The Great Draining: When God Pulls the Plug Text: Nahum 2:8-10
Introduction: The Illusions of Empire
We live in an age that is drunk on its own stability. We see great cities, vast economies, and powerful militaries, and we assume that because they are here today, they will be here tomorrow. We think that the sheer inertia of a thing guarantees its permanence. But this is the great lie of every proud and godless empire. From Babylon to Rome to the modern West, men build their towers of Babel, bricked together with arrogance and mortared with injustice, and they think them invincible. They are like a man who builds his house on the beach and mistakes the low tide for a permanent condition.
The prophet Nahum was sent to deliver a message from God to just such an empire. Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, was the bloody city, the lion's den, a place that had grown fat and secure on the plunder of nations. A century before, they had repented at the preaching of Jonah, and God in His mercy had relented. But that repentance was a distant memory. The grandchildren had forgotten the God of their grandfathers' brief conversion. They had returned to their idols, their cruelty, and their pride. They saw their massive walls, their overflowing treasuries, and their teeming population, and they felt secure. They were a great pool of water, deep and still and unmovable.
But Nahum's prophecy is a declaration that God keeps His books. Mercy spurned eventually gives way to judgment executed. God is slow to anger, but He is also great in power and will by no means clear the guilty. When the appointed time comes, God simply pulls the plug. All the apparent stability, all the wealth, all the power, drains away in a moment, leaving nothing but a muddy hole and a bad smell. This is not just an ancient history lesson about a Mesopotamian city. It is a permanent warning to every nation, every institution, and every individual who finds their security in anything other than the living God. God opposes the proud, and when He does, their collapse is not gradual. It is sudden, it is total, and it is terrifying.
The Text
Though Nineveh was like a pool of water throughout her days,
Now they are fleeing;
“Stand! Stand!”
But no one turns back.
Plunder the silver!
Plunder the gold!
And there is no limit to the treasure,
Wealth from every kind of desirable object.
She is emptied! Yes, she is emptied out and eviscerated!
Hearts are melting and knees knocking!
Also anguish is in all their loins,
And all their faces turn pale!
(Nahum 2:8-10 LSB)
The Reservoir of Wrath (v. 8)
We begin with the image of Nineveh's false security and its sudden dissolution.
"Though Nineveh was like a pool of water throughout her days, Now they are fleeing; 'Stand! Stand!' But no one turns back." (Nahum 2:8)
The metaphor is potent. A pool of water seems stable, placid, self-contained. For centuries, Nineveh had been just that. It was a reservoir of people, wealth, and power, gathered from all the surrounding nations. The waters of the Tigris river literally surrounded the city, forming a key part of its defenses. The city was a marvel of engineering and military might. It was deep, it was vast, and it felt permanent. This is how godless men think. They mistake the current arrangement for the ultimate reality. They trust in their systems, their walls, their accumulated stuff.
But God says, "Now they are fleeing." The verb is active and immediate. The dam has broken. What was once a placid pool is now a chaotic, rushing flood, but the waters are not flooding in; they are fleeing out. The very population that gave the city its strength is now its central weakness, a stampeding mob of terrified people, each man for himself. The stability was an illusion, contingent entirely upon the patience of God.
In the midst of the chaos, a futile command is shouted: "Stand! Stand!" You can hear the desperation in it. This is the cry of the officers, the magistrates, the leaders who see their entire world dissolving. They are trying to rally the troops, to restore order, to hold the line. It is the cry of every secular authority when the principles of disintegration they have fostered finally come home to roost. They want courage without a foundation. They want unity without a covenant head. They want men to stand firm for a city that stands for nothing but its own rapacious appetites.
And the response is telling: "But no one turns back." Why would they? The social contract has been shredded. When a society is built on plunder and fear, there is no loyalty left when the crisis hits. The only thing holding them together was the shared pursuit of loot and the fear of the Assyrian whip. Now, a greater fear has arrived, the fear of the wrath of God manifested through the Medes and Babylonians, and every man's only thought is to save his own skin. A society without God has no cohesive glue. When the judgment falls, it doesn't just crack; it disintegrates into a million selfish pieces.
The Great Un-Plundering (v. 9)
Next, the prophet turns his attention to the spoils of the city, the very source of its pride.
"Plunder the silver! Plunder the gold! And there is no limit to the treasure, Wealth from every kind of desirable object." (Nahum 2:9 LSB)
This is a divine command, dripping with irony. For centuries, Nineveh's business model was plunder. They were the lion, tearing the prey for their cubs, filling their dens with ripped carcasses (Nahum 2:12). Their treasuries were bursting with the wealth of conquered peoples, every desirable object stolen through bloodshed and intimidation. Their entire civilization was a monument to theft.
