Nineveh Cannot Claim Greater Security than Fallen Thebes

Nineveh is asked whether it is better than Thebes

Art thou better than populous No? The KJV's 'populous No' is No-amon, Thebes on the Nile, not a census claim. That city sat among the rivers, with waters round about her, whose rampart was the sea. Ethiopia (Cush) and Egypt were her strength, Put and Lubim her helpers.

The point is not that Thebes was weak. It is that water, walls, and famous allies did not make her an exception. Nineveh's security is not unique either. This comparison does not by itself date every layer of Nahum to one year.

Yet she was carried away, and the children were not spared

Yet was she carried away, she went into captivity; her young children also were dashed in pieces at the top of all the streets; they cast lots for her honourable men, and all her great men were bound in chains. Assyria itself had done this to Thebes. Royal inscriptions boast of that conquest. Boasts exaggerate, but the analogy is historically pointed: the predator is made to remember its own victim.

Thou also shalt be drunken: thou shalt be hid, thou also shalt seek strength because of the enemy. Drunkenness here is incapacitation, not a joke. The deaths of children are atrocity, not a tactic God commands and not a pattern for later justice. Peoples inside an empire are not guilty simply because their capital fell.