Woe to Nineveh
3 Woe to the city of bloodshed! She is full of lies. She is filled with plunder. She is never without victims.
2 The crack of a whip! The clatter of wheels! Galloping horses and bouncing chariots! 3 Horsemen charging! Glittering swords! Flashing spears! Many wounded! Piles of carcasses! There is no end to the corpses—so many that people stumble over them.
4 All this is because of the many promiscuous deeds of the prostitute, a beautiful and pleasing mistress of all kinds of sorcery,[a] who sells nations into slavery with her promiscuity and clans of people with her sorcery.
5 Beware! I am against you, declares the Lord of Armies. I will strip off your clothes! I will expose your nakedness to the nations and your shame to the kingdoms. 6 I will pelt you with filth.[b] I will treat you with contempt. I will make you a public spectacle. 7 Everyone who sees you will turn away from you in disgust and say, “Nineveh has been devastated! Who will express grief for her? Where can I find someone to comfort you?”
8 Are you better[c] than Thebes?[d] She was located on the banks of the Nile. The waters surrounded her. Her strength was the sea, and her walls were the water. 9 Cush and Egypt had limitless strength. Put and the Libyans were among her allies. 10 Yet even she went into exile. Even her infants were smashed to pieces on every street corner. They cast lots to win her dignitaries. All her great men were bound with chains.
11 You too will be drunk and will hide yourself. You too will seek refuge from the enemy.
12 All your fortifications will be like fig trees with ripe fruit. If they are shaken, their figs will fall right into the mouth of the one who eats them. 13 Look! The troops among you are women in the face of your enemies.[e] The gates of your land will be wide open. Fire will consume the bars of your gates.
14 Draw water to prepare yourselves for a siege! Strengthen your fortifications! Trample the mud and tread the clay! Make mud bricks to strengthen your walls!
15 There the fire will consume you. There the sword will cut you down. It will devour you as a swarm of grasshoppers would, even if you heap up your numbers like swarms of grasshoppers and locusts. 16 You have increased your merchants so that they are more than the stars of heaven! But they are like grasshoppers, which spread out and fly away. 17 Your courtiers are like locusts. Your field marshals are like swarming locusts! They camp in the walls on a cold day. Yet when the sun rises, they fly away, and no one knows where they are.
18 King of Assyria, your shepherds are drowsy! Your powerful men slumber! Your people are scattered on the mountains, and there are none left to gather together.[f]
19 There is no healing for your wound. Your injury is fatal! All who hear what has happened to you will clap their hands for joy, for no one ever escaped your endless cruelty!
Footnotes
- Nahum 3:4 Or witchcraft
- Nahum 3:6 The Hebrew word is usually a name for idols, so its use in the literal sense here is unusual.
- Nahum 3:8 Or more secure
- Nahum 3:8 Or No Amon, the Egyptian form of the name of the city
- Nahum 3:13 The last phrase may go with the next line.
- Nahum 3:18 Or there is no one to gather them back