Translation & Sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ The Redeemer Church of Manhattan, KS, 16 March 2025
The end of the book of Nahum continues with God’s threat to bring judgment against a nation which had set itself in opposition against Him, and, using various agricultural images, makes the case that everything they were trusting to keep them safe - their fortifications, their army-men, their gates, their walls, their leaders, their trade, their numbers, their resilience - “all those things which they reposed a confidence in [w]ould fail them.” ~M. Henry 1714, AD
Read
my translation of Nahum 3:12-19:
All your forts are fig-trees
with first-fruits; just let them be shaken, and they will fall into
the mouth of the devourer! Look, your people are women in your
midst. Before your enemies, the gates of your land are completely
open; fire devours your door-bolts. Bottle water for yourself for
the siege. Strengthen your forts. Go to the mud-pit and make a mix
with the clay; get a handle on the brick-work. It is there that the
fire will devour you. The sword will cut you down; it will devour
you like a young-locust. Let it make itself as overwhelming as the
young-locust; let it make itself as overwhelming as the
swarming-locust! You have made your merchants more numerous than the
stars of the skies. The young-locust has molted and taken wing. Your
devotees are like the swarming-locust. Furthermore, your officers
are like burrowing locusts that entrench in the walls on a cold day.
When the sun has risen, he is withdrawn, and it is not known where
his location is. Your shepherds have gotten drowsy, O King of
Assyria. Your nobles have gotten cozy. Your people were panicked
upon the mountains, and there is no rallying them. There is no
diminishing to your brokenness – [no] weakening of the strike
against you. All who listen to the hearsay about you clap hands over
you, for upon whom has your evil not had a lasting effect?
The fortifications mentioned in v.12 might be the wall of the main city or perhaps outlying military forts around the city (Calvin). But they are compared to fig trees.
Fig trees seem to have been the sort of thing everybody had in their back yard in those days, so it was a familiar image.
Isaiah 28:4 Regarding Ephraim: “And the fading flower of the beauty of his glory which is upon the head of the valley of riches will be like a ripe fig before summer which as soon as the see-er sees it, it is in his hand and he swallows it.” (NAW)
Fig trees do not grow big like elms and oaks (Many don’t grow any taller than 15 feet!), so it was not very flattering for God to compare Nineveh to a fig tree.
Furthermore, the main point of a fig tree is to eat its fruit1.
So, when you go to harvest figs, does the fig-tree fight back and say, “Hey! Give me back my figs, or I’ll poke your eyes out!”? No! it just stands there while you shake the ripe figs off of it and pick the fallen fruit up off the ground.
God is implying that the mighty city of Nineveh is going to be a pushover and that Nineveh’s riches are just there for someone else to take.2
So God is trash-talking Nineveh. The scary thing is, Nineveh doesn’t have a chance in this fight; their proud rebellion against God is a pitiful delusion of strength, and the same is true of every civilization which rises up without acknowledging accountability to their Creator.
God promises that He is going to shake things up in judgment in our world too, in the future.
Revelation 6:13 “And the stars of heaven fell [will fall] to the earth, as a fig tree drops its late figs when it is shaken by a mighty wind.” (NKJV)
So, how will you survive the shaking? You turn to “face” the “Lord” and accept the terms of His covenant; then He becomes your “helper” “at your right hand” rather than your adversary intent on destroying you.
Acts 2:25 "For David says concerning Him:`I foresaw the LORD always before my face, For He is at my right hand, that I may not be shaken.”
Hebrews 12:26-29 “...now He has promised saying, ‘Once more I myself am shaking not only the earth but also heaven.’ Now, the 'Once more' shows the replacement of the things being shaken (in this case, of things which have been created) such that the things which are not being shaken may remain. Therefore, since we are receiving an unshakeable kingdom, let us continue to be grateful, by means of which we may minister most-acceptably to God with reverence and devotion, for indeed, our God is a consuming3 fire.
The trash-talk continues as we go into v.13. God taunts Nineveh, saying that they aren’t going to put up any resistance to their conquerors.
Now, this was in the days when women weren’t allowed in the Army.
The stereotype may have its exceptions, but it seems to be part of God’s natural design for women to seek safety from trauma while it is part of God’s natural design for men to become more aggressive under trauma and go on the attack.
God’s design is quite sensible; somebody needs to preserve the human race while somebody else staves off threats – this isn’t saying that there’s anything wrong with women and the impulse to seek safety. The problem is when persons with a primary impulse to seek safety are put in the position of being the ones who are supposed to attack the enemies.
So, to call all Nineveh’s soldiers “women” was an insult4, but what could they do about it? They weren’t going to be able to prove God wrong on this when “the rivers' gates were opened, and the palace dissolved,” (Nahum 2:6, NAW) and the Medes and Persians in their crimson uniforms came pouring in to Nineveh, stabbing and slashing as they came. The Assyrian army wasn’t going to put up resistance.
According to Isaiah and Jeremiah, Egypt and Babylon would be in the same boat when their time came for God’s temporal judgment, “The mighty men... have ceased fighting, They have remained in their strongholds; Their might has failed, They became like women” (Jer. 51:30)5 for, as Romans 9:19 puts it, “Who can resist God’s will?!”
Even the very defensive infrastructure of Nineveh6 will give no resistance. Nahum says that the gates of the land7 will be left “wide-open for their invaders” and the “dead-bolts” or “bars” that were supposed to provide reinforcement to keep the gates and doors closed won’t work because they will be burnt and useless8.
When God is ready to move, nothing and nobody is going to get in His way; resistance is useless. In Revelation 20:8-9, we read of “Satan… deceiv[ing] the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle... and surround[ing] the camp of the saints and the beloved city. And fire came down from God out of heaven and devoured them.” (NKJV) “Fire” would also “devour” Nineveh.
God’s taunt against His enemies goes on in v.14; in this verse He jeers at the work they are doing to prepare for a siege.
Now, we all need water to survive, so one of the ways to prepare a city for a siege was to make sure everybody had enough drinking water secured in reservoirs/bottles/wells, otherwise, everybody is dead of dehydration within a matter of days. Indeed Nineveh was besieged for over two years before it fell.
This “water” may also go with the rest of this verse describing the process for making bricks to shore up city walls.
Back in those days, concrete hadn’t been introduced to that part of the world, so they built with bricks of dried mud.
Water would be dumped onto a spot of ground that had a lot of clay in the soil, and, since this was in the days before concrete-mixers with internal combustion engines, they simply squished the water between their toes into the clay (Isa. 41:25, Rom. 9:21) until it was the right consistency to cut or mold into the shape of bricks,
then they would set the wet bricks out to dry in the sun until they got hard, and voila! they would have bricks to make a wall taller or thicker or to repair holes in the wall.
There wasn’t much timber or stone to build with in that area (Calvin), but there was plenty of clay (Pusey). The ancient historian Xenophon (Anab. iii.4.4) described the massive brick wall he saw on the stone foundation of Nineveh, and archaeologists have confirmed that the great double outer rampart on the east side of Nineveh was made of brick and earth (Lehrman).
Isaiah described similar preparations that the Jews in Jerusalem did when they were threatened with a siege in Isaiah 22:9-10 “...y'all saw the breaches of the city of David, for they were many. So y'all collected the waters of the lower pool, and y'all counted the houses of Jerusalem, then y'all broke down the houses to fortify9 the wall.” (NAW)
v.14 echoes what had been said earlier in Nahum 2:1 “One who scatters has come up against your front: guard the fort-wall! Monitor the road; tighten belts; marshal extra strength” (NAW) It’s as though God is mocking the Ninevites as they work to prepare themselves for a siege.
