Nahum 3:13 - Exposition

The reason why the fortresses are so readily taken is now given. Are women. The Assyrians were essentially a brave nation, but they should be now no more able to resist the enemy than if they were women (comp. Isaiah 19:16 ; Jeremiah 1:1-19 :37; Jeremiah 51:30 ). The gates of thy land. The various approaches and passes which lead into Assyria (comp. Jeremiah 15:7 ; Micah 5:6 ). So Strabo (11.12. 13) speaks of certain mountain passes as "the Caspian gates" and Xenophon ('Anab.' 1.4. 4) mentions "the gates of Cilicia and Syria." The famous defile that led into Greece was called Thermopylae The fire shall devour thy bars. Hitzig, Keil, and others take the "bars" metaphorically, meaning the forts and castles which defend the passes; but the literal sense is the most natural, as in the parallel passage, Jeremiah 51:30 (see note on Amos 1:5 ). It was the Assyrians' custom to set fire to the gates of any city that they attacked. "It is incontestable," says Bonomi, in another place, "that, during the excavations, a considerable quantity of charcoal, and even pieces of wood either half burnt or in a perfect state of preservation, were found in many places. The lining of the chambers also bears certain marks of the action of fire. All these things can be explained only by supposing the fall of a burning roof, which calcined the slabs of gypsum, and converted them into dust .... It must have been a violent and prolonged fire to be able to calcine not only a few places, but every part of these slabs, which were ten feet high and several inches thick. So complete a decomposition can be attributed but to intense heat".