Nahum Chapter 3
Nah 2:11-1
Woe to Nineveh
1 Misfortune awaits bloody Nineveh,
filled with lies and pillage
and plunder without limit.
2 Do you hear the crack of whips, rattling wheels,
galloping horses, rushing chariots!?
3 Do you see cavalry charging,
swords flashing, spears gleaming,
many slain, piles of corpses,
countless bodies,
and people stumbling over them!?
4 That’s all because of your continual prostitution,
that charming mistress of sorceries;
you sell nations by your prostitution,
countries by your sorceries.
5 “I’m your enemy,” Yahveh of hosts says;
“I’ll pull your skirts up over your faces,
and show the nations your nakedness,
the kingdoms your disgrace.
6 I’ll throw filth on you
make you disgusting,
make a spectacle out of you!
7 Everybody that sees you will back away and say,
‘Nineveh lies in ruins!
Who’s going to grieve over her?’
Where will her comforters come from?” Nah 3:1-7
8 Are you any better than Thebes
that sat by the Nile
with water all around it,
with the river as its wall and rampart?
9 Nubia was its strength,
Egypt too, with no limit;
Put and the Libyans allied with it.
10 Yet Thebes was carried away into captivity.
Its little ones were dashed to pieces
at the head of every street;
they cast lots for its honorable men
and tied up its leaders with chains.
Nah 3:8-10
11 You’ll get drunk too, Nineveh, go into a stupor,
and look for refuge from your enemy.
12 Your fortresses are like fig trees with ripe fruit;
if you shake them, their figs fall into your mouth.
13 Your troops are women!
Your gates stand wide open for your enemies;
fires consume your bars.
Nah 3:11-13
14 Draw water for your siege!
Strengthen your fortifications!
Get in the clay pits to tread mortar!
Put it in brick molds!
15 But fire will burn you up;
the sword will cut you down
and eat you up like locusts.
Though you have multiplied like crawling locusts
and propagated like grasshoppers,
16 though your traders have come to outnumber the stars—
nevertheless, like crawling locusts
your enemy will strip your land and fly away.
17 Though your guards are also like grasshoppers
and your marshals resemble locust swarms
settling in stone walls on a cold day,
when the sun comes up, they fly away,
nobody knows where.
Nah 3:14-17
18 Your shepherds are asleep, king of Assyria;
your nobles lie dead on the ground.
Your people have scattered to the mountains,
and there’s nobody to round them up.
19 There’s no relief for your injury;
your wound won’t heal.
Everybody that hears about your destruction
claps their hands.
Who hasn’t come under your endless cruelty? Nah 3:15b-19
Version by Virgil Warren: christir.org