No matter what they do to fortify their city, verse 15 opens by saying, it is “there” within their own city that they will be destroyed.
The “fire” and the “sword” are familiar images that we’ve already encountered in Nahum to describe the conquest of Nineveh, for instance, Nahum 2:13a “‘Look at me; I am against you,’ declares Yahweh, Commander of armies, ‘and I will cause your cavalry to burn up in smoke, and the sword will devour your young lions…” (NAW)
And indeed, archaeologists have found much evidence of fire damage in the ancient ruins of Nineveh, including vast amounts of cinders from the wooden roof that caught fire, and evidence of “intense and sustained heat,” such as “melted nails.” (Pusey, quoting Botta)
But the “locust” is a new image, yet still a familiar one to anyone acquainted with agriculture.
Often in late summer, grasshoppers come through my garden and eat everything they can. They seem to like my iris blades, and I don’t mind that, but when they get into my vegetables, that’s another story!
What with the hard frosts of winter here, and the pesticides used in the fields around us, and other factors, I haven’t seen these insects get too out-of-control.
But sometimes conditions line up for them to multiply way more than normal, and there get to be so many of them that they eat every edible crop as well as every leaf and blade of grass throughout a whole region.
This is the picture we have here in Nahum 3:15 – a metaphor of a human army marching through the land and eating and destroying absolutely everything in its path.10
Two Hebrew words for “locust/grasshopper” show up in this verse: yeleq and arebeh.
The first is translated “young locusts/caterpillars/grasshoppers/cankerworm” – the root idea of its meaning being to “eat up” things, so it may refer to the nymph stage of the locust when it is most voracious in eating and does not have developed wings.
The second kind of locust is sometimes translated “swarming/great locust,” and its root meaning is “to be many,” so this may refer to the adult stage of the insect when it swarms and reproduces.
The end of verse 15 is very interesting to me, and I would like to suggest a translation of v.15 that is different from most English versions.
In Hebrew there are two commands, both commanding the subject to “make itself heavy/weighty/significant11,” both in comparison to locusts. This is a different Hebrew verb root from the one at the beginning of v.16 (which simply means “to multiply/be many”); this command in v.15 has more to do with the effect of weight or importance upon others, which is why I translated it “overwhelm.”
But what’s interesting is that the first command is to a masculine singular subject whereas the second command is to a feminine singular subject. So the question is, what pair of masculine and feminine subjects could he be commanding to make themselves overwhelming?
The word “you,” referring to Nineveh, is the first thing that most people think of as the subject of this command12, but the word “you” here is only feminine, with no masculine parallel, so I don’t think Nineveh is what’s being commanded to become heavy and overwhelming.
But there is a masculine singular and feminine singular pair in this verse, and it is the masculine “fire” and the feminine “sword,” so I think it is the fire and sword wielded by the Medo-Persian armies which God is commanding to become overwhelming to the citizens of Nineveh.
The way it’s usually translated in English is like the imperatives in v.14, where God is practically jeering at the Assyrians while they try to build up a bigger army, because He knows all their efforts will be in vain.
But the translation I’m suggesting is more in line with the first half of v.15 with the fire and sword overwhelming and consuming and destroying Nineveh. And the sovereignty of God is just as present because, if these are commands to the fire and the sword, then all it takes is a word from God, and His enemies are overwhelmed. That’s sovereign power!
In the prophecy of Joel (1:4, 2:25), this comparative imagery of invading armies to locusts shows up describing troops God sends in judgment upon Israel, and at the end of Isaiah (66:15-16) and the end of Revelation (9:3-7, 20:9) we see the same imagery of locusts, fire and sword consuming all of God’s enemies at the end of time.
It’s hard to see how the first half of verse 16 relates to the second half, but there is a progression from fullness of trade to the emptiness of abandonment, the latter being a consequence of the former.
Perhaps the past tense in the second half describing the judgment is an example of what they call the “prophetic perfect.” It hadn’t happened yet, but God’s word is so sure that it can be spoken of in past tense.
John Calvin noted that “the principal men [of Nineveh]... were “all merchants,13” and ancient historians like Dororus Siculus (ii.11) and Heroditus (ii.52) commented on how rich the trade was through Nineveh because the Tigris River was a tremendous artery of commerce14.
The implication of the phrase “beyond the stars of the heavens” is religious; it indicates that Assyria was putting a priority on economic trade above all else, and that is a form of idolatry, putting something in this world higher than God.
Isaiah 23 and Ezekiel 27 also promised judgment on Tyre and Babylon for the same sin,15
and, in the New Testament, Jesus used the same Greek word used to translate Nahum’s word for “merchants” to chide the Jews of His day for converting the temple – designed for the nations to worship God, into an “emporium” – designed to make money (John 2:16, cf. Matt. 22:5).
After that, Jesus’ brother wrote to believers “abroad” in James 4:13-5:3 “Get with-it now, you who are saying, ‘Today or tomorrow we shall go into this town here and manufacture for one year there, then market and profit!’ – who yourselves have no certainty of what will be tomorrow. (For what is your life? Indeed, it is smoke which is made to appear for a little while and then is made to disappear.) Instead y'all should say, ‘If the Lord wills, then we will live and do this or that.’ ... Get with-it now, you rich men, start weeping – howling – over your weighty trials which are coming upon y'all: Your wealth has rotted, and your garments have become moth-eaten, your gold and silver have been tarnished and their poison will become a witness against you and will consume your flesh like fire. Y'all stockpiled during the last days.” (NAW)
We read in Nahum 1:2, that God gets “jealous” when we make anything else more important than Him, so He will bring judgment upon those who prioritize getting money and things over having a right relationship with Jesus.
The second part of verse 16 gets translated in a variety of ways because its main verb has more than one meaning:
The ESV, following the Vulgate, translated this Hebrew verb “spread out,” which is a rare meaning of this word. The word for “wings” is not in the Hebrew, but the next verb about “flying away” does assume wings in the anatomy.
The NASB and NIV, on the other hand, translated the main verb “strip,” which is its most-common meaning in the Hebrew Bible.
The KJV “spoils” and NKJV “plunders” interpreted this “stripping” in terms of the locusts eating all the vegetation before flying away.
The NET Bible and the Targums16, on the other hand, interpreted this “stripping” in terms of the young locusts molting and stripping themselves of their skin before flying off in their adult form. This makes the most sense to me, because locusts eat more vegetation in their young nymph stage, then they molt, and their adult form is the one that can really fly.
But whether the image is of the locust “spreading out” wings in preparation for flight, “molting” in preparation for flight, or “stripping” vegetation before flying away, it’s practically the same image.
Proverbs 23:4-5 teaches us, “Do not overwork to be rich... For riches certainly make themselves wings; They fly away like an eagle toward heaven.” (NKJV) Taking away things is a way that God disciplines and punishes those who idolize things,, and that’s what the imagery of Nahum 3:16 teaches us too.
This image from the lifecycle of locusts continues on into v.17, as the swarm of individuals, which made up a very active and busy community for a time, all fly away, leaving desolation behind.
