Nahum 2:4

With Nah 2:1 the prophecy turns to Nineveh. Nah 2:1. "A dasher in pieces comes against thee. Keep thy fortress! Look out upon the way, fortify the loins, exert thy strength greatly! Nah 2:2. For Jehovah returneth to the eminence of Jacob as to the eminence of Israel; for plunderers have plundered them, and their vines have they thrown to the ground." על־פּניך cannot be addressed to Judah, as in Nah 1:15 (Chald., Rashi, etc.). It cannot indeed be objected that in Nah 1:15 the destruction of Asshur has already been announced, since the prophet might nevertheless have returned to the time when Asshur had made war upon Judah, in order to depict its ruin with greater precision. But such an assumption does not agree with the second clause of the verse as compared with Nah 2:2, and still less with the description of the approaching enemy which follows in Nah 2:3, since this is unquestionably, according to Nah 2:5, the power advancing against Nineveh, and destroying that city. We must therefore assume that we have here a sudden change in the person addressed, as in Nah 1:11 and Nah 1:12, Nah 1:13 and Nah 1:14. The enemy is called מפיץ, "a dasher in pieces;" not a war-hammer (cf. Pro 25:18), because עלה, the standing expression for the advance of a hostile army, does not agree with this. על־פּניך, against thy face, i.e., pitching his tent opposite to the city (there is no good reason for altering the suffix into פּניך, as Ewald and Hitzig propose). Against this enemy Nineveh is to bring all possible power of resistance. This is not irony, but simply a poetical turn given to the thought, that Nineveh will not be able to repulse this enemy any more. The inf. abs. nâtsōr stands emphatically for the imperative, as is frequently the case, and is continued in the imperative. Metsūr…

We now come closer to Nineveh, that great city; she took, not warning by the destruction of her armies and the fall of her king, and therefore may expect, since she persists in her enmity to God, that he will proceed in his controversy with her. Here is foretold, I. The approach of the enemy that should destroy Nineveh, and the terror of his military preparations (Nah 2:1-5). II. The taking of the city (Nah 2:6). III. The captivity of the queen, the flight of the inhabitants, the seizing of all its wealth, and the great consternation it should be in (Nah 2:7-10). IV. All this is traced up to its true causes - their sinning against God and God's appearing against them (Nah 2:11-13). All this was fulfilled when Nebuchadnezzar, in the first year of his reign, in conjunction with Cyaxares, or Ahasuerus, king of the Medes, conquered Nineveh, and made himself master of the Assyrian monarchy.

2:4 Chariots were virtually unstoppable in battle because of their maneuverability and power.