Bible Studies
Nineveh, Capital of the Assyrian Empire
Series: Additional StudiesIntroduction:
1. In recent studies we have considered the time period associated with the Judean kings Hezekiah, Manasseh, and Amon. 2. The Assyrian Empire with its capital city in Nineveh figures prominently in this history. 3. It was the Assyrian Empire that had already conquered the northern kingdom of Israel and had significantly weakened the kingdom of Judah. 4. The city was destroyed in 612 B.C. by a coalition of former subject peoples, the Babylonians, Medes, Persians, Chaldeans, Scythians and Cimmerians. 5. For some 50 years before this time Nineveh is considered to have been the largest city in the world. 6. It was one of the oldest and greatest cities of antiquity. D. J. Wiseman (Z.P.E.B.) says that archeology shows that the site was occupied from prehistoric times (c. 4500 B.C.). 7. Our concern is how it figured into the history of the Bible and particularly the time period that we have been recently studying. 8. Introduce chart of Assyrian Kings for this time period. (Dates are approximate.)a. Tiglath-Pileser III 745-727 B.C.
b. Shalmanesar V 727-721 B.C.
c. Sargon II 721-705 B.C.
d. Sennacherib II 705-681 B.C.
e. Esarhaddon 680-669 B.C.
f. Assurbanipal 668-after 633 B.C.
Discussion:
I. Gen. 10:6-11 identifies the origin of Nineveh.A. It was established by Nimrod, “the mighty hunter.”
B. Nimrod was a descendent of Ham one of the sons of Noah.
C. For years skeptics questioned the existence of the city. Between 1845 and 1854 British archeologist A. H. Layard excavated the site identifying the palace of King Sargon along with a library of over 22,000 cuneiform documents.
1. King Sargon is mentioned by Isaiah (20:1-6).
2. Isaiah prophesies of Egypt and Cush being taken captive by Assyria.
II. The prophet Jonah was sent by the Lord to go “to Nineveh the great city to cry against it.”A. It is described as “an exceedingly great city, a three days’ walk” (3:3). God identified 120,000 living in the city (4:11).
B. Jonah cried out, “Yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown” (3:4).
C. “The people believed God; and they called a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them” (3:5).
D. Even the king laid aside his robe and put on sackcloth and sat on ashes (3:7).
1. He proclaimed a fast.
2. Called on the people to pray and to turn from wickedness and from violence.
E. “When God saw their deeds, that they turned from their wicked way, then God relented concerning the calamity that He had declared He would bring upon them. And He did not do it” (3:10).
F. Jonah did not want to give them opportunity to repent. The following comment by Farrar in his book The Minor Prophets (pp. 146, 148) may help us to understand why. “Judged from the vaunting inscriptions of her kings, no power more useless, more savage, more terrible, ever cast its gigantic shadow on the page of history as it passed on the way to ruin. The kings of Assyria tormented the miserable world. They exult to record how ‘space failed for corpses’; how unsparing a destroyer their goddess Ishtar; how they flung away the bodies of soldiers like so much clay; how they made pyramids of human heads; how they burned cities; how they filled populous lands with death and devastation; how they reddened broad deserts with carnage of warriors; how they scattered whole countries with the corpses of their defenders as with chaff; how they impaled ‘heaps of men’ on stakes, and strewed the mountains and choked rivers with dead bones; how they cut off the hands of kings and nailed them on the walls, and left their bodies to rot with bears and dogs on the entrance gates of cities; how they employed nations of captives in making brick in fetters; how they cut down warriors like weeds, smote them like wild beasts in the forest, and covered pillars with the flayed skins of rival monarchs.”
III. The Assyrian Empire began a quest for world domination under Tiglath-pileser III (aka. Pul) in 745 B.C.A. We read about his invasion into northern Israel in 2 Kings 15:29 during the reign of Pekah, king of Israel.
1. While it is a very brief mention it identifies cities and areas conquered and that they were carried captive to Assyria.
2. If the structure of 2 Kings means anything it can be interpreted that God was using Assyria against Israel to oppress them because of their evil.
B. Even before this, the Israelite king Menahem had paid tribute to Tiglath-pileser (2 Kings 15:19). The later invasion, in all likelihood, resulted from Pekah rebelling against paying tribute.
