The scatterer has come up against you. Man the ramparts; watch the road; dress for battle; collect all your strength.
The waster spoken of here by the Prophet, some consider him to have been Sennacherib, and others, Nebuchodonosor. The verb עלה, ole, is also variously explained: it is often taken metaphorically in Hebrew for vanishing, as we say in French, Il s’en va en fumee; for smoke ascends, and this is the reason for the metaphor.
Here is, I. An alarm of war sent to Nineveh, Nah 2:1. The prophet speaks of it as just at hand, for it is neither doubtful nor far distant: "Look about thee, and see, he that dashes in pieces has come up before thy face.
Commenting on Nahum 2:1-10
He that dasheth in pieces is come up before thy face,.... O Nineveh, or land of Assyria; for this is not to be understood of Sennacherib's coming up against Jerusalem, as Kimchi; but of Nebuchadnezzar against Nineveh, as Aben Ezra; not Nebuchadnezzar the great, who, the Jewish chronologers say (c), took Nineveh in the first year of his reign; but his father, Nebuchadnezzar the first...