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Nahum 3:4

Adam Clarke
Bible Commentary

Because of the multitude of the whoredoms - Above, the Ninevites were represented under the emblem of a lion tearing all to pieces; here they are represented under the emblem of a beautiful harlot or public prostitute, enticing all men to her, inducing the nations to become idolatrous, and, by thus perverting them, rendering them also objects of the Divine wrath.

Mistress of witchcrafts, that selleth nations through her whoredoms - Using every means to excite to idolatry; and being, by menace or wiles, successful in all.

Albert Barnes
Notes on the Whole Bible

Because of the multitude of the whoredoms of the well-favored harlot - There are “multitudes of slain” because of the “multitude of whoredoms” and love of the creature instead of the Creator. So to Babylon Isaiah saith, “they (loss of children and widowhood) shall come upon thee in their perfection for the multitude of thy sorceries, for the great abundance of thine enchantments” Isaiah 47:9. The actual use of “enchantments,” for which Babylon was so infamous, is not elsewhere attributed to the Assyrians. But neither is the word elsewhere used figuratively; nor is Assyria, in its intimate relation to Babylon, likely to have been free from the longing, universal in pagandom, to obtain knowledge as to the issue of events which would affect her. She is, by a rare idiom, entitled “mistress of enchantments,” having them at her command, as instruments of power. Mostly, idolatries and estrangement from God are spoken of as “whoredoms,” only in respect of those who, having been taken by God as His own, forsook Him for false gods.

But Jezebel too, of whose offences Jehu speaks under the same two titles 2 Kings 9:22, was a pagan. And such sins were but part of that larger all-comprehending sin, that man, being made by God for Himself, when he loves the creature instead of the Creator, divorces himself from God. Of this sin world empires, such as Nineveh, were the concentration. Their being was one vast idolatry of self and of “the god of this world.” All, art, fraud, deceit, protection of the weak against the strong 2 Kings 16:7-9; 2 Chronicles 28:20-21, promises of good Isaiah 36:16-17, were employed, together with open violence, to absorb all nations into it. The one end of all was to form one great idol-temple, of which the center and end was man, a rival worship to God, which should enslave all to itself and the things of this world. Nineveh and all conquering nations used fraud as well as force, enticed and entangled others, and so sold and deprived them of freedom. (see Joel 3:3).

Nor are people less sold and enslaved, because they have no visible master. False freedom is the deepest and most abject slavery. All sinful nations or persons extend to others the infection of their own sins. But, chiefly, the “wicked world,” manifoldly arrayed with fair forms, and “beautiful in the eyes of those who will not think or weigh how much more beautiful the Lord and Creator of all,” spreads her enticements on all sides “the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eye, and the pride of life,” “her pomps and vanities,” worldly happiness and glory and majesty, and ease and abundance, deceives and sells mankind into the power of Satan. It is called well-favored (literally, good of grace), because the world has a real beauty, nor, “unless there were a grace and beauty in the things we love, could they draw us to them.” They have their beauty, because from God; then are they deformed, when “things hold us back from God, which, unless they were in God, were not at all.”

We deform them, if we love them for our own sakes, not in Him; or for the intimations they give of Him.: “Praise as to things foul has an intensity of blame. As if one would speak of a skilled thief, or a courageous robber, or a clever cheat. So though he calls Nineveh a well-favored harlot, this will not be for her praise, (far from it!) but conveys the heavier condenmation. As they, when they would attract, use dainty babblings, so was Nineveh a skilled artificer of ill-doing, well provided with means to capture cities and lands and to persuade them what pleased herself.” She selleth not nations only but families, drawing mankind both as a mass, and one by one after her, so that scarce any escape.

The adultery of the soul from God is the more grieveus, the nearer God has brought any to Himself, in priests worse than in the people, in Christians than in Jews, in Jews than in pagan; yet God espoused mankind to Him when He made him. His dowry were gifts of nature. If this be adultery, how much sorer, when betrothed by the Blood of Christ, and endowed with the gift of the Spirit!

Matthew Henry
Concise Bible Commentary
When proud sinners are brought down, others should learn not to lift themselves up. The fall of this great city should be a lesson to private persons, who increase wealth by fraud and oppression. They are preparing enemies for themselves; and if the Lord sees good to punish them in this world, they will have none to pity them. Every man who seeks his own prosperity, safety, and peace, should not only act in an upright, honourable manner, but with kindness to all.
Ellen G. White
Prophets and Kings, 363-4

“The Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon with fair branches, and with a shadowing shroud, and of an high stature; and his top was among the thick boughs.... Under his shadow dwelt all great nations. Thus was he fair in his greatness, in the length of his branches: for his root was by great waters. The cedars in the garden of God could not hide him: the fir trees were not like his boughs, and the chestnut trees were not like his branches; nor any tree in the garden of God was like unto him in his beauty.... All the trees of Eden, that were in the garden of God, envied him.” Ezekiel 31:3-9. PK 363.1

But the rulers of Assyria, instead of using their unusual blessings for the benefit of mankind, became the scourge of many lands. Merciless, with no thought of God or their fellow men, they pursued the fixed policy of causing all nations to acknowledge the supremacy of the gods of Nineveh, whom they exalted above the Most High. God had sent Jonah to them with a message of warning, and for a season they humbled themselves before the Lord of hosts and sought forgiveness. But soon they turned again to idol worship and to the conquest of the world. PK 363.2

The prophet Nahum, in his arraignment of the evildoers in Nineveh, exclaimed: PK 363.3

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