Nahum 3:3

The horseman lifteth up both the bright sword and the glittering spear: and there is a multitude of slain, and a great number of carcases; and there is none end of their corpses; they stumble upon their corpses:

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(3) The horseman lifteth up.—Better, There is the rearing horseman and the flaming sword, and the glittering lance, and a multitude of wounded, and a mass of corpses . . .

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

The horseman lifteth up - Rather, "leading up : the flash of the sword, and the lightning of the spear." Thus, there are, in all, seven inroads, seven signs, before the complete destruction of Nineveh or the world; as, in the Revelations, all the forerunners of the Judgment of the Great Day are summed up under the voice of seven trumpets and seven vials. Rup.: "God shall not use homes and chariots and other instruments of war, such as are here spoken of, to judge the world, yet, as is just, His terrors are foretold under the name of those things, wherewith this proud and bloody world hath sinned. For so all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword." Matthew 26:52. They who, abusing their power, have used all these weapons of war, especially against the servants of God, shall themselves perish by them, and there shall be none end of their corpses, for they shall be corpses forever: for, dying by an everlasting death, they shall, without end, be without the true life, which is God." "And there is a multitude of slain." Death follows on death. The prophet views the vast field of carnage, and everywhere there meets him only some new form of death, slain, carcasses, corpses, and these in multitudes, an oppressive heavy number, without end, so that the yet living stumble and fall upon the carcasses of the slain. So great the multitude of those who perish, and such their foulness; but what foulness is like sin?

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

3. horseman—distinct from "the horses" (in the chariots, Na 3:2).

lifteth up—denoting readiness for fight [Ewald]. Gesenius translates, "lifteth up (literally, 'makes to ascend') his horse." Similarly Maurer, "makes his horse to rise up on his hind feet." Vulgate translates, "ascending," that is, making his horse to advance up to the assault. This last is perhaps better than English Version.

the bright sword and the glittering spear—literally, "the glitter of the sword and the flash of the spear!" This, as well as the translation, "the horseman advancing up," more graphically presents the battle scene to the eye.

they stumble upon their corpses—The Medo-Babylonian enemy stumble upon the Assyrian corpses.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

The horseman; the Chaldean and Mede, or their confederates in the war.

Lifteth up; hath his sword not only drawn, but in a posture ever ready to smite, wound, or kill. The bright sword: these warriors kept their weapons in such manner, that they were fit both to cut and kill, and also to dazzle rite eye and affright.

And there, in Nineveh, and the streets of it,

is a multitude of slain, by the sword of the prevailing besiegers.

A great number of carcasses; the slain lay in the streets unburied.

There is no end of their corpses; none knew the numbers of the slain.

They, both invaders and invaded, all within the city, stumble upon their corpses, are ready to fall at them, not able to avoid them.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

The horseman lifteth up both the bright sword and the glittering spear,.... Or, "the flame of the sword and the glittering spear" (w); he rides with a drawn sword, which, being brandished to and fro, looks like a flame of fire; or with a spear made of polished iron, or steel, which, when vibrated and moved to and fro, glitters like lightning; a large number of which entering the city must be terrible to the inhabitants of it:

and there is a multitude of slain, and a great number of carcasses; of dead men lying in the streets, pierced and slain with the bright sword and glittering spear of the Medes and Chaldeans:

and there is none end of their corpses; the number of them could not be told; they lay so thick in all parts of the city, that there was no telling them:

they stumble upon their corpses; the Ninevites in fleeing, and endeavouring to make their escape, and the Medes and Chaldeans pursuing them.

(w) "flammam gladii et fulgorem hastae", Piscator; "flammam gladii et fulgur hastae", Cocceius; "flamma gladii et fulgur lanceae", Burkius.

Geneva Study Bible

The horseman lifteth up both the bright sword and the glittering spear: and there is a multitude of slain, and a great number of carcases; and there is none end of their corpses; they stumble upon their corpses:

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

3. The horseman lifteth up] Rather, in a series of exclamations: charging horsemen, and flashing swords, and glittering spears! and a multitude of slain! In Jeremiah 46:9 the simple verb is used of the horse (come up); and the causative is here used of the horseman, as in Jeremiah 51:27.

