Naum 3
Cyril of Alexandria · Comentário Patrístico (catena)
Naum 3:1
Woe to the bloody city, all full of lies and injustice. He has called it a city of blood; for those who had reigned in Nineveh were most ready for murder and exceedingly bloodthirsty; and those in it were otherwise warlike, and always eager to make their attacks untamable against whomever they might go. And he says "full of lies," because it was also full of idols, in which falsehood is especially not unproven. For they are falsely named, and the handmade gods steal the glory of divinity, "Silver and gold, according to what is written, the works of men's hands." And the wise Jeremiah somewhere also called it a land of graven images. But "full of lies" might also be understood in another way, with falsehood being understood as villainy and guile and deceit hateful to God, with injustice clearly running alongside. For where there is deceit and guile, there injustice will surely follow. And a city of blood, full of lies and injustice, is also Jerusalem, which killed the Lord. For we remember Christ saying, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her." And he said somewhere through the voice of the prophets, "Woe to them, because they have departed from me; they are miserable, because they have acted impiously against me; I redeemed them, but they have spoken lies against me." For they have spoken against the glory of Christ, at one time saying that he casts out demons by Beelzebul; at another time calling him a winebibber, and in addition to this, a Samaritan, and things much more shameful. For it would be fitting for their foul mouths alone to babble those things which they have dared to say. — Commentary on Nahum
Naum 3:2
Because emptying they have emptied them out and their branches. They destroyed the weapons of their power from among men, mighty men mocking in fire. The reins of their chariots on the day of his preparation, and the horsemen shall be thrown into confusion in the ways, and the chariots shall be thrown into confusion and shall clash together in the broad ways; their appearance is like torches of fire and like lightnings running to and fro. As the God who knows all things sounded in the holy prophets the things that would be at various times, they necessarily announced them according to what seemed good to him. And many times they occurred even in the very visions of things. Therefore they were astonished, and seeing them all but fulfilled, they made their pronouncements about them; something of which sort the Prophet now seems to have experienced concerning the inhabitants of Nineveh, and those who shielded themselves with Cyrus, that they both shook them off and their branches. But the account is made as from what is accustomed to happen to vines. For the cluster is shaken off and spits out the grapes, either when a most violent wind attacks, or when a scorching heat burns it, or when any other harm befalls it, so that the branch itself appears with the fruits, stripped even of its blossom. So then they shook them off like vines. And their weapons have been destroyed, that is, their power; for 'weapons' sometimes signifies power. But he says that being terrible horsemen, and knowing the battles from chariots, they were in such unbearable terrors, that they were turned to flight, and entangled with one another, and were shattered dashing against each other, and he thought he so gazed upon the phalanxes of the enemy, that they yielded in no way to torches, or even like lightning consumed them, darting with a swift and unrestrained course. — Commentary on the Twelve Minor Prophets