Nahum 3:1

Woe to the bloody city! it is all full of lies and robbery; the prey departeth not;

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(1) Woe to the bloody city!—Better, O bloody city! She is altogether deceit, filled with crime: she ceases not from plunder.

Benson Commentary

Nahum 3:1. Wo to the bloody city — Here God shows the cause of his bringing destruction on Nineveh, and overthrowing the Assyrian empire. And first, it is declared, that Nineveh was a city in which acts of cruelty abounded, and innocent blood was frequently shed; that it was also full of deceit, falsehood, and rapine; unjustly and continually increasing its riches by the plunder of the neighbouring countries, which had done them no injury.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

3:1-7 When proud sinners are brought down, others should learn not to lift themselves up. The fall of this great city should be a lesson to private persons, who increase wealth by fraud and oppression. They are preparing enemies for themselves; and if the Lord sees good to punish them in this world, they will have none to pity them. Every man who seeks his own prosperity, safety, and peace, should not only act in an upright, honourable manner, but with kindness to all.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Woe to the bloody city - Literally, "city of bloods" , i. e., of manifold bloodshedding, built and founded in blood Habakkuk 2:12; Jeremiah 22:13, as the prosperity of the world ever is. Murder, oppression, wresting of judgment, war out of covetousness, grinding or neglect of the poor, make it "a city of bloods." Nineveh, or the world, is a city of the devil, as opposed to the "city of God." : "Two sorts of love have made two sorts of cities; the earthly, love of self even to contempt of God; the heavenly, love of God even to contempt of self. The one glorieth in itself, the other in the Lord." : "Amid the manifold differences of the human race, in languages, habits, rites, arms, dress, there are but two kinds of human society, which, according to our Scriptures, we may call two cities. One is of such as wish to live according to the flesh; the other of such as will according to the Spirit." "Of these, one is predestined to live forever with God; the other, to undergo everlasting torment with the devil." Of this city, or evil world, Nineveh, the city of bloods, is the type.

It is all full of lies and robbery - Better, "it is all lie; it is full of robbery" (rapine). "Lie" includes all falsehood, in word or act, denial of God, hypocrisy; toward man, it speaks of treachery, treacherous dealing, in contrast with open violence or rapine . The whole being of the wicked is one lie, toward God and man; deceiving and deceived; leaving no place for God who is the Truth; seeking through falsehood things which fail. Man "loveth vanity and seeketh after leasing" Psalm 4:2. All were gone out of the way. Alb.: "There were none in so great a multitude, for whose sake the mercy of God might spare so great a city." It is full, not so much of booty as of rapine and violence. The sin remains, when the profit is gone. Yet it ceases not, but perseveres to the end; "the prey departs not;" they will neither leave the sin, nor the sin them; they neither repent, nor are weary of sinning. Avarice especially gains vigor in old age, and grows by being fed. "The prey departeth not," but continues as a witness against it, as a lion's lair is defiled by the fragments of his prey.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

CHAPTER 3

Na 3:1-19. Repetition of Nineveh's Doom, with New Features; the Cause Is Her Tyranny, Rapine, and Cruelty: No-ammon's Fortifications Did Not Save Her; It Is Vain, Therefore, for Nineveh to Think Her Defenses Will Secure Her against God's Sentence.

1. the bloody city!—literally, "city of blood," namely, shed by Nineveh; just so now her own blood is to be shed.

robbery—violence [Maurer]. Extortion [Grotius].

the prey departeth not—Nineveh never ceases to live by rapine. Or, the Hebrew verb is transitive, "she (Nineveh) does not make the prey depart"; she ceases not to plunder.The miserable ruin of Nineveh.

Woe! a comprehensive threat of many and great calamities coming.

To the bloody city; Nineveh, the chief city of the Assyrian kingdom: see Nahum 1:1.

It is all; every part, officers and rulers, traders, both buyers and sellers, shops, houses, judicatories, all filled with falsehood and lies.

Lies; cheating in their trades, and false witnesses before the judges.

Robbery; their gain, though they count it honest, is no better in God’s account than robbery or rapine, as is that the lion taketh, teareth, and devoureth, as the word in the Hebrew implies.

The prey; unjust acquists by fraud and force; extortions and violent taking away what was not theirs.

Departeth not; as they did so long since, they continue still so to do, no change from injustice to justice.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Woe to the bloody city,.... Nineveh, in which many murders were daily committed; innocent blood shed; the lives of men taken away, under the colour of justice, by false witnesses, and other unlawful methods; and which was continually making war with neighbouring nations, and shedding their blood, which it stuck not at, to enlarge its wealth and dominions; and therefore "woe" is denounced against it; and it is threatened with the righteous judgments of God, with all sorts of calamity and distress: or, "O bloody city", as the Septuagint; for the word used is vocative, and expressive of calling, as Aben Ezra and Kimchi observe:

it is all full of lies and robbery; the palace and court; the houses of noblemen and common persons were full of flattery and deceit; men of high degree were a lie, and men of low degree vanity; no man could trust another, or believe what he said; there were no truth, honesty, and faithfulness, in conversation or commerce; their warehouses were full of goods, got by rapine and violence; and their streets full of robbers and robberies:

the prey departeth not; they go on in making a prey of their neighbours, in pillaging and plundering their substance; they repent not of such evil practices, nor desist from them; or because of the above sins they shall fall a prey to the enemy, who will not cease plundering them till he has utterly stripped them of all they have; and who is represented in the next verse Nahum 3:2 as just at hand.