These individuals, which are compared to swarming, adult locusts/grasshoppers (which can fly), are called Minnezarei, a word used nowhere else in the Bible – perhaps borrowed from the Assyrian language.
It’s translated “crowned ones/guards/princes/commanders,” and is close to the Hebrew word Nazarene, which has to do with being “devoted” to a god17.
In favor of the translation “crowned ones,” we do see a lot of head-dresses in the ancient Assyrian bas-reliefs.
I would like to suggest that this is a synonym for the “merchants” in v.16 which congregated in Nineveh when it was favorable for trade, then skipped town when God’s judgment came.
A second group of persons is also described in the latter half of v.17, using another rare word which may refer to certain officers in the Assyrian army. English versions variously translate it “commander/general/marshal/captain/scribe.” (Interestingly, in the only other passage in the Bible which contains this word, Jeremiah 51:27, this same class of leaders is compared to locusts, and they are predicted to overthrow the Babylonian empire when God’s judgment comes around to them.18)
The language that Nahum uses in the latter half of v.17 is obscure, so it gets interpreted a variety of ways, but everybody agrees on one thing: these people will disappear. The exact mechanism of their disappearance may be debated, but the main point is that the leaders, too, will disappear from Nineveh.
The way that most English versions translate v.17, envisions these “locusts/grasshoppers” flying in on a “cold day,” “sitting” still until the “sun rises” and warms them up, and then “flying away,” which is pretty much parallel to the image in v.16.19
I would like to suggest, however, a slightly different image based on the rest of the lifecycle of the locust and based on the new word for “locust” which Nahum uses in the second half of v.17.
Although there is some debate on this point, the classic20 Hebrew lexicons say that the Hebrew word gob has to do with “digging,” and we know that the last stage in the lifecycle of a locust is that the adults go into reproductive mode, digging holes into which 50-100 eggs are laid. This generally happens after the warm weather has started turning to the “cooler” part of the year.
The verb which Nahum uses for them “settling/camping” denotes “putting stakes into the ground,” and the word which Nahum uses for the “walls/fences” where they “settle/ camp/entrench themselves” is only used in the Bible to refer to “sheepfolds.” Nahum doesn’t say what kind of material these sheepfolds were made of – often they made them with rocks, which is why the NASB inserts the word “rock,” but, depending on how permanent it needed to me and what building materials were available, these walls could also have been made of earth or thatch which grasshoppers could lay eggs in.
Next, the word translated “flee/fly away” is not the Hebrew word for “flying with wings.” Back in v.7, half the English versions translated it “shrink away.” I propose that this stage of “withdrawal” refers to the incubation period where the grasshopper eggs are hidden in the dirt, invisible to the eye, and lost track of, as the eggs typically sit there for years (and even decades) before they hatch.
Nahum concludes by saying that “where his place is, is not known.” It seems to me that it should be pretty easy to track where a “great horde” of swarming locusts are, but less easy to track where they laid all their eggs once they have gone underground.
Do what you want with my theory about how they disappear, but I think we can agree that Nineveh’s captains/marshals/officials/scribes end up... nobody knows where – maybe dead with no gravestone to mark where they fell in battle, or maybe escaped and living incognito somewhere, but they are no longer running the great city of Nineveh. The population of Nineveh will vanish under God’s judgment.
Proverbs 14:28 teaches us that, “In a multitude of people is a king's honor, But in the lack of people is the downfall of a prince.” (NKJV)
And with the loss of the people, the princes/leaders of Nineveh disappeared too, which is also the topic of the first half of v.1821.
The Hebrew pronoun “you” shifts from feminine in v.17 (denoting the feminine city of Nineveh) to masculine (denoting the masculine King of Assyria) in vs. 18-19, driving the message of God’s judgment home personally to the responsible leadership.
In v.18, the leaders are called “shepherds” and “nobles,” plus there’s the “King of Assyria,” but in God’s judgment against Nineveh, every level of leadership will be powerless to lead its people or to prevent Nineveh’s destruction.
There’s a range of interpretation among the versions as to why Nineveh’s leadership is impotent:
The Hebrew words are the normal verbs for “sleeping” and for “taking up residence,”
so, at the least, these leaders have let the normal things of peacetime life interfere with their responsibilities to their people in crisis – sleeping in and propping their feet up by the fireplace at home instead of getting out there and figuring out a way to protect their city from siege22,
at worst, “sleep” and “lying down” could be metaphors for death, and, of course, if they’re dead23, they aren’t able to lead either.
Either way, it would leave the people of the city without a way to organize themselves in the midst of a foreign invasion, so they would “scatter” every which-way out of the city into the wilderness in panic. There are indeed rugged mountains to the north of Nineveh. (Keil)
And, as Nahum notes in the conclusion of v.18, since the leaders aren’t leading, there’s no way to get the people back together again in any organized way.
The king, of course, was worshiped as a god in these pagan societies, but here, the One True God exposes the impotence of a king who has set himself up as a rival to Him.
The same judgment of “sleepy” leadership and “scattered” people was later pronounced:
against Israel in Jeremiah 25 (vs. 34-36) and Isaiah 56,
against the Ammonites in Jeremiah 49:5,
and against Babylon in Isaiah 13 and Jeremiah 5124.
And, in the New Testament
God struck King Herod of Judea dead for letting people respond to his speech by saying, “The voice of a God and not a man.” (Acts 12:21-23) Herod knew better: he knew what Jesus taught (Luke 13:32, Mark 6:20), and he had even interviewed Jesus personally (Luke 23).
In Luke 1:50-52, Mary touted God’s authority over kings and rulers, singing, “He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has put down the mighty from their thrones, And exalted the lowly… His mercy is on those who fear Him From generation to generation.” (NKJV)
and Paul, in 1 Timothy 6:14-15, called “our Lord Jesus Christ” “the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords.”
In the last verse of Nahum, the King of kings and Lord of lords stoops to address the condemned king of Assyria with his final sentence:
The last phrase of v.19 reminds us of the most obvious reason why God condemned Nineveh, and that was its “evil/wickedness/cruelty,” which it had perpetrated upon everyone around (Isa. 37:18), so much so that, when the “hearsay/bruit/news” of Nineveh’s overthrow came around, people “clapped25 their hands,” happy to hear of Nineveh’s downfall – relieved that they would no longer feel oppression and anxiety from the Assyrians any more.
The Hebrew word translated “grievous/incurable/fatal” at the beginning of v.19 is a passive participle that has to do with “being weakened,” and the subject of that passive participle is the word “plague/wound/ strike,” so a literal translation would be something like “It will not be… that the strike against you is weakened26.” In other words, “You will get the full force of God’s judgment; God is not going to pull any punches.” The practical upshot is that God will wipe out these people who have opposed themselves to Him; they will not recover politically, economically, or militarily. Their city-state will be destroyed, and their civilization will die out.
They can go to any doctor in the land, meet with every consultant in the market, purchase every healthcare product there is, and they’re not going to get any better, because man cannot outsmart God. If God decides to condemn you to death, you’re not going to be able to counteract that.
Please don’t misunderstand. The Bible isn’t saying that doctors and medicines are wrong; what it’s saying is that man cannot win in a contest against God.
Any Assyrian who knew his history should have known that the only way out of being doomed by Israel’s God was to repent of opposition against God and seek His mercy, like they did after Jonah’s prophecy, but short of that, nothing else would be able to stop God from wiping out Nineveh for good this time.