stumble upon their corpses] The multitude of slain and the endless corpses are those of the Ninevites, over which the victorious assailants stumble. The first half of the verse describes the charge, the second half the field when the mêlée is over. Jeremiah 46:12.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 3. - The horseman lifteth up. The Hebrew is more vivid, the words standing in pairs, as if describing the successive onsets of the enemy. So Pusey. It is best to render, "horsemen making to rear;" or as Septuagint. ἱππέως ἀναβαίνοντος, "horseman mounting;" so the Vulgate; Henderson. Horsemen are seen in the most ancient sculptures of Nimroud, and in the bas-reliefs of Kouyunjik (comp. Judith 2:15; Ezekiel 23:6; Layard, ' Nineveh,' 2:356). Both the bright sword; better, and the flaming sword (Genesis 3:24); literally, the flame of the sword. And the glittering spear; literally, the lightning flash of the spear (Habakkuk 3:11). These are the arms of the foot soldiers. A multitude of slain. The effect of the assault is described. So numerous are the corpses that one cannot help stumbling over them; the invaders themselves are impeded by the heaps of dead bodies which they have to mount. The LXX. connects this verse with the following, thus. "They shall grow weak in their bodies by reason of the multitude of their fornications." Nahum 3:3

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

This threat is explained in Nahum 3:2., by a description of the manner in which a hostile army enters Nineveh and fills the city with corpses. Nahum 3:2. "The cracking of whips, and noise of the rattling of wheels, and the horse in galloping, and chariots flying high. Nahum 3:3. Riders dashing along, and flame of the sword, and flashing of the lance, and multitude of slain men and mass of dead men, and no end of corpses; they stumble over their corpses. Nahum 3:4. For the multitude of the whoredoms of the harlot, the graceful one, the mistress of witchcrafts, who sells nations with her whoredoms, and families with her witchcrafts." Nahum sees in spirit the hostile army bursting upon Nineveh. He hears the noise, i.e., the cracking of the whips of the charioteers, and the rattling (ra‛ash) of the chariot-wheels, sees horses and chariots driving along (dâhar, to hunt, cf. Judges 5:22; riqqēd, to jump, applied to the springing up of the chariots as they drive quickly along over a rugged road), dashing riders (ma‛ăleh, lit., to cause to ascend, sc. the horse, i.e., to make it prance, by driving the spur into its side to accelerate its speed), flaming swords, and flashing lances. As these words are well adapted to depict the attack, so are those which follow to describe the consequence or effect of the attack. Slain men, fallen men in abundance, and so many corpses, that one cannot help stumbling or falling over them. כּבד, the heavy multitude. The chethib יכשׁלו is to be read יכּשׁלוּ (niphal), in the sense of stumbling, as in Nahum 2:6. The keri וכשׁלוּ is unsuitable, as the sentence does not express any progress, but simply exhibits the infinite number of the corpses (Hitzig). גויּתם, their (the slain men's) corpses. This happens to the city of sins because of the multitude of its whoredoms. Nineveh is called Zōnâh, and its conduct zenūnı̄m, not because it had fallen away from the living God and pursued idolatry, for there is nothing about idolatry either here or in what follows; nor because of its commercial intercourse, in which case the commerce of Nineveh would appear here under the perfectly new figure of love-making with other nations (Ewald), for commercial intercourse as such is not love-making; but the love-making, with its parallel "witchcrafts" (keshâphı̄m), denotes "the treacherous friendship and crafty politics with which the coquette in her search for conquests ensnared the smaller states" (Hitzig, after Abarbanel, Calvin, J. H. Michaelis, and others). This policy is called whoring or love-making, "inasmuch as it was that selfishness which wraps itself up in the dress of love, and under the appearance of love seeks simply the gratification of its own lust" (Hengstenberg on the Rev.). The zōnâh is described still more minutely as טובת חן, beautiful with grace. This refers to the splendour and brilliancy of Nineveh, by which this city dazzled and ensnared the nations, like a graceful coquette. Ba‛ălath keshâphı̄m, devoted to witchcrafts, mistress of them. Keshâphı̄m (witchcrafts) connected with zenūnı̄m, as in 2 Kings 9:22, are "the secret wiles, which, like magical arts, do not come to the light in themselves, but only in their effects" (Hitzig). מכר, to sell nations, i.e., to rob them of liberty and bring them into slavery, to make them tributary, as in Deuteronomy 32:30; Judges 2:14; Judges 3:8, etc. (not equals כמר from כבר, to entangle: Hitzig). בּזנוּניה, with (not for) their whoredoms. Mishpâchōth, families, synonymous with עמּים, are smaller peoples or tribes (cf. Jeremiah 25:9; Ezekiel 20:32).