Nahum 2:13

13 "Assyria, I'm your enemy," says God-of-the-Angel-Armies. "I'll torch your chariots. They'll go up in smoke. 'Lion Country' will be strewn with carcasses. The war business is over - you're out of work: You'll have no more wars to report, No more victories to announce. You're out of war work forever."

Nahum 2:13 Meaning and Commentary

Nahum 2:13

Behold, I [am] against thee, saith the Lord of hosts
Against Nineveh, and the whole Assyrian empire, for such rapine, violence, and oppression, their kings had been guilty of; and if he, who is the Lord of hosts, of all the armies of heaven and earth, was against them, nothing but ruin must inevitably ensue: or, "I come unto thee" ^F19; or will shortly come unto thee, and reckon with thee for all this; will visit thee in a way of wrath and vengeance. The Targum is,

``behold, I will send my fury upon thee:''

and I will burn her chariots in the smoke;
either those in which the inhabitants of Nineveh rode in great splendour about the city; or those which were used in war with their enemies; and this he would do "in the smoke"; or, "unto smoke", as the Vulgate Latin version; or, "into smoke", as the Syriac ^F20; easily, quickly, at once, suddenly, so that they should evaporate into smoke, and be no more; or, with fire, as the Targum; that is, as Kimchi interprets it, with a great fire, whose smoke is seen afar off; and may be figuratively understood of the smoke of divine wrath, as Aben Ezra explains it: and the sword shall devour thy young lions;
the swords of the Medes and Chaldeans shall destroy the princes, the sons of their king. The Targum interprets this of towns or villages destroyed thereby: and I will cut thy prey from the earth;
cut them off that they should no more prey upon their neighbours; and what they had got should be taken away from them, and be of no use to them: and the voice of thy messengers shall no more be heard;
in foreign courts, demanding homage and subjection; exacting and collecting tribute; blaspheming the God of heaven, and menacing his people, as Rabshakeh, a messenger of one of these kings, did; and which is mentioned by most of the Jewish commentators as being then a recent thing. Some render it, "the voice", or "noise of thy jaw teeth" ^F21; alluding to the lion's breaking the bones of its prey, which is done with a great noise; signifying that such cruelty and oppression the Assyrians had been guilty of should be used no more; or rather, as R. Judah ben Balaam observes, as it signifies the noise of the teeth devouring the prey, it is as if it was said, I will cut off thy prey from the earth; and Ben Melech says that, in the Persian language, grinding stones are expressed by this word, and teeth are called grinders; see ( Ecclesiastes 12:3 ) .

---

FOOTNOTES:

F19 (Kyla ynnh) "ad te venturus sum", Vatablus; "ego ad te venio", Drusius.
F20 (Nveb) "in fumum", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator.
F21 (hkkalm lwq) "vox dentium molarium", Calvin.

Nahum 2:13 In-Context

11 So, what happened to the famous and fierce Assyrian lion And all those cute Assyrian cubs? To the lion and lioness Cozy with their cubs, fierce and fearless?

12 To the lion who always returned from the hunt with fresh kills for lioness and cubs, The lion lair heaped with bloody meat, blood and bones for the royal lion feast?

13 "Assyria, I'm your enemy," says God-of-the-Angel-Armies. "I'll torch your chariots. They'll go up in smoke. 'Lion Country' will be strewn with carcasses. The war business is over - you're out of work: You'll have no more wars to report, No more victories to announce. You're out of war work forever."