Nahum 3:14

Amplified Bible

Draw water for a [long, continued] siege! Strengthen your fortresses! Go down to the clay pits, trample the mortar! Prepare the brick kiln [to burn bricks for the rampart]!

Parallel Translations

Christian Standard Bible®
Draw water for the siege;strengthen your fortresses.Step into the clay and tread the mortar;take hold of the brick-mold!

Hebrew Names Version
Draw water for the siege. Strengthen your fortresses. Go into the clay, and tread the mortar. Make the brick kiln strong.

King James Version (1611)
Draw thee waters for the siege: fortifie thy strong holdes, goe into clay, and tread the morter: make strong the bricke-kill.

King James Version
Draw thee waters for the siege, fortify thy strong holds: go into clay, and tread the morter, make strong the brickkiln.

English Standard Version
Draw water for the siege; strengthen your forts; go into the clay; tread the mortar; take hold of the brick mold!

New American Standard Bible
Draw for yourself water for a siege! Strengthen your fortifications! Go into the clay and tread the mortar! Take hold of the brick mold!

New Century Version
Get enough water before the long war begins. Make your defenses strong! Get mud, mix clay, make bricks!

Geneva Bible (1587)
Drawe thee waters for the siege: fortifie thy strong holdes: go into the clay, and temper the morter: make strong bricke.

New American Standard Bible (1995)
Draw for yourself water for the siege! Strengthen your fortifications! Go into the clay and tread the mortar! Take hold of the brick mold!

Legacy Standard Bible
Draw for yourself water for the siege!Strengthen your fortifications!Go into the clay and tread the mortar!Take hold of the brick mold!

Berean Standard Bible
Draw your water for the siege; strengthen your fortresses. Work the clay and tread the mortar; repair the brick kiln!

Contemporary English Version
Your city is under attack. Haul in extra water! Strengthen your defenses! Start making bricks! Stir the mortar!

Complete Jewish Bible
Draw water for the siege! Strengthen your fortifications! Go down in the clay, tread the mortar, Take hold of the mold for bricks!

Darby Translation
Draw thee water for the siege, strengthen thy fortresses; go into the clay, and tread the mortar, make strong the brick-kiln.

Easy-to-Read Version
Get water and store it inside your city, because the enemy soldiers will surround your city. Make your defenses strong! Get clay to make more bricks and mix the mortar. Get the molds for making bricks.

George Lamsa Translation
Draw water for the siege, fortify your strongholds; mix the clay, tread the mortar, strengthen the foundations.

Good News Translation
Draw water to prepare for a siege, and strengthen your fortresses! Trample the clay to make bricks, and get the brick molds ready!

Lexham English Bible
Draw water for a siege! Strengthen your fortifications! Go to the mud pit! Trample the clay! Grasp the brick mold!

Literal Translation
Draw water of the siege for you! Strengthen your fortifications! Go into the clay and tread in the mortar! Make the mold strong!

American Standard Version
Draw thee water for the siege; strengthen thy fortresses; go into the clay, and tread the mortar; make strong the brickkiln.

Bible in Basic English
Get water for the time when you are shut in, make strong your towns: go into the potter's earth, stamping it down with your feet, make strong the brickworks.

JPS Old Testament (1917)
Draw thee water for the siege, strengthen thy fortresses; go into the clay, and tread the mortar, lay hold of the brickmould.

Bishop's Bible (1568)
Drawe thee water for the siege, strengthen thy fortes, go into the clay, treade the morter, make strong the brickyll.

Brenton's Septuagint (LXX)
Draw thee water for a siege, and well secure thy strong-holds: enter into the clay, and be thou trodden in the chaff, make the fortifications stronger than brick.

English Revised Version
Draw thee water for the siege, strengthen thy fortresses: go into the clay, and tread the mortar, make strong the brickkiln.

World English Bible
Draw water for the siege. Strengthen your fortresses. Go into the clay, and tread the mortar. Make the brick kiln strong.

Wycliffe Bible (1395)
Drawe vp to thee water for asegyng, bilde thi strengthis; entre in fen, and trede, thou vndurgoynge holde a tiel stoon.

Update Bible Version
Draw yourself water for the siege; strengthen your fortresses; go into the clay, and tread the mortar; make strong the brickkiln.

Webster's Bible Translation
Draw thee waters for the siege, fortify thy strong holds: go into clay, and tread the mortar, make strong the brick-kiln.

New English Translation
Draw yourselves water for a siege! Strengthen your fortifications! Trample the mud and tread the clay! Make mud bricks to strengthen your walls!

