Nahum 3:12-19

12 All your defenses will be like fig trees with the earliest figs. When shaken, the figs fall into the mouth of the eater.

13 Look at your soldiers; they're women! The gates of your country are wide open to your enemies. Fire has destroyed the bars of your gates.

14 Store water for the siege! Strengthen your defenses! Step into the claypits and trample the clay! Grab the brick mold!

15 Fire will consume you there. A sword will cut you down. It will consume you like locusts. Multiply like locusts! Multiply like hungry locusts!

16 You have produced more businessmen than there are stars in the sky. [They are] like locusts that attack and then fly away.

17 Your officers are like locusts, and your scribes are like swarms of locusts that settle on the fences when it is cold. The sun rises, and they scatter in every direction. No one knows where they've gone.

18 Your shepherds, king of Assyria, have fallen into a deep sleep. Your best fighting men are at rest. Your people are scattered on the mountains, and there is no one to gather them.

19 There is no relief for your collapse. Your wound is fatal. All who hear the news about you will clap their hands. Who hasn't suffered from your endless evil?

Nahum 3:12-19 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO NAHUM 3

In this chapter is contained the prophecy of the destruction of Nineveh, and with it the whole Assyrian empire; the causes of which, besides those before mentioned, were the murders, lies, and robberies it was full of, Na 3:1 for which it should be swiftly and cruelly destroyed, Na 3:2,3 as also its whoredoms and witchcrafts, or idolatry, by which nations and families were seduced, Na 3:4 and hence she should be treated as a harlot, her nakedness exposed, and she cast out with contempt, and mocked at by all, Na 3:5-7 and all those things she placed her confidence in are shown to be of no avail; as her situation and fortresses, as she might learn from the case of No Amon, Na 3:8-12 nor the number of her inhabitants, which were weak as women; nor even her merchants, captains, nobles, and king himself, Na 3:13-18 nor the people she was in alliance with, who would now mock at her, her case being irrecoverable and incurable, Na 3:19.