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3. Woe to Nineveh

¹ Woe to the city of blood,
   full of lies,
full of plunder,
   never without victims!
² The crack of whips,
   the clatter of wheels,
galloping horses
   and jolting chariots!
³ Charging cavalry,
   flashing swords
   and glittering spears!
Many casualties,
   piles of dead,
bodies without number,
   people stumbling over the corpses—
⁴ all because of the wanton lust of a prostitute,
   alluring, the mistress of sorceries,
who enslaved nations by her prostitution
   and peoples by her witchcraft.

    ⁵ “I am against you,” declares the LORD Almighty.
   “I will lift your skirts over your face.
I will show the nations your nakedness
   and the kingdoms your shame.
⁶ I will pelt you with filth,
   I will treat you with contempt
   and make you a spectacle.
⁷ All who see you will flee from you and say,
   ‘Nineveh is in ruins—who will mourn for her?’
   Where can I find anyone to comfort you?”

    ⁸ Are you better than Thebes,
   situated on the Nile,
   with water around her?
The river was her defense,
   the waters her wall.
⁹ Cush That is, the upper Nile region and Egypt were her boundless strength;
   Put and Libya were among her allies.
¹⁰ Yet she was taken captive
   and went into exile.
Her infants were dashed to pieces
   at every street corner.
Lots were cast for her nobles,
   and all her great men were put in chains.
¹¹ You too will become drunk;
   you will go into hiding
   and seek refuge from the enemy.

    ¹² All your fortresses are like fig trees
   with their first ripe fruit;
when they are shaken,
   the figs fall into the mouth of the eater.
¹³ Look at your troops—
   they are all weaklings.
The gates of your land
   are wide open to your enemies;
   fire has consumed the bars of your gates.

    ¹⁴ Draw water for the siege,
   strengthen your defenses!
Work the clay,
   tread the mortar,
   repair the brickwork!
¹⁵ There the fire will consume you;
   the sword will cut you down—
   they will devour you like a swarm of locusts.
Multiply like grasshoppers,
   multiply like locusts!
¹⁶ You have increased the number of your merchants
   till they are more numerous than the stars in the sky,
but like locusts they strip the land
   and then fly away.
¹⁷ Your guards are like locusts,
   your officials like swarms of locusts
   that settle in the walls on a cold day—
but when the sun appears they fly away,
   and no one knows where.

    ¹⁸ King of Assyria, your shepherds That is, rulers slumber;
   your nobles lie down to rest.
Your people are scattered on the mountains
   with no one to gather them.
¹⁹ Nothing can heal you;
   your wound is fatal.
All who hear the news about you
   clap their hands at your fall,
for who has not felt
   your endless cruelty?

From these words we may learn what the Prophet before meant, when he said that the Assyrians were like locusts or chafers; as though he said, — “I know that you trust in your great number; for ye are like a swarm of chafers or locusts; ye excel greatly in number; inasmuch as you have assembled your merchants and traders as the stars of heaven.” Here he shows how numerous they were. But when he says, The chafer has spoiled, and flies away, he points out another reason for the comparison; for it is not enough to lay hold on one clause of the verse, but the two clauses must be connected; and they mean this, — that the Assyrians, while they were almost innumerable, gloried in their great number, — and also, that this vast multitude would vanish away. He then makes an admission here and says, by multiplying thy merchants, thou hast multiplied them; but when he says, as chafers and as locusts, he shows that this multitude would not continue, for the Lord would scatter them here and there. As then the scattering was nigh, the Prophet says that they were chafers and locusts.

We now understand the design of the Prophet: He first ridicules the foolish confidence with which the Assyrians were inflated. They thought, that as they ruled over many nations, they could raise great armies, and set them in any quarter to oppose any one who might attack them: the Prophet concedes this to them, that is, that they were very numerous, by multiplying thou hast multiplied; but what will this avail them? They shall be locusts, they shall be chafers. — How so? A fuller explanation follows, Thou hast multiplied thy merchants as the stars of heaven: but this shall be temporary; for thou shalt see them vanishing away very soon; they shall be like the chafers, who, being in a moment scattered here and there, quit the naked field or the meadow. But by merchants or traders some understand confederates; and this comparison also, as we have before seen, frequently occurs in the Prophets: and princes at this day differ nothing from traders, for they outbid one another, and excel in similar artifices, as we have elsewhere seen, by which they carry on a system of mutual deception. This comparison then may be suitable, Thou hast multiplied thy traders, — tes practiciens. But the meaning of the Prophet may be viewed as still wider; we may apply this to the citizens of Nineveh; for the principal men no doubt were merchants: as the Venetian of the present day are all merchants, so were the Syrians, and the Ninevites, and also the Babylonians. It is then nothing strange, that the Prophet, by taking a part for the whole should include under this term all the rich, Thou hast then multiplied thy merchants ²⁴⁹²⁴⁹     The latter clause of the last verse and this verse and the following are evidently connected. The first, התכבד, hath י added to it in ten or more copies, and may be deemed an imperative as well as the other, and in the feminine gender; Calvin takes it an infinitive. This would be literal rendering —
   Increase thyself as the chafer,
Increase thyself as the locust,
   16. Multiply thy merchants more than the stars of heaven:
The chafer spoils, and flies away:
   17. Thy crowned ones shall be as the locusts,
And thy rulers as the gibbous caterpillar;
Which lodge in the fences in the cold day;
The sun rises and they flit away,
And not known is the place where they are.
   — Ed.

He has hitherto allowed them to be very numerous; but he now adds, The chafer has spoiled, and flies away The verb means sometimes to spoil, and it means also to devour: The chafer then has devoured, and flies away; that is, “Thy princes, (as he afterwards calls them,) or thy principal men, have indeed devoured; they have wasted many regions by their plunders, and consumed all things on every side, like the chafers, who destroy the standing corn and all fruits: thou hast then been as a swarm of chafers.” For as chafers in great numbers attack a field, so Nineveh was wont to send everywhere her merchants to spoil and to denude the whole land. “Well,” he says “the chafer has devoured, but he flies away, he is scattered; so it shall happen,” says the Prophet, “to the citizens of Nineveh.” And hence he afterwards adds,