The Bloody City (Nahum 3:1-4)

This study was done using the Amplified Bible, which I don't have permission to publish, so I will replace the verses here with the American Standard Version.  Because of that some of the comments may not totally make sense because the AMP has expanded explanations.  I would highly recommend going to a site like BibleGateway.com where you can read the AMP version for free.

Nahum Chapter 3: 

1. Woe to the bloody city! it is all full of lies and rapine; the prey departeth not.

 Nineveh certainly was a bloody city.  It's kings were known for awful brutality.  When they defeated their enemies there would lead their captives by putting hooks through their noses and even execute them by skinning them alive.

It was full of lies as are many nations, particularly the nobles and politicians.  They make great promises to nations and peoples in order to convince them to submit, but in the end do not fulfill their end of the bargain.

2 The noise of the whip, and the noise of the rattling of wheels, and prancing horses, and bounding chariots,

A.  Such distinct sounds the inhabitants of the city would have hear from far off.  The cracking of the whip also indicates haste, the rushing onslaught toward the great city. 

3 the horseman mounting, and the flashing sword, and the glittering spear, and a multitude of slain, and a great heap of corpses, and there is no end of the bodies; they stumble upon their bodies;-

A.  Such a large multitude of flashing swords and gleaming spears would have been terrible to look at from the city walls.  Then, when they burst into the city the bodies became innumerable.  The stumbling was by both the horsemen and the fleeing Ninevites who were forced to trip over the bodies of their own family and friends.  The horsemen, having no respect for those they killed continued forward, trampling the bodies of their victims.

4 All because of the multitude of the harlotries [of Nineveh], the well-favored harlot, the mistress of deadly charms who betrays and sells nations through her whoredoms [idolatry] and peoples through her enchantments.

 Harlotry in fact was a mainstay of Assyria, John Gill explains: "...all the Assyrian women must be harlots, since they were obliged once in their lifetime to lie with a stranger in the temple of Venus, whom the Assyrians call Mylitta, as Herodotus (b) and Strabo (c) relate; to all which here may be an allusion: and particularly the inhabitants of this city had all the arts of address and insinuation to deceive others as harlots have; and both men and women very probably were given to whoredom and adultery in a literal sense as is generally the case where luxury and intemperance abound; and especially were grossly guilty of idolatry, which in Scripture is frequently expressed by whoredom and adultery; worshiping Bel, Nisroch and other deities and which was highly provoking to God; and therefore for these things, his judgement came upon them, before and after described."

Nineveh had a long history of enslaving nations.  Those nations which rose up and destroyed it were enslaved nations before that time.