Nineveh Told of Her Fate and Judah of Her Restoration (2:1–2)

Fortress (2:1). Roads led to Nineveh from every direction, so it is likely that there were at least watch posts beyond the city walls, although none have been identified.

The Lord will restore … their vines (2:2). Destroying fruit trees was a severe action in war, as Sargon of Assyria said when he devastated an unruly region: “I cut down its extensive vines and so brought its drinking to an end.”23

The Fall of Nineveh Foreseen (2:3–13)

Shields … red (2:3). Wall paintings uncovered in the Assyrian provincial palace at Til Barsip show Assyrian soldiers of the late eighth century B.C. wearing red and blue tunics. Their shields are colored in concentric circles, alternately reddish brown and pale blue. It is uncertain whether these colors are exact or have suffered chemical change.24

The metal on the chariot (2:3). Clarification of the unique Hebrew word pelādôt has come from Ugaritic texts of the thirteenth century. In them pld denotes a type of blanket or fabric;25 thus, the Hebrew phrase “fire of the pelādôt of the chariot” probably denotes bright-colored trappings on the chariots. The paintings at Til Barsip (see 2:3) include a royal chariot with its body colored red; one Assyrian text refers to the chariot of a goddess decorated with colored wool.26

Assyrian lion hunt with some of original colors preserved

Jill Walton, courtesy of the Louvre

Squares (2:4). Beside the palaces on their terraces, the houses of the city occupied the lower ground, with orchards and gardens interspersed among them. Some of the main streets were paved as part of Sennacherib’s beautification of Nineveh.

Picked troops (2:5). Traditionally, Babylonian and Assyrian kings relied on soldiers levied from the population in return for plots of land they could cultivate. In the Assyrian empire squadrons of permanent soldiers were posted in key places, and this standing army included men from subjugated regions (including Samaria).27

Shields line the battlements at Lachish during the Assyrian siege

Caryn Reeder, courtesy of the British Museum

City wall (2:5). Already in prehistoric times, people built walls around their settlements. They served to mark the limits and to defend the inhabitants and their flocks against wild animals and human foes. As warfare developed, the walls grew higher and stronger to prevent breaching and tunneling and to provide a platform from which to fire arrows or drop stones and other things on attackers. Yet a determined enemy could usually find a way to overcome them (see comment on 2:6). Sennacherib rebuilt the walls of Nineveh of mud-brick, probably rising twenty feet or more high, faced with cut stone blocks, “as high as a mountain.”28 Towers protected the gateways.

Protective shield (2:5). Cities under attack would hang shields on the battlements for extra protection against enemy arrows and slingstones. Sennacherib’s sculpture of the siege of Lachish shows them.

River gates (2:6). Sennacherib created an extensive network of canals to irrigate the land around Nineveh and control water, with dams to provide reservoirs. By breaching the dams, attackers could cause a surge of water along the Khosr River, weakening the walls where it entered the city and rapidly emptying the reservoirs.29

Palace collapses (2:6). Excavations have shown that part of Ashurbanipal’s palace was lost through erosion of the mound on which it was built; this may have been true of others too.

Decreed (2:7). The Hebrew word rendered “decreed” is uncertain (cf. NIV note); past commentators tried to explain it as the name of an Assyrian queen, Hussab. There is no evidence for such a queen, and the introduction of such a figure here would be odd. The translation “it is decreed [established]” is the most satisfactory at present; “the city” must then be supplied as the subject of the verb “be exiled.”

Be exiled (2:7). The threat of exile hung over every small kingdom of the ancient Near East if they rejected the suzerainty of a greater power or rebelled against one. Examples are known from the third millennium B.C. on of powerful kings deporting conquered populations to other parts of their realms. The Assyrian kings engaged in this policy extensively, listing the numbers of peoples they transferred (Sennacherib lists over 500,000).30

The people of Samaria were removed to the east and people from other regions settled in that city (2 Kings 17). When Sennacherib attacked Judah because King Hezekiah had broken the treaty his father Ahaz had made, he records that he took away 200,150 people from Judah. Exiles were not necessarily used as slave labor. Often the promise that the field commander made to the citizens of Jerusalem became a reality (2 Kings 18:31–32); the exiles were settled on land from which they could make a living, but they could not return to their own country. The threat of exile, in other words, was an ever-present possibility.

Slave girls moan like doves (2:7). The cries of doves are often compared with the laments of mourners in Hebrew literature (Isa. 38:14; 59:11) and, long before, in Sumerian (e.g. The Curse of Agade 219–21) and in later Babylonian texts.31

Plunder (2:9–10). A glimpse of Nineveh’s treasures appeared in 1988–1990 when Iraqi archaeologists opened tombs of Assyrian queens at Nimrud (ancient Kalah), twenty-five miles south of Nineveh, and discovered masses of golden jewelry, dishes, bowls of gold, and other valuable objects.32 For the first time, modern eyes were able to see the reality of Assyria’s wealth. The Babylonian Chronicle notes the “heavy plunder” Babylonian forces took in Nineveh and other places.33 Far more awaited the conquerors in the palaces of Nineveh, garnered from conquered kingdoms and harvested as tribute.

Lion and lioness (2:11). See sidebar on “The Lion as Symbol.”