Post by Lee on Dec 12, 2014 3:52:06 GMT
(KJV) Nahum 3:8 Art thou better than populous No,
That was situate among the rivers, that had the waters round about it,
Whose rampart was the sea, and her wall was from the sea?
(ESV) Nahum 3:8 Are you better than Thebes,
that sat by the Nile, with water around her,
her rampart a sea, and water her wall?
Thebes is the No of the Old Testament, and is a very ancient place. In “the Word of the Lord against Egypt” (Jer. 46.) we read, “The Lord of Hosts the God of Israel saith, Behold I will punish Amon of No, and Pharaoh and Egypt with her gods, and her kings; even Pharaoh and them that trust in him, and I will deliver them into the hand of those that seek their lives, even into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon . . .” (R.V., verses 25, 26). This was spoken about B.C. 600, while at the same time God declared that He would not make a full end of Israel, though He would punish him (verse 28). The preservation of Israel in our day, after more than 2,500 years, and the destruction of Thebes, are alike witnesses of the truth of God. So also in Ezek. 30:14–16, No is similarly devoted to destruction at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar. And even Nahum threatened Nineveh with a like fate to “No-amon” (R.V.) “populous No” (A.V.) (Nah. 3:8).
“Thebes” was so called by the Greeks, and was the name, not only of this (the most celebrated) Egyptian city, but of other Greek cities as well. The name, which seems to mean wonderful, magnificent, was associated with another name, Diospolis, the city of Zeus (Amon), and applied to both sides of the Nile. The East was the city proper, and the West the burial place, indicated in the pictures on the monuments of the sepulchral barge bearing the dead “beyond the River”—“Shall we meet beyond the River?” They had “gone West,” to the land of the setting sun. It seems to be beyond dispute that in these pictures and customs of two-and-a-half millenniums ago we have the true sources of ancient and modern blendings of fact and fable concerning the dead. “Man goeth to his long home” (betholamo), said the preacher (Ecc. 12:5). And even to this day the Jews euphemistically call the cemetery beth-chayim, the house of life! In this they are rather like the ancient Egyptians.
(1924). The Christadelphian, 61(electronic ed.), 201–202.