Once again, this principle holds true, not only in the case of Nineveh, but with any nation:
A generation or so after Nahum’s prophecy, the Jews found themselves in a similar situation, where God would no longer extend any more mercy to their nation. Both Micah and Jeremiah prophesied that “Israel’s plague became incurable27” because they had rejected the only “remedy” there is against God’s judgment (which is to repent of rebellion against God and seek His mercy, as the prophets had repeatedly told them to do), and so God sent the Chaldean army to conquer Jerusalem and send the Jews into exile. 2 Chron. 36:16 says this explicitly: “But they mocked the messengers of God, despised His words, and scoffed at His prophets, until the wrath of the LORD arose against His people, till there was no remedy28.” (NKJV)
Jeremiah 46:11 aimed a similar prophecy against Egypt, too.29
But I maintain that there was one remedy, one way of “healing/relief/ease” from God’s condemnation.
When we look at the New Testament, Jesus is presented (in Luke 13:32 & Acts 4:29) “healing/relieving/easing” (the same Greek word used to translate the first noun in Nahum 3:19 into Greek) “every illness and every infirmity” (Mat. 9:35, NAW). Jesus has the remedy!
Jesus made it clear, however, that His physical cures were not the end goal of His ministry (John 4:48, 10:25, 14:11) but rather the eternal life which would come to those who trust Him to save them. John 3:18 "He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God… 6:47 Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me has everlasting life.” (NKJV)
Remember that, in Nahum, we are looking at only part of one process of God’s judgment. The fact that Nahum centers on God’s judgment against the Assyrian empire necessarily limits the scope of the big picture of God’s judgment, but I have tried all along to use parallel statements from the other Biblical prophets and apostles to show that the whole counsel of scripture presents a bigger picture.
That bigger picture includes God’s creative, revelatory, and redemptive work, in addition to His work of judgment highlighted in Nahum. In the case of Nineveh, Nahum places the brick of his prophecy on top of multiple bricks already laid in God’s redemptive history concerning Assyria.
At the foundation is the book of Genesis, which tells of the creation of the land and people of Assyria, the revelation of God’s person and of His universally-binding ordinances upon all mankind (including Assyria), the rebellion of mankind against God and His ordinances, the judgment of God against sin, from the banishment out of Eden to the worldwide flood of Noah, and the animal sacrifices which God ordained as the way to be reconciled to Him. This was all part of the history of Nineveh which it shared in common with Israel and all the other nations of the world. God had not left the Assyrians without a witness concerning himself and His judgment and redemption.
But God did even more to reveal Himself along with His justice and mercy; God sent prophets to Israel and to all the surrounding nations to remind them of the ancient revelation they had received of Him (recorded in the book of Genesis) and to warn them that if they did not get right with God, God would destroy their civilizations. In the case of Nineveh, that was the mission of the prophet Jonah.
According to my reckoning, Nahum’s prophecy was not more than a century after Jonah’s, so it had not even been a hundred years since the Assyrians had understood enough about God to repent and honor God appropriately and receive mercy from God.30
So, when Nahum said Nineveh was “incurable,” it was not some snap judgment by an impatient, ethnocentric Jew in the 8th Century BC; rather, it was the culmination of Assyrians rejecting God and His word for thousands of years.
A second aspect of the big picture, of which Nahum is only a part, is the way God’s temporal judgments against nations are sequenced. As the Apostle Peter put it in the fourth chapter of his first epistle, “It is time to begin the judgment at the household of God, and if [it comes] first at us, what will be the end for those who are unpersuaded by God's good news?” (1 Peter 4:17, NAW) In the larger picture, we see that God brings discipline first upon His covenanted people through the means of the oppression of other peoples, then God brings judgment upon those other peoples. For instance,
The children of Israel were enslaved by the Egyptians, then God delivered His people from the Egyptian’s oppression and decimated the Egyptian army at the Red Sea. First the house of God, then the nations.
Throughout the books of Joshua, Judges and Samuel, one Canaanite and Aramean nation after another brought crisis upon the people of Israel, only to be conquered subsequently by the Judges and the Kings (Saul and David).
Then, during the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah, more-distant nations of Assyria, Egypt, and Persia became God’s means of judgment and chastisement against His people. Then Nahum is one of the prophets who declared God’s plan to punish those nations, in turn, for rebelling against their Creator and abusing His people. So Nahum’s message comes sequentially after Assyria had brought destruction to unfaithful Jews and refinement to the Jewish remnant, and it’s important to keep it in that context.
In the years to come, the Persians, Greeks, Romans, Europeans, Muslims, Communists, and others would each take their turn persecuting God’s people, the church (in its Old Testament and New Testament forms), and God has subsequently humbled one empire after another, and will continue to do so until His church is complete and He is ready to make an end of this world. That’s the big picture.
Psalm 5:8-12 “Yahweh, guide me in your righteousness because of my opponents; level your way in front of me. Because in [every] mouth there is nothing that will stand; their innards are empty-desires, an open grave their larynx; they flatter [with] their tongue. Judge them guilty, God! They will fall as a result of their counsels. Cause them to go away through multiplication of their transgressions because they are resistant with You. Meanwhile, all refugees in You will be happy, they will sing out forever, you will even fabricate shelter over him, and lovers of Your name will exult in You! Because You yourself really bless a righteous [person]; like a big shield, Yahweh, you encircle him with favor.” (NAW)
DouayB (Vulgate) |
LXXC |
BrentonD (Vaticanus) |
KJVE |
NAW |
Masoretic HebrewF |
11
There-fore
thou also
shalt be |
11
καὶ
σὺG
μεθυσθήσῃ
καὶ ἔσῃ ὑπερεωραμένη,
καὶH
σὺ ζητήσεις σεαυτῇ
στάσινI
ἐξ ἐχθρ |
11 And thou shalt be drunken, and shalt be overlooked; and thou shalt seek for thyself strength because of [thine] enem[ies]. |
