Nahum 3:19
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There is no healing for your injury; your wound is severe. All who hear the news of you applaud your downfall, for who has not experienced your constant cruelty?
Commentaries
Excerpts gathered from published commentaries to ground the reading.
Nineveh's Sins and Inevitable Destruction - Nahum 3 The announcement of the destruction awaiting Nineveh is confirmed by the proof, that this imperial city has brought this fate upon itself by its sins and crimes (Nah 3:1-7), and will no more be able to avert it than the Egyptian No-amon was (Nah 3:8-13), but that, in spite of all its resources, it will be brought to a terrible end (Nah 3:14-19).
Open source ↗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).
Open source ↗3:19 Nineveh deserved destruction rather than healing. Although God had been patient with Nineveh in Jonah’s day (Jon 3:10), the Assyrians had returned to cruelty and would reap the harvest of their own evil (see Prov 11:16-19; Isa 66:5-6; Hos 8:7). Those who had suffered under Assyria’s cruelty would welcome this message with joy.
Open source ↗Cross-references
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For her wound is incurable; it has reached even Judah; it has approached the gate of my people, as far as Jerusalem itself.
All who pass by clap their hands at you in scorn. They hiss and shake their heads at the Daughter of Jerusalem: “Is this the city that was called the perfection of beauty, the joy of all the earth?”
It claps its hands at him and hisses him out of his place.
Truly, O LORD, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all these countries and their lands.
Go up to Gilead for balm, O Virgin Daughter of Egypt! In vain you try many remedies, but for you there is no healing.
Then the beast was permitted to wage war against the saints and to conquer them, and it was given authority over every tribe and people and tongue and nation.
For this is what the Lord GOD says: ‘Because you clapped your hands and stomped your feet and rejoiced over the land of Israel with a heart full of contempt,
Listen! The sound of a report is coming— a great commotion from the land to the north. The cities of Judah will be made a desolation, a haunt for jackals.
The kings of the earth were immoral with her, and those who dwell on the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her immorality.”
Rejoice over her, O heaven, O saints and apostles and prophets, because God has pronounced for you His judgment against her.