Assyrian Lion Motif & Nahum

"Ashurbanipal boasts that kings and lions are powerless before him. At the beginning of one of his annals (Cylinder F) he states,

Among men, kings, and among the beasts, lions (?) were powerless before my bow, I know (the art) of waging battle and combat...A valiant hero, beloved of Assur and Ishtar, of royal lineage, am I (Luckenbill 1989, 2:347, ¶ 896).

Ashurbanipal has tied his lion hunting and military conquests together in one statement.
In the vision of Nahum concerning Nineveh, Nahum asks a rhetorical question,

Where is the dwelling of the lions, and the feeding place of the young lions, where the lion walked, the lioness and lion’s cub, and no one made them afraid? (2:11).

He sees Nineveh as a lions’ den that has been destroyed and the lions are gone. The “prey” in verse 12 is apparently the booty that the Assyrians have taken from all the cities they conquered in recent memory.
In verse 13, the LORD states directly,

Behold, I am against you. I will burn your chariots in smoke, and the sword shall devour your young lions; I will cut off your prey from the earth, and the voice of your messenger shall be heard no more.

The phrase “the sword shall devour your young lions” draws our attention to another relief showing Ashurbanipal thrusting a sword through a lion. The inscription associated with this relief says,

I, Ashurbanipal, king of the universe, king of Assyria, in my lordly sport, they let a fierce lion of the plain out of the cage and on foot...I stabbed him later with my iron girdle dagger and he died (Luckenbill 1989, 2:392, ¶ 1024).

The book of Nahum sets forth an ironic reversal of the Assyrian usage of the lion motif. Gordon Johnston has observed.

The extended lion metaphor in Nahum 2:11–13 includes the two major varieties of the Neo-Assyrian lion motif:  

*the depiction of the Assyrian king and his warriors as mighty lions,  

*and the royal lion hunt theme.  

While the Assyrians kept these two motifs separate, Nahum dovetailed the two, but in doing so he also reversed their original significance. *While the Assyrian

warriors loved to depict themselves as mighty lions hunting their prey, Nahum pictured them as lions that would be hunted down. *The Assyrian kings also boasted that they were mighty hunters in royal lion hunts; Nahum pictured them as the lions being hunted in the lion hunt. By these reversals Nahum created an unexpected twist on Assyrian usage. According to Nahum the Assyrians were like lions, to be sure; however, not in the way that they depicted themselves; rather than being like lions on the prowl for prey, the hunters would become the hunted! (2001:304)."

ABR