Nahum 2-3 - Jon B
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Video
Passage
Nahum 2–3 (ESV)
Nahum 2:1 The scatterer has come up against you. Man the ramparts; watch the road; dress for battle; collect all your strength.
Nahum 2:2 For the LORD is restoring the majesty of Jacob as the majesty of Israel, for plunderers have plundered them and ruined their branches.
Nahum 2:3 The shield of his mighty men is red; his soldiers are clothed in scarlet. The chariots come with flashing metal on the day he musters them; the cypress spears are brandished.
Nahum 2:4 The chariots race madly through the streets; they rush to and fro through the squares; they gleam like torches; they dart like lightning.
Nahum 2:5 He remembers his officers; they stumble as they go, they hasten to the wall; the siege tower is set up.
Nahum 2:6 The river gates are opened; the palace melts away;
Nahum 2:7 its mistress is stripped; she is carried off, her slave girls lamenting, moaning like doves and beating their breasts.
Nahum 2:8 Nineveh is like a pool whose waters run away. “Halt! Halt!” they cry, but none turns back.
Nahum 2:9 Plunder the silver, plunder the gold! There is no end of the treasure or of the wealth of all precious things.
Nahum 2:10 Desolate! Desolation and ruin! Hearts melt and knees tremble; anguish is in all loins; all faces grow pale!
Nahum 2:11 Where is the lions’ den, the feeding place of the young lions, where the lion and lioness went, where his cubs were, with none to disturb?
Nahum 2:12 The lion tore enough for his cubs and strangled prey for his lionesses; he filled his caves with prey and his dens with torn flesh.
Nahum 2:13 Behold, I am against you, declares the LORD of hosts, and I will burn your chariots in smoke, and the sword shall devour your young lions. I will cut off your prey from the earth, and the voice of your messengers shall no longer be heard.
Nahum 3:1 Woe to the bloody city, all full of lies and plunder— no end to the prey!
Nahum 3:2 The crack of the whip, and rumble of the wheel, galloping horse and bounding chariot!
Nahum 3:3 Horsemen charging, flashing sword and glittering spear, hosts of slain, heaps of corpses, dead bodies without end— they stumble over the bodies!
Nahum 3:4 And all for the countless whorings of the prostitute, graceful and of deadly charms, who betrays nations with her whorings, and peoples with her charms.
Nahum 3:5 Behold, I am against you, declares the LORD of hosts, and will lift up your skirts over your face; and I will make nations look at your nakedness and kingdoms at your shame.
Nahum 3:6 I will throw filth at you and treat you with contempt and make you a spectacle.
Nahum 3:7 And all who look at you will shrink from you and say, “Wasted is Nineveh; who will grieve for her?” Where shall I seek comforters for you?
Nahum 3:8 Are you better than Thebes that sat by the Nile, with water around her, her rampart a sea, and water her wall?
Nahum 3:9 Cush was her strength; Egypt too, and that without limit; Put and the Libyans were her helpers.
Nahum 3:10 Yet she became an exile; she went into captivity; her infants were dashed in pieces at the head of every street; for her honored men lots were cast, and all her great men were bound in chains.
Nahum 3:11 You also will be drunken; you will go into hiding; you will seek a refuge from the enemy.
Nahum 3:12 All your fortresses are like fig trees with first-ripe figs— if shaken they fall into the mouth of the eater.
Nahum 3:13 Behold, your troops are women in your midst. The gates of your land are wide open to your enemies; fire has devoured your bars.
Nahum 3:14 Draw water for the siege; strengthen your forts; go into the clay; tread the mortar; take hold of the brick mold!
Nahum 3:15 There will the fire devour you; the sword will cut you off. It will devour you like the locust. Multiply yourselves like the locust; multiply like the grasshopper!
Nahum 3:16 You increased your merchants more than the stars of the heavens. The locust spreads its wings and flies away.
Nahum 3:17 Your princes are like grasshoppers, your scribes like clouds of locusts settling on the fences in a day of cold— when the sun rises, they fly away; no one knows where they are.
Nahum 3:18 Your shepherds are asleep, O king of Assyria; your nobles slumber. Your people are scattered on the mountains with none to gather them.
Nahum 3:19 There is no easing your hurt; your wound is grievous. All who hear the news about you clap their hands over you. For upon whom has not come your unceasing evil?