11 Thou also shalt be drunken: thou shalt be hid, thou also shalt seek strength because of the enemy. |
11 Even you yourself will become intoxicated; you will be disregarded, Even you yourself will seek refuge from the enemies. |
(יא) גַּם אַתְּ תִּשְׁכְּרִיJ תְּהִי נַעֲלָמָה K גַּם אַתְּ תְּבַקְשִׁי מָעוֹז מֵאוֹיֵבL. |
12 All thy strong holds shall be [like] fig trees with [their] green [figs]: if they be shaken, X they shall fall into the mouth of the eater. |
12
πάντα τὰ ὀχυρώματά
σου συκαῖ |
12
All thy strong-holds
are [as]
fig-trees having |
12 All thy strong holds shall be like fig trees with the firstripe [figs]: if they be shaken, they shall even fall into the mouth of the eater. |
12 All your forts are fig-trees with first-fruits; just let them be shaken, and they will fall into the mouth of the devourer! |
(יב) כָּל מִבְצָרַיִךְ Nתְּאֵנִים עִם בִּכּוּרִים אִם יִנּוֹעוּ וְנָפְלוּ עַל פִּי אוֹכֵל. |
13 Behold thy people in the midst of thee are women: the gates of thy land shall be set wide open to thy enemies, the fire shall devour thy bars. |
13 ἰδοὺ ὁ λαός σου [ὡς] γυναῖκες ἐν Oσοί· τοῖς ἐχθροῖς σου ἀνοιγόμεναι ἀνοιχθήσονται πύλαι τῆς γῆς σου, καὶP καταφάγεται πῦρ τοὺς μοχλούς σου. |
13 Behold, thy people within thee are [as] women: the gates of thy land shall surely be opened to thine enemies: the fire shall devour thy bars. |
13 Behold, thy people in the midst of thee are women: the gates of thy land shall be set wide open unto thine enemies: the fire shall devour thy bars. |
13 Look, your people are women in your midst. Before your enemies, the gates of your land are completely open; fire devours your door-bolts. |
(יג)הִנֵּה עַמֵּךְ Qנָשִׁים בְּקִרְבֵּךְ לְאֹיְבַיִךְ פָּתוֹחַ נִפְתְּחוּ שַׁעֲרֵי אַרְצֵךְ אָכְלָה אֵשׁ בְּרִיחָיִך. |
14
Draw thee water for the siege, build
up thy bulwarks:
go into the clay, and tread, |
14 ὕδωρ περιοχῆς ἐπίσπασαι σεαυτῇ Rκαὶ κατακράτησον τῶν ὀχυρωμάτων σου, ἔμβηθι εἰς πηλὸνS καὶ συμπατήθητι ἐν ἀχύροις, κατακράτησον ὑπὲρ πλίνθονT· |
14 Draw thee water for a siege, and well secure thy strong-holds: enter into the clay, and be thou trodden in the chaff, make [the fortifications] stronger than brick. |
14 Draw thee waters for the siege, fortify thy strong holds: go into clay, and tread X the morter, make strong the brickkiln. |
14 Bottle water for yourself for the siege. Strengthen your forts. Go to the mud-pit and make a mix with the clay; get a handle on the brick-work. |
(יד) מֵי מָצוֹר שַׁאֲבִי לָךְ חַזְּקִי מִבְצָרָיִךְ בֹּאִי בַטִּיט וְרִמְסִי בַחֹמֶר הַחֲזִיקִי מַלְבֵּן.U |
15
There shall the fire devour thee: thou shalt perish by the sword,
it shall devour thee like the bruchus:
|
15
ἐκεῖ καταφάγεταί σε πῦρ,
ἐξολεθρεύσει
σε ῥομφαία, καταφάγεταί σε
ὡς ἀκρίς,
καὶ |
15
There the fire shall devour
thee; the sword shall utterly destroy thee, it shall devour
thee as the locust,
and |
15 There shall the fire devour thee; the sword shall cut thee off, it shall eat thee up like the cankerworm: make thyself many as the cankerworm, make thyself many as the locust[s]. |
15 It is there that the fire will devour you. The sword will cut you down; it will devour you like a young-locust. Let it make itself as overwhelming as the young-locust; let it make itself as overwhelming as the swarming-locust! |
(טו) שָׁם תֹּאכְלֵךְ אֵשׁ תַּכְרִיתֵךְ חֶרֶב תֹּאכְלֵךְ כַּיָּלֶקX הִתְכַּבֵּדY כַּיֶּלֶק הִתְכַּבְּדִי כָּאַרְבֶּהZ. |
16 Thou hast multiplied thy merchandises above the stars of heaven: the bruchus hath spread [himself] and flown away. |
16 ἐπλήθυνας τὰς ἐμπορίας σου ὑπὲρAA τὰ ἄστρα τοῦ οὐρανοῦ· βροῦχος ὥρμησεν καὶ ἐξεπετάσθη. |
16 Thou hast multiplied thy merchandise beyond the stars of heaven: the palmerworm has attacked [it], and has flown away. |
16 Thou hast multiplied thy merchants above the stars of heaven: the cankerworm spoileth, and flieth away. |
16 You have made your merchants more numerous than the stars of the skies. The young-locust has molted and taken wing. |
(טז) הִרְבֵּית ABרֹכְלַיִךְ מִכּוֹכְבֵי הַשָּׁמָיִםAC יֶלֶק פָּשַׁטAD וַיָּעֹף. |
17
Thy guards
are like the locusts: and thy little
ones like the locusts
of
locusts which swarm
on the hedges in the day of cold: the sun arose, and |
17
ἐξήλατο ὡς
ἀττέλεβος ὁ σύμμικτόςAE
σου, ὡς X
ἀκρὶς ἐπιβεβηκυῖα
ἐπὶ φραγμ |
17
Thy mixed
multitude has
suddenly
departed
as the grasshopper,
as the locust perched
on a hedgeX
in a frosty day; the sun arises, and it flies off, and knows not
its place: |
17
Thy crowned
are
as the locusts, and thy captains
as the great
grasshoppers,
which camp
in the hedges in the cold day, but
when the sun ariseth |
17 Your devotees are like the swarming-locust. Furthermore, your officers are like burrowing locusts that entrench in the walls on a cold day. When the sun has risen, he is withdrawn, and it is not known where his location is. |
(יז)AFמִנְּזָרַיִךְ כָּאַרְבֶּה וְטַפְסְרַיִךְAG כְּגוֹב גֹּבָיAH הַחוֹנִים בַּגְּדֵרוֹתAI בְּיוֹם קָרָהAJ שֶׁמֶשׁ זָרְחָה וְנוֹדַד וְלֹא נוֹדַע מְקוֹמוֹ אַיָּם. |
18
Thy shepherds have slumbered,
O king of Assyria,
thy princes shall be
|
18
ἐνύσταξαν οἱ ποιμένες σου,
βασιλεὺς Ἀσσύριος ἐκοίμισεν
τοὺς |
18
Thy shepherds have slumbered,
the Assyrian king has laid
low thy |
18 Thy shepherds slumber, O king of Assyria: thy nobles shall dwell in the dust: thy people is scattered upon the mountains, and no [man] gathereth them. |
18 Your shepherds have gotten drowsy, O King of Assyria. Your nobles have gotten cozy. Your people were panicked upon the mountains, and there is no rallying them. |
(יח) נָמוּAL רֹעֶיךָ מֶלֶךְ אַשּׁוּר יִשְׁכְּנוּ אַדִּירֶיךָAM נָפֹשׁוּAN עַמְּךָ עַל הֶהָרִים וְאֵין מְקַבֵּץ.AO |
19 Thy destruction is not hidden, thy wound is grievous: all that have heard the fame of thee, have clapped their hands over thee: for upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually? |
19 οὐκ ἔστιν ἴασις APτῇ συντριβῇ σου, ἐφλέγμανεν ἡ πληγή σου· πάντες οἱ ἀκούοντες τὴν ἀγγελίαν σου κροτήσουσιν χεῖρας ἐπὶ σέ· διότι ἐπὶ τίνα οὐκ ἐπῆλθεν ἡ κακία σου διὰ παντός; |
19 There is no healing for thy bruise; thy wound has rankled: all that hear the report of thee shall clap [their] hands against thee; for upon whom has not thy wickedness passed continually? |
19 There is no healing of thy bruise; thy wound is grievous: all that hear the bruit of thee shall clap the hands over thee: for upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually? |
19 There is no diminishing to your brokenness – [no] weakening of the strike against you. All who listen to the hearsay about you clap hands over you, for upon whom has your evil not had a lasting effect? |
(יט) אֵין כֵּהָהAQ לְשִׁבְרֶךָ נַחְלָה מַכָּתֶךָ כֹּל שֹׁמְעֵי שִׁמְעֲךָ תָּקְעוּ כַףAR עָלֶיךָ כִּי עַל מִי לֹא עָבְרָה רָעָתְךָ תָּמִיד. |
1Perhaps also to provide close shade (John 1:48).