Geneva Study Bible

Woe to the bloody city! it is all full of lies and robbery; {a} the prey departeth not;

(a) It never ceases to spoil and rob.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

1. bloody city] Ezekiel 24:9. In ancient states the capital was virtually the kingdom, and to Nineveh are here ascribed all the characteristics of the Assyrian monarchy. The cruelties perpetrated by the Assyrians were shocking. Captive princes who had offered resistance in defence of their country were shut up in cages and exposed to the gaze of the populace; the heads of those already executed were hung round the necks of those still living; and others were flayed alive. The Assyrians appear to have been the most ruthless people of antiquity. See cut representing impaled captives, Layard, Nineveh, II. 369, and Tiele’s chap. on the revolt of Shamas-sum-ukin; comp. also Sayce, Assyria; its princes &c. p. 127 ff. On the other hand they were not incapable of acts of magnanimity, an example of which was Assurbanipal’s pardon of the rebellious Egyptian princes whom his father Esarhaddon had raised to the throne. See his own words, Winckler, Altorient. Untersuch., I. pp. 104, 105.

full of lies and robbery] Robbery means “rending” or tearing in pieces (Psalm 7:2), the figure of the lion (ch. Nahum 2:11) being perhaps still retained, while “lies” rather deserts the figure, and refers to the false and overreaching state-craft of Nineveh (ch. Nahum 3:4), though possibly the subtlety of the wild beast might be alluded to.

The prey departeth not] “Prey” may be less the thing caught than the act or habit of catching—this prey taking is unceasing; cf. Jeremiah 17:8 last clause.

Pulpit Commentary

Verses 1-19. - Part III. THE CAUSE OF THE JUDGMENT - SINS OF THE CITY, WHICH BRING INEVITABLE PUNISHMENT. Verses 1-7. - § 1. The prophet specifies the crimes which have brought this ruin upon Nineveh. Verse 1. - The bloody city; literally, city of bloods, where Mood is shed without scruple (comp. Ezekiel 24:6, 9; Habakkuk 2:12). The cruelty of the Assyrians is attested by the monuments, in which we see or read how prisoners were impaled alive, flayed, beheaded, dragged to death with ropes passed through rings in their lips, blinded by the king's own hand, hung up by hands or feet to die in slow torture (see Bonomi, pp. 168, etc., 190, etc., 225). Others have their brains beaten out, or their tongues torn out by the roots, while the bleeding heads of the slain are tied round the necks of the living, who are reserved for further torture (Layard, 'Nineveh and Babylon,' p. 456; Rawlinson, 'Ancient Monarchies,' 2:503, etc., edit. 1864). The royal inscriptions recount with exultation the number of the enemies slain and of captives carried away, cities levelled with the ground, plundered, and burnt, lands devastated, fruit trees destroyed, etc. It is all full of lies; ὅλη ψευδής, "all lie" (Septuagint). The Assyrians used treachery in furthering their conquests, made promises which they never kept, to induce nations to submit to their yoke. Such, doubtless, were those of Rabshakeh (Isaiah 36:16). Rawlinson, "Falsehood and treachery... are often employed by the strong, as furnishing short cuts to success, and even, where the moral standard is low, as being in themselves creditable (see Thucyd., 3:83). It certainly was not necessity which made the Assyrians covenant breakers; it seems to have been in part the wantonness of power - because they 'despised the cities, and regarded no man' (Isaiah 33:8); perhaps it was in part also their imperfect moral perception, which may have failed to draw the proper distinction between craft and cleverness" ('Ancient Monarchies,' 1:305). Robbery; rather, rapine, or rending in pieces. The figure applies to the way in which a wild beast kills its prey by tearing it to pieces. So the three crimes of Nineveh here enumerated are bloodshed, deceit, and violence. In the uncertainty concerning the word (pereq). rendered "robbery," which only occurs m Obadiah 1:14, where it means "crossway," the LXX. translates, ἀδικίας πλήρης, "full of unrighteousness." The Vulgate is correct, dilaceratione plena. The prey departeth not. They go on in the same way, gathering spoil into the city, never ceasing from this crime. The monuments continually record the booty that was brought to Nineveh (see, for instance, the 'Annals of Assurbanipal,' passim; 'Records of the Past,' vol. 9; Schrader, 'Keilinschr.,' 195, etc., 216, 233, etc.; comp. Isaiah 33:1). Septuagint, Οὐ ψηλαφηθήσεται θήρα, which gives a sense contradictory to the text, "Prey shall not be handled." Nahum 3:1

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

The city of blood will have the shame, which it has inflicted upon the nations, repaid to it by a terrible massacre. The prophet announces this with the woe which opens the last section of this threatening prophecy. Nahum 3:1. "Woe to the city of blood! She all full of deceit and murder; the prey departs not." ‛Ir dâmı̄m, city of drops of blood, i.e., of blood shed, or of murders. This predicate is explained in the following clauses: she all full of lying and murder. Cachash and pereq are asyndeton, and accusatives dependent upon מלאה. Cachash, lying and deceit: this is correctly explained by Abarbanel and Strauss as referring to the fact that "she deceived the nations with vain promises of help and protection." Pereq, tearing in pieces for murder, - a figure taken from the lion, which tears its prey in pieces (Psalm 7:3). לא ימישׁ, the prey does not depart, never fails. Mūsh: in the hiphil here, used intransitively, "to depart," as in Exodus 13:22; Psalm 55:12, and not in a transitive sense, "to cause to depart," to let go; for if ‛ı̄r (the city) were the subject, we should have tâmı̄sh.