Nahum 3:4 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

Because, & c.; God is just, Nineveh hath deserved all this. The multitude of the whoredoms; her crafts and her policies, in which she resembled those lewd women; as they by their wiles abuse and deceive men, so did Nineveh, or the Assyrian kingdom, deceive, impoverish, and enslave nations by state policies: so Isaiah 23:17 Revelation 17:2. Or else, by whoredoms here may be meant idolatries, which were multiplied by the many people that served the Assyrian idols, or by their multiplying of idols, which probably they did by taking into the muster-roll of their gods those idols which the conquered nations worshipped: or whoredoms literally understood; for this sin undoubtedly did abound where wealth, luxury, ease, and long continuance of these, were to be found. Well-favoured; the glory of their state and government, or the splendour of their idols, temples, and sacrifices, or the comeliness and beauty of the lewd and whorish women among them. Witchcrafts; bewitching policies, and enchanting counsels, confederacies, and promised favours; or it may be literally taken for witchcrafts or necromancies, which sin abounded no doubt among the Assyrians. Selleth; disposeth of them as imperiously and absolutely as men do slaves which they buy; or else, drawing them into the wars for pay, exposed them to slaughter by the enemies sword, as if they had bought their persons to sell their lives, that thereby their own countrymen and citizens might be spared and escape. Or selleth, i.e. occasioneth them to abound in sin, for which God in his just judgment selleth them into the enemies hand. Nations; whole kingdoms. Whoredoms: see above. And families through her witchcrafts: either it is an elegant illustration of the former passage, or perhaps it may intimate the seducing of some particular and eminent families to engage themselves in a hereditary and perpetual service to the Assyrian idols, or to witchcrafts, in which the devil imitated God's institution, in taking a family to his service; so the chief families had the authority of ruling, and the burden of all idolatrous priesthood. Gr. Tholosun. de Rep. lib. 4. sect. 9, and lib. 8. c. 2. sect. 6,8.