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King James Version
Nahum 2:13
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Beware, I am against you.
"Behold, I am against you," says the LORD of Hosts, "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 eretz, and the voice of your messengers will no longer be heard."
Behold, I am against thee, saith the Lord of hosts, and I will burne her charets in the smoke, and the sword shall deuoure thy yong Lions, and I wil cut off thy pray from the earth, and the voice of thy messengers shall no more be heard.
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.
"Behold, I am against you," declares the LORD of armies. "I will burn up her chariots in smoke, and a sword will devour your young lions; I will eliminate your prey from the land, and no longer will the voice of your messengers be heard."
"I am against you, Nineveh," says the Lord All-Powerful. "I will burn up your chariots in smoke, and the sword will kill your young lions. I will stop you from hunting down others on the earth, and your messengers' voices will no longer be heard."
"Behold, I am against you [Nineveh]," declares the LORD of hosts, "and I will burn your chariots in the smoke, and the sword will devour your young lions. I will cut off your prey from the land, and the voice of your messengers will no longer be heard."
Beholde, I come vnto thee, sayeth the Lord of hostes, and I will burne her charets in the smoke, and the sworde shall deuoure thy yong lyons, and I will cut off thy spoyle from the earth, and the voyce of thy messengers shall no more be heard.
"Behold, I am against you," declares the LORD of hosts. "I will burn up her chariots in smoke, a sword will devour your young lions; I will cut off your prey from the land, and no longer will the voice of your messengers be heard."
"Behold, I am against you," declares Yahweh of hosts. "And I will burn up her chariots in smoke, and a sword will devour your young lions; and I will cut off your prey from the land, and no longer will the voice of your messengers be heard."
"Behold, I am against you," declares the LORD of Hosts. "I will send your chariots up in smoke and the sword will devour your young lions. I will cut off your prey from the earth, and the voices of your messengers will no longer be heard."
The Lord All-Powerful is against you, Nineveh. God will burn your chariots and send an army to kill those young lions of yours. You will never again make victims of others or send messengers to threaten everyone on this earth.
The lion would tear up food for his cubs and strangle prey for his lionesses; he used to fill his caves with prey, his lairs with torn flesh. "I am against you," says Adonai -Tzva'ot. "Her chariots I will send up in smoke, the sword will consume your lion cubs, I will destroy your prey from the earth, and your envoys' voices will be heard no more."
Behold, I am against thee, saith Jehovah of hosts: and I will burn her chariots into smoke; and the sword shall devour thy young lions, and I will cut off thy prey from the earth; and the voice of thy messengers shall no more be heard.
The Lord All-Powerful says, "I am against you, Nineveh. I will burn your chariots and kill your ‘young lions' in battle. You will not hunt anyone on earth again. People will never again hear bad news from your messengers."
Behold, I am against you, says the LORD of hosts, and I will burn up your multitudes in the smoke, and the sword shall devour your young lions; and I will cut off your prey from the earth, and the news of your deeds shall no more be heard.
"I am your enemy!" says the Lord Almighty. "I will burn up your chariots. Your soldiers will be killed in war, and I will take away everything that you took from others. The demands of your envoys will no longer be heard."
"Look! I am against you!" declares Yahweh of hosts. "I will burn her chariots with fire; the sword will devour fierce lions. I will cut off your prey from the earth; the voice of your messengers will no longer be heard."
Behold, I am against you, declares Jehovah of Hosts; and I will burn her chariots in the smoke, and the sword shall devour your young lions. And I will cut off your prey from the earth, andthe voice of your messengers shall not beheard any more.
Behold, I am against thee, saith Jehovah of hosts, and I will burn her chariots in the smoke, and the sword shall devour thy young lions; and I will cut off thy prey from the earth, and the voice of thy messengers shall no more be heard.
See, I am against you, says the Lord of armies, and I will have your war-carriages burned in the smoke, and your young lions will be food for the sword: you will no longer get your food by force on the earth, and the voice of your she-lions will be stopped for ever.
The lion did tear in pieces enough for his whelps, and strangled for his lionesses, and filled his caves with prey, and his dens with ravin. Behold, I am against thee, saith the LORD of hosts, and I will burn her chariots in the smoke, and the sword shall devour thy young lions; and I will cut off thy prey from the earth, and the voice of thy messengers shall no more be heard.
Behold me against thee sayth the Lord of hoastes, & I will burne in smoke her charets, and the sworde shall deuoure thy lions, I will roote out also from the earth thy spoyling, and the voyce of thy messengers shalbe hearde no more.
Behold, I am against thee, saith the Lord Almighty, and I will burn up thy multitude in the smoke, and the sword shall devour thy lions; and I will utterly destroy thy prey from off the land, and thy deeds shall no more at all be heard of.
