Nahum 3:18

Such an end will come to the Assyrian kingdom on the overthrow of Nineveh. Nah 3:18. "The shepherds have fallen asleep, king Asshur: thy glorious ones are lying there: thy people have scattered themselves upon the mountains, and no one gathers them. Nah 3:19. No alleviation to thy fracture, thy stroke is grievous: all who hear tidings of thee clap the hand over thee: for over whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually?" The king of Asshur addressed in Nah 3:18 is not the last historical king of that kingdom, but a rhetorical personification of the holder of the imperial power of Assyria. His shepherds and glorious ones ('addı̄rı̄m, as in Nah 2:6) are the princes and great men, upon whom the government and defence of the kingdom devolved, the royal counsellors, deputies, and generals. Mâmū, from nūm, to slumber, to sleep, is not a figurative expression for carelessness and inactivity here; for the thought that the people would be scattered, and the kingdom perish, through the carelessness of the rulers (Hitzig), neither suits the context, where the destruction of the army and the laying of the capital in ashes are predicted, nor the object of the whole prophecy, which does not threaten the fall of the kingdom through the carelessness of its rulers, but the destruction of the kingdom by a hostile army. Nūm denotes here, as in Psa 76:6, the sleep of death (cf. Psa 13:4; Jer 51:39, Jer 51:57 : Theodoret, Hesselb., Str., and others). Shâkhan, a synonym of shâkhabh, to have lain down, to lie quietly (Jdg 5:17), used here of the rest of death. As the shepherds have fallen asleep, the flock (i.e., the Assyrian people) is scattered upon the mountains and perishes, because no one gathers it together. Being scattered upon the mountains, is easily explained from the figu…

This chapter goes on with the burden of Nineveh, and concludes it. I. The sins of that great city are charged upon it, murder (Nah 3:1), whoredom and witchcraft (Nah 3:4), and a general extent of wickedness (Nah 3:19). II. Judgments are here threatened against it, blood for blood (Nah 3:2, Nah 3:3), and shame for shameful sins (Nah 3:5-7). III. Instances are given of the like desolations brought upon other places for the like sins (Nah 3:8-11). IV. The overthrow of all those things which they depended upon, and put confidence in, is foretold (Nah 3:12-19).

3:18 shepherds: With the leaders gone, Nineveh’s people would be scattered like sheep. • lie dead (literally sleep; see John 11:11-14): Assyria’s leaders, asleep during Nineveh’s crisis, would sleep in death. By contrast, Israel’s Shepherd does not slumber (Ps 121:3), and he will gather Israel’s lost sheep (Jer 23:3; Ezek 36:35).