Nahum 3:13-19

13 Look at your troops. All of them are weak. The gates of your forts are wide open to your enemies. Fire has destroyed their heavy metal bars.

14 Prepare for the attack by storing up water! Make your walls as strong as you can! Make some bricks out of clay! Mix the mud to hold them together! Use them to repair the walls!

15 In spite of all of your hard work, fire will burn you up inside your city. Your enemies will cut you down with their swords. They will destroy you just as grasshoppers eat up crops. Multiply like grasshoppers! Increase your numbers like locusts!

16 You have more traders than the number of stars in the sky. But like locusts they strip the land. Then they fly away.

17 Your guards are like grasshoppers. Your officials are like large numbers of locusts. They settle in the walls on a cold day. But when the sun appears, they fly away. And no one knows where they go.

18 King of Assyria, your leaders are asleep. Your nobles lie down to rest. Your people are scattered on the mountains. No one is left to gather them together.

19 Nothing can heal your wounds. You will die of them. All those who hear the news about you clap their hands because you have fallen from power. All of them suffered because you never showed them any pity.

Nahum 3:13-19 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.