Behold, I am against thee, saith the LORD of hosts, and I will burn her chariots in the smoke, and the sword shall devour thy young lions: and I will cut off thy prey from the earth, and the voice of thy messengers shall no more be heard.
"Behold, I am against you," says Yahweh of Hosts, "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."
Lo! Y to thee, seith the Lord God of oostis; and Y schal brenne thi cartis of foure horsis til to the hiyeste, and swerd schal ete thi smale liouns; and Y schal distrie thi prei fro the lond, and the vois of thi messangeris schulen no more be herd.
Look, I am against you, says Yahweh of hosts, and I will burn your crowd in the smoke, and the sword shall devour your young lions; and I will cut off your prey from the earth, and the voice of your messengers shall be heard no more.
Behold, I [am] against thee, saith the LORD of hosts, and I will burn her chariots in the smoke, and the sword shall devour thy young lions: and I will cut off thy prey from the earth, and the voice of thy messengers shall no more be heard.
"I am against you!" declares the Lord who commands armies: "I will burn your chariots with fire; the sword will devour your young lions; you will no longer prey upon the land; the voices of your messengers will no longer be heard."
13 "Behold, I am against you," says the Lord of hosts, "I will burn your [fn] 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 be heard no more."
"I am your enemy!" says the Lord of Heaven's Armies. "Your chariots will soon go up in smoke. Your young men will be killed in battle. Never again will you plunder conquered nations. The voices of your proud messengers will be heard no more."
"I am against you," says the Lord of All. "I will burn up your war-wagons in smoke. A sword will destroy your young lions. I will cut off your food from the land. And the voice of your men who came with news will never be heard again."
See, I am against you, says 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 be heard no more.
Behold me! against thee, Declareth Yahweh of hosts, Therefore will I burn up in smoke her chariots, and, thy young lions, shall be devoured by the sword, - so will I cut off, out of the earth, thy prey, nor shall be heard any more, the voice of thine envoy.
Behold I come against thee, saith the Lord of hosts, and I will burn thy chariots even to smoke, and the sword shall devour thy young lions: and I will cut off thy prey out of the land, and the voice of thy messengers shall be heard no more.
Behold, I am against you, says 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 more be heard.
Lo, I [am] against thee, An affirmation of Jehovah of Hosts, And I have burned in smoke its chariot, And thy young lions consume doth a sword, And I have cut off from the land thy prey, And not heard any more is the voice of thy messengers!
Beholde, I wil vpon the (saieth the LORDE of hoostes) and wil set fyre vpon thy charettes, that they shal smoke withall, and the swerde shal deuoure thy yonge lyons. I wil make an ende of thy spoylinge from out of the earth, & the voyce of thy messaungers shall nomore be herde.
"Assyria, I'm your enemy," says God -of-the-Angel-Armies. "I'll torch your chariots. They'll go up in smoke. ‘Lion Country' will be strewn with carcasses. The war business is over—you're out of work: You'll have no more wars to report, No more victories to announce. You're out of war work forever."
Contextual Overview
Bible Verse Review
from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge
I am: Nahum 3:5, Jeremiah 21:13, Jeremiah 50:31, Jeremiah 51:25, Ezekiel 5:8, Ezekiel 26:3, Ezekiel 28:22, Ezekiel 29:3, Ezekiel 29:10, Ezekiel 35:3, Ezekiel 38:3, Ezekiel 39:1
I will burn: Joshua 11:9, 2 Kings 19:23, Psalms 46:9
and the sword: Isaiah 31:8, Isaiah 31:9, Isaiah 37:36-38
I will cut: Nahum 3:1, Nahum 3:12, Isaiah 33:1-4, Isaiah 49:24, Isaiah 49:25
the voice: 2 Kings 18:17, 2 Kings 18:19, 2 Kings 18:27-35, 2 Kings 19:9, 2 Kings 19:23, 2 Chronicles 32:9-16, 2 Chronicles 32:19
Reciprocal: Psalms 76:6 - both Isaiah 15:7 - the abundance Jeremiah 46:14 - the sword Jeremiah 50:37 - their horses Jeremiah 51:21 - General Ezekiel 13:8 - behold Ezekiel 21:3 - Behold Ezekiel 34:10 - I am Nahum 2:9 - for there is none end of the store Nahum 3:15 - shall the
Cross-References
And the sons of Ham; Cush, and Mizraim, and Phut, and Canaan.
And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea.
