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They cast lots for her honorable men - This refers still to the city called populous No. And the custom of casting lots among the commanders, for the prisoners which they had taken, is here referred to.

Great men were bound in chains - These were reserved to grace the triumph of the victor.

Yet was she - (also ) carried away, literally, “She also became an exile band,” her people were carried away, with all the barbarities of pagan war. All, through whom she might recover, were destroyed or scattered abroad; “the young,” the hope of another age, cruelly destroyed (see Hosea 14:1-9; Isaiah 13:16; 2 Kings 8:12); “her honorable men” enslaved (see Joel 3:3), “all her great men prisoners.” God‘s judgments are executed step by step. Assyria herself was the author of this captivity, which Isaiah prophesied in the first years of Hezekiah when Judah was leaning upon Egypt (see Isaiah 20:1-6). It was repeated by all of the house of Sargon. Jeremiah and Ezekiel foretold fresh desolation by Nebuchadnezzar Jeremiah 46:25-26; Ezekiel 30:14-16. God foretold to His people, “I gave Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee” Isaiah 43:3; and the Persian monarchs, who fulfilled prophecy in the restoration of Judah, fulfilled it also in the conquest of Egypt and Ethiopia. Both perhaps out of human policy in part.

But Cambyses‘ wild hatred of Egyptian idolatry fulfilled God‘s word. Ptolemy Lathyrus carried on the work of Cambyses; the Romans, Ptolemy‘s. Cambyses burned its temples; Lathyrus its four-or five-storied private houses; the Roman Gallus leveled it to the ground. A little after it was said of her, “she is inhabited as so many scattered villages.” A little after our Lord‘s Coming, Germanicus went to visit, not it, but “the vast traces of it.”: “It lay overwhelmed with its hundred gates” and utterly impoverished. No was powerful as Nineveh, and less an enemy of the people of God. For though these often suffered from Egypt, yet in those times they even trusted too much to its help (see Isaiah 30). If then the judgments of God came upon No, how much more upon Nineveh! In type, Nineveh is the image of the world as oppressing God‘s Church; No, rather of those who live for this life, abounding in wealth, ease, power, and forgetful of God. If, then, they were punished, who took no active part against God, fought not against God‘s truth, yet still were sunk in the cares and riches and pleasures of this life, what shall be the end of those who openly resist God?

Strong-holds, even the strongest, are no defence against the judgments of God. They shall be unable to do any thing for themselves. The Chaldeans and Medes would devour the land like canker-worms. The Assyrians also would be eaten up by their own numerous hired troops, which seem to be meant by the word rendered "merchants." Those that have done evil to their neighbours, will find it come home to them. Nineveh, and many other cities, states, and empires, have been ruined, and should be a warning to us. Are we better, except as there are some true Christians amongst us, who are a greater security, and a stronger defence, than all the advantages of situation or strength? When the Lord shows himself against a people, every thing they trust in must fail, or prove a disadvantage; but he continues good to Israel. He is a strong-hold for every believer in time of trouble, that cannot be stormed or taken; and he knoweth those that trust in Him.