The Drunkenness of the Damned Text: Nahum 3:11-13
Introduction: The Inescapable Stupor of Judgment
We live in an age that believes it can outrun God. Our generation is convinced that with enough technological innovation, enough political maneuvering, and enough defiant self-assertion, the consequences of rebellion can be indefinitely postponed. We see a nation like ancient Nineveh, the subject of Nahum's prophecy, as a relic of a primitive past, a bronze-age cautionary tale with little to say to our sophisticated and enlightened era. But the Word of God is not a history book for antiquarians; it is a living and active word, a mirror that shows us our own face, our own rebellion, and our own fast-approaching judgment.
The prophet Nahum is sent to pronounce the final, unalterable doom of Nineveh, the bloody capital of the Assyrian empire. They had repented once, a century earlier under the preaching of Jonah, but that repentance was a distant memory. They had returned to their violence, their idolatry, and their arrogance. And so God sends Nahum not with an offer of mercy, but with a declaration of war. What we find in this prophecy is a detailed blueprint for how God dismantles proud and godless civilizations. And the principles are timeless. God does not change, and the nature of rebellious man does not change.
In the verses before us today, the prophet describes the internal state of a society on the brink of collapse. It is not just that their external defenses will fail; it is that their internal fortitude has already rotted away. They are drunk, they are hidden from reality, their fortifications are a joke, and their men have become as effective as women in battle. This is not just a military assessment; it is a spiritual diagnosis. When a nation gives itself over to sin, God gives it over to a spirit of stupor. He makes them drunk on their own rebellion, so that they stagger blindly into the very pit He has dug for them. And as we look around at our own culture, a culture drunk on sexual license, drunk on political hubris, and drunk on the worship of self, we must ask ourselves if we are not seeing the same symptoms that afflicted Nineveh just before the end.
The Text
You too will become drunk;
You will be hidden.
You too will search for a strong defense from the enemy.
All your fortifications are fig trees with ripe fruit,
When shaken, they fall into the eater’s mouth.
Behold, your people are women in your midst!
The gates of your land are opened wide to your enemies;
Fire consumes your gate bars.
(Nahum 3:11-13 LSB)
The Cup of Wrath (v. 11)
We begin with the internal state of the Ninevites, a state of intoxicated confusion.
"You too will become drunk; You will be hidden. You too will search for a strong defense from the enemy." (Nahum 3:11)
The first condition is drunkenness. This is a common biblical metaphor for the wrath of God. God forces the wicked to drink from the cup of His fury, and the result is confusion, staggering, and utter helplessness (Jer. 25:15-17). When a people group is hellbent on their sin, God's judgment often takes the form of giving them exactly what they want, but in a concentration so potent that it destroys them. They loved their sin, so God makes them drink it to the dregs. The result is a kind of national insanity. They can no longer think clearly. Their leaders make foolish decisions. Their people are given over to madness. They quit calling things by their right names. They celebrate what they once condemned. This is not just a moral failure; it is a judicial stupor, a divinely-sent delirium.
Because they are drunk, they "will be hidden." This can mean a couple of things, and they are related. First, it means they will go into hiding, cowering from the invading armies. The swaggering bullies of the ancient world will be reduced to trembling fugitives. But second, it means they will be hidden from reality itself. They will be in a fog, oblivious, concealed from the truth of their own desperate situation. Sin always promises wisdom and enlightenment, but it delivers blindness and obscurity. They thought they were the masters of the world, but they are so far gone they cannot even see the hand of God raised to strike them.
In this drunken and hidden state, they "will search for a strong defense." Notice the desperation. The ones who boasted in their impenetrable walls are now scrambling, looking for a refuge. But their search is futile. When God is your enemy, there is no fortress that can protect you. To search for a defense from the enemy, when God is the one who has sent the enemy, is to look in all the wrong places. It is like trying to find shelter from a hurricane in a house made of straw. Their problem is not military; their problem is theological. They have offended the Lord of Hosts, and no amount of human ingenuity can provide a defense against Him.
Fruitless Fortifications (v. 12)
Next, the prophet mocks the pathetic state of Nineveh's famed defenses.