Gill's Notes on the Bible
Behold, I [am] against thee, saith the Lord of hosts,.... Against Nineveh, and the whole Assyrian empire, for such rapine, violence, and oppression, their kings had been guilty of; and if he, who is the Lord of hosts, of all the armies of heaven and earth, was against them, nothing but ruin must inevitably ensue: or, "I come unto thee" s; or will shortly come unto thee, and reckon with thee for all this; will visit thee in a way of wrath and vengeance. The Targum is,
"behold, I will send my fury upon thee:''
and I will burn her chariots in the smoke; either those in which the inhabitants of Nineveh rode in great splendour about the city; or those which were used in war with their enemies; and this he would do "in the smoke"; or, "unto smoke", as the Vulgate Latin version; or, "into smoke", as the Syriac t; easily, quickly, at once, suddenly, so that they should evaporate into smoke, and be no more; or, with fire, as the Targum; that is, as Kimchi interprets it, with a great fire, whose smoke is seen afar off; and may be figuratively understood of the smoke of divine wrath, as Aben Ezra explains it:
and the sword shall devour thy young lions; the swords of the Medes and Chaldeans shall destroy the princes, the sons of their king. The Targum interprets this of towns or villages destroyed thereby:
and I will cut thy prey from the earth; cut them off that they should no more prey upon their neighbours; and what they had got should be taken away from them, and be of no use to them:
and the voice of thy messengers shall no more be heard; in foreign courts, demanding homage and subjection; exacting and collecting tribute; blaspheming the God of heaven, and menacing his people, as Rabshakeh, a messenger of one of these kings, did; and which is mentioned by most of the Jewish commentators as being then a recent thing. Some render it, "the voice", or "noise of thy jaw teeth" u; alluding to the lion's breaking the bones of its prey, which is done with a great noise; signifying that such cruelty and oppression the Assyrians had been guilty of should be used no more; or rather, as R. Judah ben Balaam observes, as it signifies the noise of the teeth devouring the prey, it is as if it was said, I will cut off thy prey from the earth; and Ben Melech says that, in the Persian language, grinding stones are expressed by this word, and teeth are called grinders; see Ecclesiastes 12:3.
s הנני אליך "ad te venturus sum", Vatablus; "ego ad te venio", Drusius. t בעשן "in fumum", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator. u קול מלאככה "vox dentium molarium", Calvin.
Barnes' Notes on the Bible
Behold I, Myself, am against thee - (Literally, “toward thee”). God, in His long-suffering, had, as it were, looked away from him; now He looked toward (as in Psalms 37:20) him, and in His sight what wicked one should stand? “Saith the Lord of hosts,” whose power is infinite and He changes not, and all the armies of heaven, the truly angels and evil spirits and men are in His Hand, whereto He directs or overrules them. “And I will burn her chariots in the smoke.” The Assyrian sculptures attest how greatly their pride and strength lay in their chariots. They exhibit the minute embellishment of the chariots and horses . Almost inconceivably light for speed, they are pictured as whirled onward by the two or, more often, three powerful steeds with eye of fire , the bodies of the slain (or, in peace, the lion ) under their feet, the mailed warriors, with bows stretched to the utmost, shooting at the more distant foe.
Sennacherib gives a terrific picture of the fierceness of their onslaught. “The armor, the arms, taken in my attacks, swam in the blood of my enemies as in a river; the war-chariots, which destroy man and beast, had, in their course, crushed the bloody bodies and limbs” . All this their warlike pride should be but fuel for fire, and vanish in smoke, an emblem of pride, swelling, mounting like a column toward heaven, disappearing. Not a brand shall then be saved out of the burning; nothing half-consumed; but the fire shall burn, until there be nothing left to consume, as, in Sodom and Gomorrah, “the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace. And the sword of the vengeance of God shall devour the young lions” Genesis 19:28, his hope for the time to come, the flower of his youth; “and I will cut off thy prey,” what thou hast robbed, and so that thou shouldest rob no more, but that thy spoil should utterly cease from “the earth, and the voice of thy messengers shall be no more heard,” such as Rabshakeh, whereby they insulted and terrified the nations and blasphemed God.
In the spiritual sense, Nineveh being an image of the world, the prophecy speaks of the inroad made upon it through the Gospel, its resistance, capture, desolation, destruction. First, He that “ruleth with a rod of iron,” came and denounced “woe to it because of offenses;” then His mighty ones in His Name. Their shield is red, “the shield of faith,” kindled and glowing with love. Their raiment too is red, because they wash it in the Blood of the Lamb, and conquer through the Blood of the Lamb, and many shed their own blood “for a witness to them.” “The day of His preparation” is the whole period, until the end of the world, in which the Gospel is preached, of which the prophets and apostles speak, as the day of salvation Isa 49:8; 2 Corinthians 6:2; to the believing world a day of salvation; to the unbelieving, of preparation for judgment. All which is done, judgments, mercy, preaching, miracles, patience of the saints, martyrdom, all which is spoken, done, suffered, is part of the one preparation for the final judgment. The chariots, flashing with light as they pass, are “the chariots of salvation” Habakkuk 3:8, bearing the brightness of the doctrine of Christ and the glory of His truth throughout the world, enlightening while they wound; the “spears” are the word of God, slaying to make alive.
