Nahum 3:4

"Because of the multitude of the whoredoms of the well-favored harlot, the mistress of witchcrafts, that selleth nations through her whoredoms, and families through her witchcrafts."

"Whoredoms" is primarily the word for pagan idolatry, a kind of "code word" focused upon the shameful and licentious "worship" (as they called it) of idol gods. It identified idolatry by its principal and distinguishing characteristic. The term was usually applied as "harlotry" to the defection and apostasy of God's own people; and some scholars seem surprised that a pagan city is here called a harlot. However, even in the case of Nineveh it was an apostasy. The entire city, under the preaching of the prophet Jonah had indeed repented and turned to the worship of the true God, a phenomenon in which the king himself with all of his nobles humbled themselves before God, forsook the violence that was in their hands, clothed themselves with sackcloth, and engaged in fasting, praying for God to avert the doom of Jonah's prophetic announcement. Thus, as usually in the Bible, the term "harlot" applied to a falling away from the truth. That the term was applied now and then to pagan nations cannot indicate any change or variation in this essential meaning of it.

The notion that pagan Gentile nations generally were any less apostates from God than were the apostate Israelites is false. Contrary to the thesis that monotheism evolved out of polytheism, all men at one time knew God. "Knowing God, they glorified him not as God" (Romans 1:21). How did they know God? "God manifested it unto them" (Romans 1:19). Jonah had quite recently (in Nahum's time) manifested God to the Ninevites; and the very terminology of this verse is a witness to the actuality and success of Jonah's mission. (See additional studies on the subject of apostasy under the figure of a harlot in my commentary on Revelation, p. 386, and also on the state of paganism being a falling away, or an apostasy, from the knowledge of the true God even on the part of the pre-Christian Gentile nations, in my commentary on Romans, pp. 30-34.) Therefore, we must reject the view that Nineveh was an apostate (harlot) merely because "theirs was a willful ignoring of the light of nature and natural religion."[8]

The application of the term "harlot" to Nineveh has provoked a number of different opinions:

Watts thought is was because, "Ishtar, her patroness, was a goddess of sex and war, and her temples were furnished with sacred prostitutes."[9] Barnes applied it only to those who "having been taken by God for his own, forsake him for false gods."[10] Keil said it meant, "the treacherous friendship and crafty politics with which the coquette ensnared smaller nations."[11] "Though commonly designations of idolatrous practices, there is evidently nothing of that kind in Nahum's use of the terms here."[12] We believe all such views are founded in the failure to see in Nineveh a city sinning against the light, a real apostate from God whom they knew in the preaching of Jonah. There is absolutely no good reason for setting aside the basic meaning of this symbol in the Old Testament. "It is correct that the figure of a harlot is a standard symbol of the Old Testament, and it usually means apostasy from Jehovah on the part of his people."[13] But Nineveh was not "God's people !" No ? The vast majority of the whole city were "God's people" after they repented and the Lord turned aside their destruction.

"Well-favored harlot ..." This refers to the strategic situation of the city astride the ancient trade-routes, and to the wealth and power that flowed unto her as a result.