2“And hence an useful doctrine may be deduced: whatever strength men may seek for themselves from different quarters, it will wholly vanish away; for neither forts, nor towers, nor ramparts, nor troops of men, nor any kind of contrivances, will avail any thing…” ~J. Calvin, 1559 AD
3καταναλίσκον, a synonym to the word “eater” (ἔσθοντος) in the LXX of Nahum.
4“God prepares men for ruin, when he debilitates their hearts, that they cannot bear the sight of their enemies… By saying, in the midst of thee, he intimates, that though they should be separated from their enemies and dwell in a fortified city, they should yet be filled with trembling…. smitten by the hand of God… that they would not cease to tremble, even while they were dwelling in a safe place.” ~Calvin, 1559 AD
5Isaiah
19:16 “In that day Egypt will be like women, and they
will tremble and fear before the hand that Yahweh Commander of
armies shakes over them.” (NAW)
Jeremiah 50:37 “A
sword is against their horses, Against their chariots, And against
all the mixed peoples who are in her midst; And they will become
like women. A sword is against her treasures, and they will be
robbed...” (NKJV)
cf. Luke 21:26 “...men's hearts
failing them from fear and the expectation of those things which are
coming on the earth...” (NKJV)
6And of Egypt (Isa. 45:1-2) and of Babylon (Jer. 51:30b).
7Pusey noted that “gates of the land” were different from “city gates,” explaining that mountain passes which afforded access to Nineveh are probably what is meant. Kyle agreed and interpreted the “bolts” as forts at those passes.
8“For as we see that so great is the vehemence of fire, that it melts iron and brass, so the Prophet means, that there would be no strength which could defend Nineveh and its empire against the hand of God.” ~Calvin
9בצר, a synonym to Nahum’s חזק.
10I, along with Metsudath David, Newcome and others interpret the locusts as an image of the Medo-Persians destroying Nineveh. Calvin and Grotius, however, interpreted the locusts as the Ninevites destroying other nations. Matthew Henry and Keil maintained that both were the case here.
11The only other place this verb appears in this hitpael stem in the Bible is Prov. 12:9, where it is translated “he honored himself/pretended to be somebody/played the great man/was self-important.”
12Every commentator I read interpreted it as such.
13Matthew Henry, however, said that the merchants came “from abroad.”
14Pusey noted lists of goods in which Nineveh traded, published by Rawlinson and Brugsch, including: nard, amonium, myrrh, frankincense, indigo, embroidery, brocades, wrought iron, silver dishes, brass harps, lapis lazuli, ebony, ivory, vases, etc.
15Isaiah
23:8
“Who has purposed this against Tyre, the bestower of crowns,
whose merchants
[סחריה]
were
princes, whose traders
[כנעניה]
were
the honored of the earth?” (NAW)
Ezekiel
27:13-24 “‘Javan,
Tubal, and Meshech were your traders.
They bartered [נתן]
human lives and vessels
of bronze for your merchandise [מערב]…
Judah and the land of Israel were your traders.
They traded [נתן]
for your merchandise wheat of Minnith, millet, honey, oil, and
balm… Arabia and all the princes of Kedar were your regular
merchants [סחרי].
They traded with you in lambs, rams, and goats… Haran, Canneh,
Eden, the merchants
of Sheba, Assyria, and Chilmad were your merchants.
These were your merchants
in choice items in purple clothes, in embroidered garments, in
chests of multicolored apparel, in sturdy woven cords, which were
in your marketplace.”
(NKJV, underlined
words are all forms of Nahum’s word רכל.)
16AJV renders “spreads itself,” but Lehrman translated “sheds the skin.” Keil insisted (inaccurately, as I point out in the endnotes) that “Pashat never means anything else than to plunder,” but he noted that Maurer, Ewald, and Hitzig interpreted it in terms of young locusts molting.
17Ibn Ezra and Kimchi supported “crowned,” while Daath Soferim and Keil supported “devoted” – the latter specifying “those levied, selected (for war).”
18“...Appoint a general against her; Cause the horses to come up like the bristling locusts.” (NKJV)
19Keil, like almost all the other commentators I read, took this position even though he admitted that “locusts do not take refuge in walls or hedges during the winter.” Calvin suggested yet another interpretation of the Assyrians themselves being the locusts who hibernated in Nineveh and “betook themselves in different directions... when the suitable time for plunder came.” But I don’t think this fits with the overall way Nahum is presenting the judgments upon Nineveh.
20I refer to Strong’s and Brown Driver & Briggs. It may be noted, however, that Holladay’s gloss is “swarm.” See also commentary notes in endnotes.
21“The point is that all the officials and leaders disappear when the trouble comes. Without the leadership, chaos ensues.” ~Michael Barrett, 2021 AD
22Cf. Calvin: “He refers to their sloth… they shall remain idle; they shall not be able to sally out against their enemies, to stop their progress” Barrett and others agreed.
23This was the interpretation of the KJV, Vulgate, and, among the commentators, Pusey and Keil (who also cited Theodoret, Hesselberg, and “Str.” in support).
24Jeremiah 51:56-57 "...the plunderer comes against her, against Babylon... For the LORD is the God of recompense, He will surely repay. And I will make drunk Her princes and wise men, Her governors, her deputies [פחותיה וסגניה, synonyms to Nahum’s מִנְּזָרַיִךְ ... וְטַפְסְרַיִךְ], and her mighty men. And they shall sleep a perpetual sleep [וישׁנו שׁנת, cf. Nahum’s נָמוּ ... יִשְׁכְּנוּ] And not awake," says the King, Whose name is the LORD of hosts.” (NKJV)
25Cf. Psalm 47:1 “All you peoples: Clap your hands; cheer for God with a sound of singing.” (NAW) and Lam. 2:15, Job 27:23, where a synonym for Nahum’s “clap” (תקע) is used to show derision: ספק/שׂפק.
26Calvin agreed: “the pain of thy stroke cannot be allayed.”
27Micah
1:9 “because her plague is incurable [אנושׁה,
a synonym to Nahum’s נחלה], because
he has come to Judah; he has reached to the gate of my people –
unto Jerusalem! (NAW)
Jeremiah
30:12-13
"For thus says the LORD: `Your affliction
is incurable [אנושׁ],
Your wound
is severe.’
There is no one to plead your cause, That you may be bound up; You
have no healing medicines [רפאות
תעלה].’”
(NKJV)
28מרפא, a synonym to Nahum’s כהה.
29Jeremiah 46:11 "Go up to Gilead and take balm, O virgin, the daughter of Egypt; In vain you will use many medicines [רפאות]; You shall not be cured [תעלה].” (NKJV)
30“And he says, ‘continually,’ to show that God’s forbearance had been long exercised. Hence, also, it appears, that the Assyrians were inexcusable, because, when God indulgently spared them, they did not repent, but pursued their wicked ways for a long course of time.” ~Calvin
AMy
original chart includes the following copyrighted English versions:
NASB, NIV, ESV, Bauscher’s version of the Peshitta, and Cathcart’s
version of the Targums, but I remove these columns from my public,
non-copyrighted edition of this chart so as not to infringe on their
copyrights. NAW is my translation. When a translation adds words not
in the Hebrew text, but does not indicate it has done so by the use
of italics or greyed-out text, I put the added words in [square
brackets]. When one version chooses a wording which is different
from all the other translations, I underline it. When a
version chooses a translation which, in my opinion, either departs
too far from the root meaning of the Hebrew word or departs too far
from the grammar form of the original text, I use strikeout.
