Nahum 3:1

Let us mourn with Nahum, and say with him, "Woe to him that buildeth his house on high." Or rather let us mourn for them as Christ mourned for those of old. "Woe to you that are rich, for ye have received your consolation." Let us, I beseech you, not cease thus lamenting, and if it be not unseemly, let us even beat our breasts for the carelessness of our brethren. Let us not weep for him who is already dead, but let us weep for the rapacious man, the grasping, the covetous, the insatiable. Why should we mourn for the dead, in whose case it is impossible henceforth to effect anything? Let us mourn for these who are capable even of change.

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.

(Chapter 3, verses 1 and following) Woe to the city of blood, full of deceit and torn apart. The plunder will not cease. The sound of the whip, the sound of the rattling wheel, the galloping horses and the blazing chariots, the ascending knight and the flashing sword, the gleaming spear and the multitude of the slain, and the weighty destruction. There is no end to the corpses. They will stumble over their own bodies because of the multitude of the prostitute's charming and enticing acts of fornication, and her sorceries which she sold to the nations through her acts of fornication, and her enchantments which she used to deceive the families. LXX: O city of blood, completely deceitful, full of wickedness, the hunting will not touch you: the sound of scourges, and the sound of turning wheels, and of pursuing horses, and of a blazing chariot, of a rider ascending, and a gleaming sword, and of shining armor, and of a multitude of wounded, and of a heavy downfall, and there will be no end to its nations, and they will be weakened in their bodies by the multitude of their fornication. A beautiful and pleasing harlot, leader of wickedness, who sells nations in her fornication, and tribes in her wickedness. Where we have been placed, full of laceration, is called Pherec Malea in Hebrew, which Aquila interpreted as 'full of decapitation', that is, full of excision. Symmachus, on the other hand, interpreted it as 'full of amputation', which we can say is full of cruelty or severity. In another edition of his work, I found 'full of dismemberment', that is, with the sections of flesh and pieces torn through the limbs: finally, he immediately added, where there is uninterrupted prey. The Hebrew scholar Pherec does not interpret it as 'exervicationem', which we find in the edition of Aquila, but as 'gubernaculum', that is, 'governance': to show that the city was royal, and as if it held the governance of all nations like a ship. Its power, that is, Nineveh, is described, and it is condemned under the lamentation of cruelty. Woe, city of blood, in which there is no truth, but all falsehood, full of plunder and tearing of prey. The voice of a cruel whip always and of a raging empire, and the voice of the wheel's momentum. Let us understand the voice as a sound: the roaring wheel, racing through different places, and the snorting horses, and the fiery chariot, are heard in…