On the other hand, in resisting, the world clashes with itself. It would oppose the Gospel, yet knows not how; is “maddened with rage, and gnashes its teeth, that it can prevail nothing” . On the broad ways which lead to death, where “Wisdom uttereth her voice” and is not heard, it is hemmed in, and cannot find a straight path; its chariots dash one against another, and yet they breathe their ancient fury, and run to and fro like lightning, as the Lord saith, “I beheld Satan, as lightning, fall from heaven” Luke 10:18. Then shall they “remember their mighty ones,” all the might of this world which they ascribed to their gods, their manifold triumphs, whereby in pagan times their empire was established; they shall gather strength against strength, but it shall be powerless and real weakness. While they prepare for a long siege, without hand their gates give way; the kingdom falls, the world is taken captive by a blessed captivity, suddenly, unawares, as one says in the second century ; “Men cry out that the state is beset, that the Christians are in their fields, in their forts, in their islands!” These mourn over their past sins, and beat their breasts, in token of their sorrow; yet sweeter shall be the plaint of their sorrow, than any past joy.
Sit they shall mourn as doves, and their mourning is as melody and the voice of praise in the ear of the Most High. One part of the inhabitants of the world being thus blessedly taken, the rest are fled. So in all nearness of God’s judgments, those who are net brought nearer, flee further. “They flee, and look not back, and none heareth the Lord speaking, “Return, ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings” Jeremiah 3:22. So then, hearing not His Voice, stand, stand, they flee away from His presence in mercy, into darkness for ever. Such is the lot of the inhabitants of the world; and what is the world itself? The prophet answers what it has been. A pool of water, into which all things, the riches and glory, and wisdom, and pleasures of this world, have flowed in on all sides, and which gave back nothing. All ended in itself. The water came from above, and became stagnant in the lowest part of the earth. “For all the wisdom of this world, apart from the sealed fountain of the Church, and of which it cannot be said, the streams thereof make glad the city of God nor are of those waters which, above the heavens, praise the Name of the Lord, however large they may seem, yet are little, and are enclosed in a narrow bound” Luke 10:18.
These either are hallowed to God, like the spoils of Egypt, as when the eloquence of Cyprian was won through the fishermen , or the gold and silver are offered to Him, or they are left to be wasted and burned up. “All which is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, all under the sun,” remain here. : “If they are thine, take them with thee. When be dieth, he shall carry nothing away, his glory shall not descend after him” Psalms 49:17. True riches are, not wealth, but virtues, which the conscience carries with it, that it may be rich forever.” The seven-fold terrors Nahum 2:10, singly, may have a good sense , that the stony heart shall be melted, and the stiff knees, which before were not bent to God, be bowed in the Name of Jesus. Yet more fully are they the deepening horrors of the wicked in the Day of Judgment, when “men’s hearts shall fail them for fear and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth” Luke 21:26, closing with the everlasting confusion of face, “the shame and everlasting contempt,” to which the wicked shall rise.
As the vessel over the fire is not cleansed, but blackened, so through the judgments of God, whereby the righteous are cleansed, the wicked gather but fresh defilement and hate. Lastly, the prophet asks, “Where is the dwelling of those who had made the world a den of ravin, where the lion,” even the devil who is “a roaring lion,” and all antichrists 1 John 2:18, destroyed at will; where Satan made his dwelling in the hearts of the worldly, and “tore in pieces for his whelps,” i. e., killed souls of men and gave them over to inferior evil spirits to be tormented, and “filled his holes with prey,” the pit of hell with the souls which he deceived? . The question implies that they shall not be. “They which have seen him shall say, Where is he?” Job 20:7. God Himself answers, that He Himself will come against it to judgment, and destroy all might arrayed against God; and Christ shall “smite the Wicked one with the rod of His Mouth” Isaiah 11:4, and the “sharp two-edged sword out of His mouth shall smite all nations” Revelation 1:16; Revelation 19:15, Revelation 19:21, “and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever and ever” Revelation 14:11; and it should no more oppress, nor “any messenger of Satan” go forth to harass the saints of God.
Clarke's Notes on the Bible
Verse Nahum 2:13. Behold, I am against thee — Assyria, and Nineveh its capital. I will deal with you as you have dealt with others.
The voice of thy messengers — Announcing thy splendid victories, and the vast spoils taken - shall no more be heard - thou and thy riches, and ill-got spoils, shall perish together.