New King James Version
Draw your water for the siege! Fortify your strongholds! Go into the clay and tread the mortar! Make strong the brick kiln!

New Living Translation
Get ready for the siege! Store up water! Strengthen the defenses! Go into the pits to trample clay, and pack it into molds, making bricks to repair the walls.

New Life Bible
Store up water to drink when you are shut in by armies! Make your walls stronger! Go into the clay to make more clay blocks for building!

New Revised Standard
Draw water for the siege, strengthen your forts; trample the clay, tread the mortar, take hold of the brick mold!

J.B. Rotherham Emphasized Bible
Siege-water, draw for thyself, strengthen thy fortresses, - go into the clay, and tread thou the mortar, make strong the brick.

Douay-Rheims Bible
Draw thee water for the siege, build up thy bulwarks: go into the clay, and tread, work it and make brick.

Revised Standard Version
Draw water for the siege, strengthen your forts; go into the clay, tread the mortar, take hold of the brick mold!

Young's Literal Translation
Waters of a siege draw for thyself, Strengthen thy fortresses, Enter into mire, and tread on clay, Make strong a brick-kiln.

Miles Coverdale Bible (1535)
Drawe water now agaynst thou be beseged, make vp thy stroge holdes, go into the claye, tempre the morter, make stronge bricke:

THE MESSAGE
Store up water for the siege. Shore up your defenses. Get down to basics: Work the clay and make bricks. Sorry. Too late. Enemy fire will burn you up. Swords will cut you to pieces. You'll be chewed up as if by locusts. Yes, as if by locusts—a fitting fate, for you yourselves are a locust plague. You've multiplied shops and shopkeepers— more buyers and sellers than stars in the sky! A plague of locusts, cleaning out the neighborhood and then flying off. Your bureaucrats are locusts, your brokers and bankers are locusts. Early on, they're all at your service, full of smiles and promises, But later when you return with questions or complaints, you'll find they've flown off and are nowhere to be found. King of Assyria! Your shepherd-leaders, in charge of caring for your people, Are busy doing everything else but. They're not doing their job, And your people are scattered and lost. There's no one to look after them. You're past the point of no return. Your wound is fatal. When the story of your fate gets out, the whole world will applaud and cry "Encore!" Your cruel evil has seeped into every nook and cranny of the world. Everyone has felt it and suffered.

Contextual Overview

⁸Are you better than Thebes, Which was situated by the waters of the Nile, With water surrounding her, Whose defense was the sea (the Nile), Whose wall consisted of the sea? ⁹Ethiopia was her strength, And Egypt too, without limits. Put and Lubim were among her helpers. ¹⁰Yet she became an exile; She went into captivity. Her young children were dashed to pieces At the head of every street; They cast lots for her honorable men, And all her great men were bound with chains. ¹¹You too [Nineveh] will become drunk [with the cup of God's wrath]; You will be hidden. You too [Nineveh] will search [in vain] for a refuge from the enemy. ¹²All your fortresses are [nothing but] fig trees with ripe figs— When shaken they fall into the mouth of the eater. ¹³Behold, your people are [as weak and helpless as] women in your midst! The gates of your land are opened wide to your enemies; Fire consumes the bars across your gates. ¹⁴Draw water for a [long, continued] siege! Strengthen your fortresses! Go down to the clay pits, trample the mortar! Prepare the brick kiln [to burn bricks for the rampart]!¹⁵But there [in the very midst of these preparations] the fire will devour you; The sword will cut you down; It will devour you as the locust does. Multiply yourself like the creeping locusts; Multiply yourself like the swarming locusts. ¹⁶You have increased your traders more than the [visible] stars of heaven— The creeping locust strips and destroys and then flies away. ¹⁷Your guardsmen are like the swarming locusts. Your marshals are like the hordes of grasshoppers Settling in the stone walls on a cold day. When the sun rises, they fly away, And no one knows the place where they are.

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

Draw: 2 Chronicles 32:3, 2 Chronicles 32:4, 2 Chronicles 32:11, Isaiah 22:9-11, Isaiah 37:25

fortify: Nahum 2:1, Isaiah 8:9, Jeremiah 46:3, Jeremiah 46:4, Jeremiah 46:9, Joel 3:9-11

Reciprocal: Genesis 11:3 - brick Exodus 1:14 - in mortar Jeremiah 43:9 - in the brickkiln Jeremiah 51:12 - the standard

Cross-References

Genesis 3:1
Now the serpent was more crafty (subtle, skilled in deceit) than any living creature of the field which the LORD God had made. And the serpent (Satan) said to the woman, "Can it really be that God has said, 'You shall not eat from any tree of the garden'?"

