Nahum 2

¹ He who dashes in pieces has come up against you. Keep the fortress! Watch the way! Strengthen your waist! Fortify your power mightily!

² For the LORD restores the excellency of Jacob as the excellency of Israel, for the destroyers have destroyed them and ruined their vine branches.

³ The shield of his mighty men is made red. The valiant men are in scarlet. The chariots flash with steel in the day of his preparation, and the pine spears are brandished.

⁴ The chariots rage in the streets. They rush back and forth in the wide ways. Their appearance is like torches. They run like the lightnings.

⁵ He summons his picked troops. They stumble on their way. They dash to its wall, and the protective shield is put in place.

⁶ The gates of the rivers are opened, and the palace is dissolved.

⁷ It is decreed: she is uncovered, she is carried away; and her servants moan as with the voice of doves, beating on their breasts.

⁸ But Nineveh has been from of old like a pool of water, yet they flee away. “Stop! Stop!” they cry, but no one looks back.

⁹ Take the plunder of silver. Take the plunder of gold, for there is no end of treasure, an abundance of every precious thing.

¹⁰ She is empty, void, and waste. The heart melts, the knees knock together, their bodies and faces have grown pale.

¹¹ Where is the den of the lions, and the feeding place of the young lions, where the lion and the lioness walked with the lion’s cubs, and no one made them afraid?

¹² The lion tore in pieces enough for his cubs, and strangled prey for his lionesses, and filled his caves with the kill and his dens with prey.

¹³ “Behold, I am against you,” says the LORD of Armies, “and I will burn her chariots in the smoke, and the sword will devour your young lions; and I will cut off your prey from the earth, and the voice of your messengers will no longer be heard.”

Around Nahum 2

Context

Context for this book is being written. A note appears here only once it names its sources.

AI explanation

About Nahum as a whole · Written by an AI model · Not reviewed by a theological reader

This explanation was written by an AI model to help you get started. It names no sources and can contain mistakes. Scripture comes first, and context with sources is shown separately on this page.

What this book is about

News is coming over the mountains. “Behold, on the mountains the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace!” For the peoples that Assyria crushed, it is the news they have waited for: the oppressor will not rise again.

Nahum announces the fall of Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian empire. He begins with who God is: “The LORD is slow to anger, and great in power,” he says. Then, in vivid poetry, he lets the reader hear the city fall: the noise of the whip, the rattling wheels, horsemen charging, bodies without end. Its fortresses are like fig trees whose fruit drops into the mouth of the eater. Its defenses fail.

The city’s own cruelty is coming back upon it. The book ends on a question aimed at Nineveh: “who hasn’t felt your endless cruelty?”

Background

The book was written between the fall of Thebes, an Egyptian city, in 663 before Christ, which it mentions, and the fall of Nineveh in 612. Assyria was known for the brutality of its conquests, and it had destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel a century earlier. Nahum himself is called the Elkoshite in the opening line.

How Christians read it

Nahum is often read beside Jonah. In Jonah Nineveh repents and is spared. In Nahum, generations later, it faces judgment. Together they show God as both patient and just. The tone is harsh, and readers do well to remember who is speaking: the victims of an empire, hearing that its violence will end. Read that way, even its harshest lines belong to people who had suffered long and wanted to hear that it would end.

About this explanation

Written by Claude Sonnet 5.5, an AI model, on 21 October 2026. It draws on the WEB text and general knowledge and was not checked against sources by a person. Every quotation from Scripture is checked automatically against the WEB text.

Report a mistake