And now God says to the invading armies, "Go ahead. Plunder the plunderers." He turns their own sin back upon their own heads. The very thing they trusted in, their limitless treasure, is now the incentive for their destruction. God is hoisting them on their own petard. This is a fundamental principle of divine justice. God often judges a sin with a sin that looks just like it. Jacob the deceiver is deceived by Laban. David the adulterer has adultery tear his own family apart. And Nineveh the plunderer will be plundered.
The phrase "no limit to the treasure" underscores the sheer scale of their greed and the corresponding scale of their judgment. They had piled it high, and in doing so, they were simply gathering firewood for their own funeral pyre. This is a sober warning for any nation, particularly our own, that has grown fat on materialism and economic hubris. Wealth is not a shield. Apart from God, it is a magnet for judgment. It is a weight that will drag you to the bottom of the sea when the ship of state goes down.
The Anatomy of Terror (v. 10)
Finally, the prophet gives us a visceral, physiological description of the city's utter collapse. The judgment is not abstract; it is felt in the body.
"She is emptied! Yes, she is emptied out and eviscerated! Hearts are melting and knees knocking! Also anguish is in all their loins, And all their faces turn pale!" (Nahum 2:10 LSB)
The Hebrew here is emphatic, using a series of rhyming, alliterative words: buqah u-mebuqah u-mebullaqah. It is a torrent of desolation. The city is not just defeated; it is gutted. The translation "emptied, emptied out, and eviscerated" captures it well. It is a picture of a body disemboweled. All the life, all the substance, all the internal structure is ripped out, leaving a hollow shell.
And the human response is one of complete physical and psychological breakdown. "Hearts are melting." Courage evaporates. The will to resist is gone. This is what happens when God decides to fight. He doesn't just have to break down the walls of a city; He can reach inside and break the spirit of the defenders before the first siege engine arrives. "Knees knocking." The body betrays the mind. Strength fails. They cannot stand, they cannot fight, they cannot even flee effectively. This is sheer, unadulterated terror.
"Anguish is in all their loins." This is a deep, gut-wrenching pain, like the contractions of a woman in labor. It is an agony that doubles a man over. "And all their faces turn pale." The blood drains from their faces, a visible sign of the terror that has gripped their hearts. Nahum paints a picture of a city having a collective panic attack. The proud, cruel, swaggering Assyrians, the terror of the ancient world, are reduced to a quivering, whimpering, jellified mass of fear.
This is what the fear of man looks like when it finally comes face to face with the wrath of God. All the bravado, all the arrogance, all the self-assurance is stripped away in an instant. This is the end of all godless empires. They do not go out with a bang. They go out with a whimper, with melting hearts and knocking knees.
Conclusion: The Only Safe Place
It is tempting to read a passage like this and think of it as little more than divine chest-thumping, a relic from a more primitive, wrathful Old Testament. But that is to miss the point entirely. The good news of the gospel only makes sense against the backdrop of this kind of righteous, holy justice.
The terror that gripped Nineveh is a small picture of the ultimate terror that will grip every unrepentant soul on the day of judgment. The melting hearts and knocking knees of the Assyrians are a faint echo of the terror of those who will call for the mountains to fall on them to hide them from the face of the Lamb. The God who pulled the plug on Nineveh is the same God who holds our lives and the destiny of our nation in His hands.
The only place of safety is not in a walled city, not in a full treasury, and not in a powerful army. The only safe place in the entire universe is in the wounds of Jesus Christ. He is our stronghold in the day of trouble. On the cross, Jesus absorbed the full, undiluted, eviscerating wrath of God that we deserved. He became, for us, buqah u-mebuqah u-mebullaqah. He was emptied out, so that we could be filled. His heart melted in anguish in the Garden. His face was pale in death. He endured the ultimate plunder, being stripped naked and shamed, so that we could be clothed in His righteousness and receive the limitless treasures of His grace.
The choice before us is the same choice that was before Nineveh. We can trust in our own pool of resources, our own apparent stability, and wait for the day when God inevitably pulls the plug. Or we can abandon our pride, confess that we are the plunderers, and flee for refuge to the only one who can save. For those who are in Christ, the message of Nahum is not a threat, but a promise. It is the good news that God will surely and finally judge all the bloody cities of men, and He will vindicate His people. Our God is a consuming fire, and that is a terrifying thing for His enemies, but it is the greatest comfort in the world for His children.