And when a version omits a word which is in the original text, I
insert an X. I also place an X at the end of a word if the original
word is plural but the English translation is singular. I
occasionally use colors to help the reader see correlations between
the various editions and versions when there are more than two
different translations of a given word. The only known Dead Sea
Scrolls containing Nahum 3 are 4Q82 (containing parts of verses 1-3
& 17 and dated between 30-1 BC), The Nahal Hever Greek
scroll (containing parts of vs. 1-3 & 6-16 and dated around
25BC), and the Wadi Muraba’at Scroll (containing parts of verses
1-19 and dated around 135 AD). Where the DSS is legible and in
agreement with the MT or LXX, the text is colored purple.
Where the DSS support the LXX/Vulgate/Peshitta with omissions or
text not in the MT, I have highlighted
with yellow the LXX
and its translation into English, and where I have accepted that
into my NAW translation, I have marked it with /forward and back
slashes\.
BDouay Old Testament first published by the English College at Douay, A.D. 1609, Revised and Diligently Compared with the Latin Vulgate by Bishop Richard Challoner, Published in 1582, 1609, 1752. As published on E-Sword.
C“Septuagint” Greek Old Testament, edited by Alfred Rahlfs. Published in 1935. As published on E-Sword.
DEnglish translation of the Septuagint by Sir Lancelot Charles Lee Brenton, 1851, “based upon the text of the Vaticanus” but not identical to the Vaticanus. As published electronically by E-Sword.
E1769 King James Version of the Holy Bible; public domain. As published electronically by E-Sword.
FFrom
the Wiki Hebrew Bible
https://he.wikisource.org/wiki/%D7%9E%D7%99%D7%9B%D7%94_%D7%90/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%AA.
DSS text comes from https://downloads.thewaytoyahuweh.com
GNahal Hever reads γε instead of the LXX συ. Και γε might be a slightly better-nuanced translation of the the Hebrew gam, but the Hebrew does have an emphatic pronoun “you” here, which is in the LXX, but not in Nahal Hever. However, since the verb has the second person embedded in it, the meaning is not really different.
HNahal Hever is partially illegible, but the letter ε is visible before συ here, presumably translating the Hebrew gam as και γε, like it did at the beginning of the verse also, yet another indication that Nahal Hever was a separate translation into Greek from the LXX.
IBy the time of the Greek N. T., this word had a different meaning, that of “insurrection/disputation,” but there is an interesting judgment-day parallel in Rev. 6:17 which uses the same Greek root in the phrase “who is able to stand?”
JCf. Hab. 2:16.
KThe Niphal spelling is properly interpreted reflexively by the Geneva (“hide thyself”) or passively (“be concealed/ignored/disregarded”) by Vulgate, LXX, Peshitta, Targums, KJV, and NASB, but the Niphal stem is ignored and translated actively (“hiding”) by NIV & ESV. There are other words in Hebrew with a more primary meaning of “cover/hide,” but this one is used throughout the HOT to indicate accidental ignorance or a purposeful averting of the eyes or ears so as not to see or hear another person. BHS suggested that switching the second and third letters of this word could generate the Targum’s word “destroyed.”
LPeshitta, Symmachus, and Brenton add “your,” but it is not in the LXX (not even Vaticanus) or Vulgate. However, what is in the Peshitta, LXX, and Vulgate is a plural ending. Since no DSS have survived with this word intact, those ancient versions are much closer to the time of the original than the existing Hebrew text itself. The fact that Symmachus also saw a suffix on the ending of the Hebrew word also raises doubt as to the MT spelling. But whether it is “your enemy,” “enemy” or “enemies,” the general meaning comes out the same.
MNahal Hever does not have room in its lacuna for this word. The MT has the preposition “with,” whereas the LXX has the participle form of the verb for “have,” which means basically the same thing but is a longer word. The shorter space in the N.H. may support the MT, since the Greek prepositions for “with” in Greek (συν, ‘αμα, μετα, εν) are shorter that the participle used by the LXX.
NThe Vulgate, Peshitta, and Targums (followed by all the English versions except the NASB) add the comparative particle “like,” but it is not in the MT or LXX or DSS (and therefore not in the NASB).
ONahal Hever lacuna begins here, which has too much space for the LXX wording, but a word like μεσω (“the middle of”) could be added without changing the meaning.
PThe lacuna in Nahal Hever here is too small to contain all the letters in the LXX, but it doesn’t necessarily require a different meaning since what the LXX says could be stated more concisely in Greek.
QIn a reversal of policy from the previous verse, the NET & NLT follow the LXX, Peshitta, and Targums which add a comparative “as,” but most standard English versions followed the MT (it’s illegible in all the DSS) and Vulgate with the grammar of metaphor instead of simile. Ultimately there is no difference in meaning as long as one doesn’t hold strictly to a literal hermeneutic with metaphors, which it seems the NIV did.
RThe lacuna in Nahal Hever, which begins here, is about 10 characters/spaces too short for the text in LXX.
SThe lacuna in Nahal Hever, which begins here, is about 9 characters/spaces too short for the text in LXX.
TNahal Hever reads πλινθειου instead of the LXX πλίνθον, but both words are obviously related to “bricks.”
UThis is one of only 3 instances of this word in the HOT, the others being 2 Sam. 12:31 (something that forced laborers could “bend/cross over”) and Jer. 43:9 (something that masons could “hide large stones” in). Calvin interpreted it in terms of mortar “joining together” the bricks.
VThe translators of Nahal Hever and of LXX went with the “heaviness” idea of the Hebrew verb rather than with the “greatness” idea of the verb which all other translators followed, but multiple commentators pointed out that this distinction should be preserved.
WLXX apparently skipped the last phrase, but it is in Nahal Hever: καταβαρυνθητι ‘ως ακρις.
XThis word only occurs here and in Ps. 105:34 (referring to the Egyptian plague, where it is translated “young locusts/caterpillars/grasshoppers”), Jer. 51:14 & 27 (describing the men and horses of the army coming up against Babylon as “caterpillars/locusts”), and Joel 1:4 & 2:25 (describing an army invasion of Judah, where it is translated “cankerworm/ crawling/creeping/hopping/young locust”). BDB’s gloss is “young locust,” with a root meaning “to lick up,” so Keil’s translation reads “lickers.”
YThis is an imperative masculine singular, so it should not refer to the feminine “you.” I think it refers to the common-gendered “fire.” (Both words for “locust” in this verse are also masculine.) The only other place this verb appears in this hitpael stem in the Bible is Proverbs 12:9, where it is translated “he honored himself/pretended to be somebody/played the great man/was self-important.” The next verb is exactly the same, except it is feminine, so I think it refers to the feminine “sword.” (The word for “you” is also singular and feminine, but it makes more sense for the fire and sword to be “multiplying/becoming overwhelming” rather than the city of Nineveh. The next verse does speak of Nineveh “multiplying,” but it uses a different verb for that – רב, which simply means “multiply,” whereas here the verb is כבד, which has more to do with the effect of “weight” or “importance” upon others, which is why I translated it “overwhelm” here.) The best way I could figure to bring out the nuance that the commands are to the fire and sword rather than to the people of Nineveh, was to make the imperative into a Jussive, so that I could use the word “it” – rather than the word “you” - as their subjects. Keil was the only commentator I found to even comment on this difficulty, but his solution was to have “the people [masculine עם which does not occur in this verse or in the previous verse] floating before his mind” followed by “thinking of the city [feminine עיר, which one would have to go back 15 verses to find].”
