decked with cedar, gilding, and ivory, and raised upon terraces whence
broad flights of steps led down to courts guarded by giant stone figures
of bulls and lions, with eagles' wings and human faces, as if some
notion of the mysterious Cherubim around the Throne in Heaven had
floated to these Assyrians. The slabs against the walls were carved with
representations of battles, hunts, sacrifices, triumphs, and all the
scenes in the kings' histories, nay, in the building of the city; and
there were explanations in the wedge-shaped letters of the old Assyrian
alphabet. The Ninevites had numerous idols, but their honour for the
Lord had not quite faded away; and about the year 830, about the time of
Amaziah in Judah, and Jeroboam II. in Israel, the prophet Jonah was
sent to rebuke them for their many iniquities. In trying to avoid the
command, by sailing to Tarshish in a Phoenician ship, he underwent that
strange punishment which was a prophetic sign of our Lord's Burial and
Resurrection; and thus warned, he went to Nineveh and startled the
people by the cry, "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be destroyed!" At
that cry, the whole place repented as one man; and from the king to the
beggar all fasted and wept, till God had mercy on their repentance and
ready faith, and turned away His wrath, in pity to the 120,000 innocent
children who knew not yet to do good or evil.

The prophet Nahum afterwards prophesied against the bloody city, and
foretold that her men should become like women, and that in the midst of
her feasting and drunkenness an overflowing flood should make an end of
her. But first God had a work for the Ninevites to do, namely, to punish
His own chosen, who would not have Him for their God. Therefore, He
strengthened the great King Tiglath Pileser, who already held in
subjection the other great Assyrian city of Babylon, and the brave
Median mountaineers, to come out against the Syrians and Israelites.
Ahaz, King of Judah, hoping to be delivered from his distresses, sent