Genesis 3:15
"And I will put enmity (open hostility) Between you and the woman, And between your seed (offspring) and her Seed; He shall [fatally] bruise your head, And you shall [only] bruise His heel."

Genesis 3:20
The man named his wife Eve (life spring, life giver), because she was the mother of all the living.

Genesis 9:6
"Whoever sheds man's blood [unlawfully], By man (judicial government) shall his blood be shed, For in the image of God He made man.

Leviticus 20:25
'You are therefore to make a distinction between the [ceremonially] clean animal and the unclean, and between the unclean bird and the clean; and you shall not make yourselves detestable by animal or by bird or by anything that crawls on the ground, which I have set apart from you as unclean.

Psalms 72:9
The nomads of the desert will bow before him, And his enemies will lick the dust.

Isaiah 29:4
Then you [Jerusalem] will be brought low, You will speak from the earth, And from the dust where you lie face down Your muffled words will come. Your voice will also be like that of a spirit from the earth [like one produced by a medium], And your speech will whisper and squeak from the dust.

Isaiah 65:25
"The wolf and the lamb will graze together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox [there will no longer be predator and prey]; and dust will be the serpent's food. They will do no evil or harm in all My holy mountain (Zion)," says the LORD.

Micah 7:17
They shall lick the dust like a serpent; Like crawling things of the earth They shall come trembling out of their fortresses and hiding places. They shall turn and come with fear and dread to the LORD our God And they shall be afraid and stand in awe before You [O LORD].

Gill's Notes on the Bible

Draw thee waters for the siege,.... Before the siege is begun, fetch water from the river, wells, or fountains without the city, and fill cisterns, and such like receptacles of water, with them; that there may be sufficiency of it to hold out, which is often wanting in long sieges; the want of which gives great distress to the besieged: this is put for all necessary provisions, which should be made when a city is in danger of being blocked up: this, and what follows, are said ironically; signifying, let them do what they would or could for their support and security, it would be all in vain:

fortify thy strong holds; repair the old fortifications, and add new ones to them; fill them with soldiers, arms, and ammunition:

go into clay, and tread the mortar; make strong the brick kiln; repair the brick kilns, keep them in good order; employ men in digging clay, and treading it, and making it into bricks, and burning them in the kiln, that there be no want of bricks to repair the fortifications, or such breaches as might be made by the enemy. Bricks were much used instead of stone in those countries; but when they had done their utmost, they would not be able to secure themselves, and keep out the enemy.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Draw thee waters for the siege, fortify thy strongholds - This is not mere mockery at man’s weakness, when he would resist God. It foretells that they shall toil, and that, heavily. Toil is added upon toil. Nineveh did undergo a two years’ siege. Water stands for all provisions within. He bids them, as before Nahum 2:1, strengthen what was already strong; strongholds, which seemed to “cut off” all approach. These he bids them strengthen, not repairing decays only but making them exceeding strong 2 Chronicles 11:12. Go into clay. We seem to see all the inhabitants, like ants on their nest, all poured out, every one busy, every one making preparation for the defense. Why had there been no need of it? What needed she of towers and fortifications, whose armies were carrying war into distant lands, before whom all which was near was hushed? Now, all had to be renewed. As Isaiah in his mockery of the idol-makers begins with the forging of the axe, the planting and rearing of the trees, which were at length to become the idol (Isaiah 44:12, following), Nahum goes back to the beginning. The neglected brick-kiln, useless in their prosperity, was to be repaired; the clay, which abounded in the valley of the Tigris , was to be collected, mixed and kneaded by treading, as still represented in the Egyptian monuments. The conquering nation was to do the work of slaves, as Asiatic captives are represented, under their taskmasters , on the monuments of Egypt, a prelude of their future. Xenophon still saw the massive brick wall, on the stone foundation .

Yet, though stored within and fenced without, it shall not stand (see Isaiah 27:10-11).

Clarke's Notes on the Bible

Verse Nahum 3:14. Draw thee waters for the siege — The Tigris ran near to Nineveh, and here they are exhorted to lay in plenty of fresh water, lest the siege should last long, and lest the enemy should cut off this supply.

Go into clay, and tread the mortar — This refers to the manner of forming bricks anciently in those countries; they digged up the clay, kneaded it properly by treading, mixed it with straw or coarse grass, moulded the bricks, and dried them in the sun. I have now some of the identical bricks, that were brought from this country, lying before me, and they show all these appearances. They are compact and very hard, but wholly soluble in water. There were however others without straw, that seem to have been burnt in a kiln as ours are. I have also some fragments or bats of these from Babylon.