Chapter 3
Woe to the Bloodstained City[a]
1 Woe to the bloodstained city,
festering with lies,
full of booty,
never ceasing in its plunder.
2 Endless are the crack of the whip
and the rumbling of wheels,
galloping horses
and jolting chariots,
3 charging cavalry,
flashing swords,
shimmering spears,
endless piles of the slain,
heaps of corpses,
endless bodies to stumble over.
4 Because of the persistent debaucheries of the harlot,
with her alluring facade as a mistress of sorcery,
who enslaved nations by her harlotries
and peoples by her witchcraft.
5 “I am against you,”
says the Lord of hosts.
“I will lift up your skirts over your face
and exhibit your nakedness to the nations,
your shame to the kingdoms.
6 I will pelt you with filth,
and treat you with contempt,
and make a spectacle of you.
7 Then all those who see you
will shrink from you and say,
‘Nineveh is destroyed.’
Who will console her?
Where can anyone be found to comfort you?”
Are You Better than No-amon?[b]
8 [c]Are you better than No-amon,
a city situated among streams
and surrounded by water,
with the seas serving as her rampart
and water as her wall?
9 Ethiopia and Egypt were her strength,
and that strength was boundless;
Put and the Lybians were her allies.
10 Nevertheless, even she became an exile
and went into captivity.
Even her infants were dashed to pieces
at every street corner.
Lots were cast for her nobles,
and all her leaders were put in chains.
11 You, too, will become drunk
and go into hiding.
You, too, will flee,
seeking a refuge from the enemy.
The Situation of Nineveh Is Desperate[d]
12 All your fortresses are fig trees
that bear early fruit.
As soon as they are shaken,
they fall into the mouth of the eater.
13 Look at your troops.
You are a nation of women.
The gates of your country
lie open to your enemies;
fire has consumed the bars of your gates.
14 Draw yourselves water for the siege!
Strengthen your fortifications!
Trample the clay,
tread the mortar,
repair the brickwork!
15 Then the fire will consume you
and the sword will cut you off.
Multiply yourselves like the locusts,
make yourselves as numerous as the grasshoppers.
Like the Locusts, Strip the Land and Fly Away[e]
16 You have increased the number of your merchants
until they now outnumber the stars of the heavens,
but like the locusts, they strip the land
and then fly away.
17 Your guards are like locusts,
and your scribes are like swarms of grasshoppers
that settle in the walls
on a cold day.
However, when the sun rises, they fly away,
and no one knows where they have gone.
Incurable Is Your Sickness[f]
18 Alas, your shepherds are asleep,
O king of Assyria;
your neighbors lie down to rest.
Your people are scattered on the mountains
with no one to gather them.
19 There is no way to relieve your wound;
your injury is mortal.
All who hear this news about your fate
clap their hands over your downfall.
For who has not suffered
as a result of your relentless cruelty?
Footnotes
- Nahum 3:1 Hallucinating description of the last days of Nineveh: the seductive gluttony of the peoples undergoes the pain of adulterous women.
- Nahum 3:8 Nineveh will know the fate that she herself inflicted, at the time of her splendor, at Thebes, the opulent city of Egypt plundered, in 767 B.C., by Ashurbanipal. This tragic change of situation underlies the fragility of empires built by men.
- Nahum 3:8 No-amon: called Thebes by the Greeks, was the capital of Upper Egypt; it, too, fell despite the power of Pharaoh Tirhakah (an Ethiopian by origin; see v. 9). Put: a non-Semitic population in southern Egypt.
- Nahum 3:12 What good, then, is it to work to repair the gaps with clay and intrigues.
- Nahum 3:16 Like a swarm of insects, a crowd of businessmen and functionaries had battered the Orient. The wind turns and goes, and takes away the evil-doing swarm.
- Nahum 3:18 This funereal chant, full of irony, reveals to what point the Assyrian tyranny had reached.