Nahum 3:12-19

12 All your fortresses are like fig trees with first-ripe figs--if shaken they fall into the mouth of the eater.

13 Behold, your troops are women in your midst. The gates of your land are wide open to your foes; fire has devoured your bars.

14 Draw water for the siege, strengthen your forts; go into the clay, tread the mortar, take hold of the brick mold!

15 There will the fire devour you, the sword will cut you off. It will devour you like the locust. Multiply yourselves like the locust, multiply like the grasshopper!

16 You increased your merchants more than the stars of the heavens. The locust spreads its wings and flies away.

17 Your princes are like grasshoppers, your scribes like clouds of locusts settling on the fences in a day of cold--when the sun rises, they fly away; no one knows where they are.

18 Your shepherds are asleep, O king of Assyria; your nobles slumber. Your people are scattered on the mountains with none to gather them.

19 There is no assuaging your hurt, your wound is grievous. All who hear the news of you clap their hands over you. For upon whom has not come your unceasing 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.