nah 3:11) shows to itself that הָֽלְכָה refers to the past, as תִּשְ×כְּרִי does to the future; yea, the facts themselves require that Nahum should be understood as pointing to the fate which the powerful city of Thebes had already experienced. For it must be an event that has already occurred, and not something still in the future, which he holds up before Nineveh as a mirror of the fate that is awaiting it. The clauses which follow depict the cruelties that were generally associated with the taking of an enemy's cities. For עֹלָלֶיהָ וגו roF .se, see Hos 14:1; Isa 13:16, and 2Ki 8:12; and for יַדּוּ גוֹרָל, Joe 3:3 and Oba 1:11. Nikhbaddı̄m, nobiles; cf. Isa 23:8-9. GedoÌ„lı̄m, magnates; cf. Jon 3:7. It must be borne in mind, however, that the words only refer to cruelties connected with the conquest and carrying away of the inhabitants, and not to the destruction of No-amon.
We have no express historical account of this occurrence; but there is hardly any doubt that, after the conquest of Ashdod, Sargon the king of Assyria organized an expedition against Egypt and Ethiopia, conquered No-amon, the residence of the Pharaohs at that time, and, as Isaiah prophesied (Isa 20:3-4), carried the prisoners of Egypt and Ethiopia into exile. According to the Assyrian researches and their most recent results (vid., Spiegel's Nineveh and Assyria in Herzog's Cyclopaedia), the king Sargon mentioned in Isa 20:1 is not the same person as Shalmaneser, as I assumed in my commentary on 2Ki 17:3, but his successor, and the predecessor of Sennacherib, who ascended the throne during the siege of Samaria, and conquered that city in the first year of his reign, leading 27,280 persons into captivity, and appointing a vicegerent over the country of the ten tribes. In Assyrian Sargon is called Sar Kin, i.e., essentially a king. He was the builder of the palace at Khorsabad, which is so rich in monuments; and, according to the inscriptions, he carried on wars in Susiana, Babylon, the borders of Egypt, Melitene, Southern Armenia, Kurdistan, and Media; and in all his expeditions he resorted to the removal of the people in great numbers, as one means of securing the lasting subjugation of the lands (see Spiegel, l.c. p. 224). In the great inscription in the palace-halls of Khorsabad, Sargon boasts immediately after the conquest of Samaria of a victorious conflict with Pharaoh Sebech at Raphia, in consequence of which the latter became tributary, and also of the dethroning of the rebellious king of Ashdod; and still further, that after another king of Ashdod, who had been chosen by the people, had fled to Egypt, he besieged Ashdod with all his army, and took it. Then follows a difficult and mutilated passage, in which Rawlinson (Five Great Monarchies, ii. 416) and Oppert (Les Sargonides, pp. 22, 26, 27) find an account of the complete subjugation of Sebech (see Delitzsch on Isaiah, at Isa 20:5-6). There is apparently a confirmation of this in the monuments recording the deeds of Esarhaddon's successor, whose name is read Assur-bani-pal, according to which that king carried on tedious wars in Egypt against Tirhaka, who had conquered Memphis, Thebes, and sundry other Egyptian cities during the illness of Esarhaddon, and according to his own account, succeeded at length in completely overcoming him, and returned home with rich booty, having first of all taken hostages for future good behaviour (see Spiegel, p. 225). If these inscriptions have been read correctly, it follows from them that from the reign of Sargon the Assyrians made attempts to subjugate Egypt, and were partially successful, though they could not maintain their conquests. The struggle between Assyria and Egypt for supremacy in Hither Asia may also be inferred from the brief notices in the Old Testament (2Ki 17:4) concerning the help which the Israelitish king Hosea expected from So the king of Egypt, and also concerning the advance of Tirhaka against Sennacherib.
(Note: From the modern researches concerning ancient Egypt, not the smallest light can be obtained as to any of these things. “The Egyptologists (as J. Bumüller observes, p. 245) have hitherto failed to fill up the gaps in the history of Egypt, and have been still less successful in restoring the chronology; for hitherto we have not met with a single well-established date, which we have obtained from a monumental inscription; nor have the monuments enabled us to assign to a single Pharaoh, from the 1st to the 21st, his proper place in the years or centuries of the historical chronology.â€)