"All your fortifications are fig trees with ripe fruit, When shaken, they fall into the eater’s mouth." (Nahum 3:12)
This is divine sarcasm. Nineveh was renowned for its massive walls, towers, and gates. From a human perspective, they were impregnable. But from God's perspective, they are like fig trees, laden with overripe fruit. The image is one of absurd ease. An invading army will not need battering rams or siege engines. All they have to do is give the tree a little shake, and the sweet fruit will fall right into their mouths. The conquest will not be a struggle; it will be a harvest. The defenses that took generations to build will collapse with laughable ease.
This is a crucial principle for us to grasp. Men always put their trust in their own hands, in their technology, their wealth, their military might. We trust in our political systems, our economic models, our "too big to fail" institutions. But when God decides a nation is ripe for judgment, all these things become as flimsy as a fig tree. The walls of the Soviet Union looked formidable, until God gave them a little shake. The financial systems of the West look permanent, until God decides it is harvest time. To trust in man-made fortifications is to trust in a lie. The only true fortress is the Lord Himself (Ps. 18:2). Nineveh's trust was in brick and mortar, and so their fall was total.
The Collapse of Manhood (v. 13)
Finally, Nahum describes the internal collapse of the Assyrian people themselves, a collapse of their very identity.
"Behold, your people are women in your midst! The gates of your land are opened wide to your enemies; Fire consumes your gate bars." (Nahum 3:13)
This is perhaps the most damning indictment of all. "Your people are women in your midst!" The word "people" here can refer to the soldiers, the fighting men. The most feared and brutal warriors of the ancient world have been rendered effeminate. This is not an insult to women; it is an observation of God's created order. God designed men to be the protectors, the fighters, the guardians of the city gate. He designed women to be the protected, the nurturers, the guardians of the home. When a culture comes under judgment, God often reverses these roles to its shame. The men lose their courage, their resolve, their masculinity. They become soft, indecisive, and useless in a crisis.
This is a spiritual, not a biological, condition. It is a judgment from God. When men refuse to act like men, God confirms them in their rebellion. He gives them over to effeminacy. And a nation of soft men is a nation that cannot stand. We see this plague in our own day. A culture that wages war on masculinity, that tells boys their natural aggression is "toxic," that redefines manhood and womanhood into meaningless, fluid categories, is a culture that is begging for judgment. It is a culture whose fighting men have become women.
The result is predictable. "The gates of your land are opened wide to your enemies." The gates are the place of strength, of defense, of decision. But when the men have become women, there is no one left to defend the gates. They are thrown open, not by the strength of the enemy, but by the weakness of the defenders. The enemy just walks right in. And "fire consumes your gate bars." The very things meant to secure the city become the fuel for its destruction. The collapse is total, from the inside out.
Conclusion: The Only Strong Defense
The picture Nahum paints of Nineveh is a terrifying one: a nation drunk, blind, defenseless, and unmanned. It is a picture of a people whose sin has come home to roost. They built an empire on blood and lies, and God brought it all crashing down with contemptuous ease. Their strength was a mirage, their security a joke, and their manhood a memory.
The warning to us is stark. A nation that abandons God will inevitably travel the same road. It will become drunk on its own propaganda. It will hide from the truth. Its proudest achievements and defenses will become as flimsy as fig trees. And its men will forget how to be men, leaving the gates wide open for any enemy God chooses to send.
There is only one "strong defense from the enemy," and it is not found in bigger armies, or smarter politicians, or a stronger economy. The only strong defense is found in repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the one who drank the cup of God's wrath for us, so that we would not have to. He is the one who, in the ultimate act of masculine courage, stood at the gate of hell itself and conquered it through His death and resurrection.
Our choice is the same as Nineveh's. We can continue in our drunken rebellion, trusting in our fig-leaf fortifications, until we stagger into a judgment that is total and final. Or we can humble ourselves, confess our sins, and flee for refuge to the only fortress that will never fail, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is our rock, our salvation, and our strong tower. In Him, the gates are not thrown open to the enemy, but are opened wide to welcome the redeemed. In Him, the fire is not a fire of judgment, but the refining fire of the Holy Spirit. He is the only defense that stands, because He is the King who reigns forever.