Nahum 2:8

"But Nineveh hath been from of old like a pool of water; yet they flee away. Stand, stand, they cry; but none looketh back."

Nineveh was like a pool of water fed by many streams, in that her citizens came from every land, being drawn to the city, not for patriotic or benign purposes, but solely for commercial greed and the pursuit of wealth. None of the peoples, or at least very few of them, felt any loyalty whatever to the city. When sudden destruction came, every man fled. The whole population deserted the defenses. Fear of the central tyranny had formed out of them a cohesive unity; and when that was destroyed, the city fragmented into a thousand fleeing groups of people.