C. Later king Ahaz, of Judah, father of Hezekiah, met with Tiglath-pileser in Damascus (2 Kings 16:10ff).
1. He had wanted Assyria’s help against Aram and Israel (2 Kings 16:7-9).
2. So Tiglath-pileser conquered Damascus and put Rezin, king of Aram to death.
IV. It was Sargon II who completed the siege of Samaria in 722 that had been started by Shalmaneser V. Read 2 Kings 17:1ff.A. Hoshea, king of Israel, stopped paying tribute to Assyria after having agreed to do so. He sought an alliance with Egypt.
1. Shalmaneser put him in prison.
2. Samaria was besieged for three years (2 Kings 18:9-12).
B. Sargon completed the siege and took Israel captive to Assyria.
1. Peoples from other nations were settled in the land of Israel.
2. These mixed people were later known as the Samaritans.
C. 2 Kings 17:7ff defines why they fell—rebellion against God. God had used Assyria as an instrument of judgment against those who had rebelled against Him.
V. The Assyrian king Sennacherib was the one who invaded Judah during the reign of Hezekiah (2 Kings 18:13ff).A. He was the one who conquered 46 cities, including Lachish.
B. Hezekiah cut off the gold from the doors of the temple to pay his tribute, fortified Jerusalem and made changes in the water system in response to Sennacherib.
C. While Sennacherib did not conquer Jerusalem he says he shut up Hezekiah “like a bird in a cage.” Recorded on Taylor Prism (British Museum) and Sennacherib Prism (Oriental Institute Chicago).
1. The text of Scripture says God defended the city and saved it for His own and for David’s sake (2 Kings 19:34).
2. The Assyrians had discredited God and His power to deliver Jerusalem.
3. But God said that He had raised up Assyria (Isa. 37:26) and because they were raging against Him He would turn them back (Isa. 37:29-38).
VI. The book of Nahum predicts the destruction of Nineveh (1:1).A. “With an overflowing flood He will make a complete end of its site, and will pursue His enemies into darkness” (1:8). “The gates of the rivers are opened and the palace is dissolved” (2:6)
B. “Like tangled thorns, and like those who are drunken with their drink, they are consumed like stubble completely withered” (1:10).
C. “All your fortifications are fig trees with ripe fruit—when shaken, they fall into the eater’s mouth” (3:12).
D. “The gates of your land are opened wide to your enemies; fire consumes your gate bars” (3:13).
E. “There is no relief for your breakdown, your wound is incurable. All who hear about you will clap their hands over you, for on whom has not your evil passed continually” (3:19).
F. In 612 B.C. Nabopolassar united the Babylonian army with the Medes and Scythians and led a campaign that captured the Assyrian citadels in the north. The Babylonians laid siege to Nineveh. The walls were too strong for their battering rams, so they decided to try and starve the people out. A famous oracle had been given that “Nineveh should never be taken until the river became its enemy” (cf. Nahum 1:8; 2:6). According to a Babylonian Chronicle the defenses were breached at a time of unusually high flooding of the Tigris and Khosr Rivers.
G. Lenormant and E. Chevallier, The Rise and Fall of Assyria, state, “Rain fell in such abundance that the waters of the Tigris inundated part of the city and overturned one of its walls for a distance of twenty stades. Then the King, convinced that the oracle was accomplished and despairing of any means of escape, to avoid falling alive into the enemy’s hands constructed in his palace an immense funeral pyre, placed on it his gold and silver and his royal robes, and then shutting himself up with his wives and eunuchs in a chamber formed in the midst of the pile, disappeared in the flames. Nineveh opened its gates to the besiegers, but this tardy submission did not save the proud city. It was pillaged and burned, and then razed to the ground so completely as to evidence the implacable hatred enkindled in the midst of subject nations by the fierce and cruel Assyrian government.”
H. Zeph. 2:13-15 describes her end. Wiseman (Z.P.E.B) says, She “was unrecognized by Zenophon and his retreating Greeks as they passed in 401 B.C.”
Conclusion:
1. Assyria was a great empire. Nineveh was a great city. 2. But like Israel she was brought low. 3. Let us not be like her. Let us accept the instruction of the Lord. Let us trust in Him. 4. Let us heed the warning of Samaria, and of Nineveh, and so many others destroyed before the justice of God. 5. But God has a plan for the deliverance of a remnant (Zeph. 3:12-20). 6. Will you humble yourself and take refuge in the name of the Lord?
