Nahum 3:12-19

Evangelical Heritage Version

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.^[a] 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.^[b]

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!