The first message sees the details of the siege of Nineveh taking place in the city when the enemy attacked, and it ends with the reaction of a segment of the populace (v. 7).
2:3 Nahum again focused on the destroyer (scatterer) of Nineveh (cf. v. 1). He described the siege and capture of Nineveh. The shields and uniforms of the soldiers who invaded Nineveh would be red. This was, really, a favorite color of the Median and Babylonian armies.30However, they may have been red with blood and or from the copper that they used to cover both shields and uniforms.31Nahum saw the invading chariots flashing with steel. Scythed chariots were in use at this time in the ancient Near East, chariots with steel blades protruding from them and their wheels.32Spears made out of cypress (pine) were long and straight, and Nineveh's invaders would brandish them showing their readiness for battle.33
2:4 The invaders' chariots would race through Nineveh's streets and squares. So gleaming with red and steel would they be that they would look like torches or lightning darting to and fro. Since Nahum described the enemy advancing toward the city walls (v. 5), he may have seen these chariots darting through the suburban streets and squares outside the walls.34
2:5 The Assyrian king would call on his nobles to defend the city, but they would stumble in their haste to do so. They would hurry to Nineveh's walls to set up some type of protective shield to deflect the attacker's arrows, spears, and stones.35
2:6 The Tigris River flowed close to the walls of Nineveh, and two of its tributaries, the Khosr and the Tebiltu, passed through the city. Virtually all of Nineveh's 15 gates also contained passages for the waters from one of these tributaries or its canals. They were called "gates of the river."36
Sennacherib had built a double dam and reservoir system to the north of the city to control the amount of water that entered it and to prevent flooding.37Nahum may have seen the invader opening these dam gates and flooding the city. However, ancient historians wrote that flooding from heavy rains also played a role in Nineveh's fall.
"Diodorus wrote that in the third year of the siege heavy rains caused a nearby river to flood part of the city and break part of the walls (Bibliotheca Historica2. 26. 9; 2. 27. 13). Xenophon referred to terrifying thunder (presumably with a storm) associated with the city's capture (Anabasis, 3. 4. 12). Also the Khosr River, entering the city from the northwest at the Ninlil Gate and running through the city in a southwesterly direction, may have flooded because of heavy rains, or the enemy may have destroyed its sluice gate."38
The palace the prophet saw washed away was perhaps that of Ashurbanipal, which stood in the north part of Nineveh.39However, Nineveh contained many palaces and temples, and the Hebrew word hekal, used here, describes both types of structures. Assyria had ruined many enemy cities, palaces, and temples, but now this fate would befall Nineveh.
2:7 The Lord's judgment of Nineveh had been determined. The city would be stripped of her treasures and they and their possessors would be carried off to other places. Even the slave girls, the bottom of the social scale, as well as the nobles (v. 5), the top, would lament the fall of the city. They would make mournful sounds and beat their breasts like doves that cooed and flapped their wings. Normally one would expect slaves in a city to rejoice at its destruction since that would mean their liberation. But life in Nineveh was good for some foreigners taken there as captives.