ZThis is the kind of locust which formed one of the plagues in Egypt (Ex. 10, Ps. 78:46, & 105:34 – where it is differentiated from the yeleq-locust and simply translated “locust”), and one of the curses for covenant-breaking (Deut. 38:28, 1 Ki. 8:37), but was kosher for eating (Lev. 11:22). Multitudinous enemies were often referred to as being like locusts (Judges 6:54, 7:12, Jer. 46:23, and Joel 1:4, 2:25 – where it is differentiated from the yeleq-locust by being translated “locust/swarming locust/great locust”) as here. BDB’s gloss is “locust,” with a root meaning “to be many.”
AANahal Hever translated with the preposition ως (“like/as”) requiring the “stars” be in the Accusative rather than the Genitive case, but here is a rare case where the LXX made a better translation with “above.”
ABThis word is only used elsewhere in the HOT to describe merchants at Jerusalem (1 Ki. 10:15; Neh. 3:31-32; 13:20; Cant. 3:6; Ezek. 17:4) and the merchants of Tyre (Ezek. 27:3, 13, 15, 17, 20, 22-24). The Greek translation of this word in the LXX of Nah. 3:16 only shows up in Matt. 22:5 in the parable of the invitations to the wedding feast when one of the first invitees went back to his “shop/business/merchandise,” and in John 2:16, where Jesus said that the sellers in the temple should not make His Father's house into a “house of business/merchandise/market/trade”! James 4:13 uses a verbal form too.
ACThis is one of only two places in the Bible (Isaiah 13:10’s eschatological one being the other) where this phrase “stars of the heavens” does not refer to the number of descendants promised to Abram (Gen. 22:17, 26:4, Ex. 32:13, Deut. 1:10, 10:22, 28:62, 1 Chron. 27:23, Neh. 9:23, Heb. 11:12).
ADThe NASB and NIV follow the Targums in translating this word according to the meaning of “strip” (esp. changing clothes), which is the most-common meaning of the word. However a secondary meaning of this same verb is “to conduct a surprise-attack” (Judges 9:33, 44, & 20:37, and 1 Sam. 23:27; 27:8-10; and 30:1, 14, 1 Chron. 14:9-13, 28:18, Job 1:17, and possibly Hos. 7:1), and this is the meaning brought out by the LXX. (Perhaps the Peshitta’s word has a similar range of meaning because Lamsa translated it “swarms” and Baucher translated it “sheds skin.”) The ESV, following the Vulgate, translates it according to its tertiary meaning “to spread out” (found only in 1 Chr. 14:9 &13 and its parallel passages in 2 Sam. 5:18 & 22, and advocated by Pusey and Keil), but the ESV was unwarranted in adding the word “wings.” Perhaps it speaks of the young larvae eating voraciously, then molting and flying away on their adult wings.
AEIt appears that Nahal Hever reads οχλος (“crowd”) here instead of the LXX “mixed multitude,” but the rest of the book of Nahum is too obliterated to read in N.H.
AFAlthough this word is a Hapex Legomenon, its related form appears 10 times, denoting consecrated priests (Lev. 15:31; 22:2), Nazirites (Num. 6:2,3,5,6,12), and devotees of various gods (Eze. 14:7, Hos. 9:10, and Zec. 7:3). May refer to a particular Assyrian official rank. Pusey, noting the headgear worn in Assyrian bas-reliefs, advocated for “crowned ones,” quoting Gosse’s book on Assyria, “All high officers of state… were adorned with diadems.”
AGThis word is only found in the HOT only here and in Jer. 51:27, where it is translated “commander/general/marshal/captain.” May refer to a particular rank of Assyrian officer. ESV renders “scribe” here. Ashurbanipal developed an impressive library and saw to it that his images always depicted a writing stylus in his belt, so being a scribe was highly valued in Nineveh. Keil noted that this word for “general” also appears in Targum Jonathan on Dt. 28:12 describing an angel.
AHThis word is repeated here. Its only other occurrence is Amos 7:1, where it is translated “locusts/locust-swarms/grasshoppers.” BDB and Strong related it to a root meaning “to dig/grub,” Lehrman traced its meaning to the Arabic cognate “to gather” and translated it “swarms” (cf. Holladay’s lexicon, followed by NASB, NIV, and ESV). Calvin (and Pusey and Keil) said the construction is a “superlative degree in Hebrew” and thus means “the locust of all locusts” or, as the KJV put it, “great locust,” followed by Henry “the largest specimens of that species.”
AIThis word shows up in only 7 other verses: Num. 32:16, 24, 36, 1 Sam. 24:4, Ps. 89:41, Jer. 49:3, and Zeph. 2:6, where it is translated “sheepfolds/pens/hedges/walls.”
AJ“cold” – in combination with “day” only here and in Prov. 25:20 “Like one who takes away a garment in cold weather ... Is one who sings songs to a heavy heart.” (NKJV) - and without “day” in Job 24:7, 37:9, and Ps. 147:17 – all about literal cold weather.
AKAq., Sym., Theod. translated with συναγων, which is much closer to the meaning of the Hebrew word.
ALA relatively-rare word found only here and in Psalm 76:6 & 121:3-4, and Isa. 5:27 & 56:10.
AMcf. Perhaps the same “noblemen” mentioned in 2:5, although I think the ones in chapter 2 could be Nineveh’s adversaries. After the feminine “your” in previous verses referring to the city of Nineveh, the 2nd singular possessive pronoun changes in this verse to masculine, referring to the King of Assyria.
ANThis rare verb, found only here and in Jer. 50:11 and Mal. 3:20 (and only here in the Niphal stem), is never used to describe anything but cattle (cf. “shepherds” here, although clearly a metaphor for people), and all the other occurrences, which are in the Qal stem, denote leaping about and frolicking – even stampeding, so this “scattering” is not so much about “distribution” as it is about “going every which-way” in a panic. Calvin agreed, but his solution was to claim (without any evidence) that the MT was misspelled (and should have been spelled פוץ as in Nah. 2:1) and to use the word “scatter” anyway!
AOI think this participle can be interpreted reasonably as a noun “rally,” but NASB & NIV interpreted it (reasonably) in terms of a particular person “one to gather.” Incidentally, in Isaiah 56:8 “The Lord Yahweh” is the “One who gathers.” Cf. 1 Kings 22:17 "...I saw all Israel scattered [פוץ instead of Nahum’s פוש] on the mountains, as sheep that have no shepherd...’” (NKJV)
APBHS notes suggested that this would be a better translation of גהה than of the MT’s כהה.
AQHapex Legomenon, but shares the same root as “dim/diminish” in Lev. 13:6, 21, 26, 28, 56, Isa. 42:3, and 61:3.
ARThis is one of two instances of the phrase “clap hands” in the HOT where the context is triumph (the other being Ps. 47:2), the other three instances of the phrase use a different verb and have to do with providing surety for a loan (Prov. 6:1, 17:18, 22:26).