Nahum 2:6

New Living Translation

The river gates have been torn open! The palace is about to collapse!

Parallel Translations

Easy-to-Read Version
But the gates by the rivers are open, and the enemy comes flooding in and destroys the king's palace.

New American Standard Bible
The gates of the rivers are opened And the palace sways back and forth.

New Century Version
The river gates are thrown open, and the palace is destroyed.

Update Bible Version
The gates of the rivers are opened, and the palace is dissolved.

Webster's Bible Translation
The gates of the rivers shall be opened, and the palace shall be dissolved.

Amplified Bible
The gates of the rivers [surrounding Nineveh] are opened And the palace [of sun-dried brick] is dissolved [by the torrents].

English Standard Version
The river gates are opened; the palace melts away;

World English Bible
The gates of the rivers are opened, and the palace is dissolved.

Wycliffe Bible (1395)
Yatis of floodis ben openyd, and the temple is brokun doun to erthe.

English Revised Version
The gates of the rivers are opened, and the palace is dissolved.

Berean Standard Bible
The river gates are thrown open, and the palace erodes away.

Contemporary English Version
The river gates fly open, and panic floods the palace.

American Standard Version
The gates of the rivers are opened, and the palace is dissolved.

Bible in Basic English
The river doorways are forced open, and the king's house is flowing away.

Complete Jewish Bible
[The king of Ninveh] assigns his officers; they stumble as they march; they hurry to its wall and set up shields to protect the battering ram.

Darby Translation
The gates of the rivers are opened, and the palace melteth away.

JPS Old Testament (1917)
He bethinketh himself of his worthies; they stumble in their march; they make haste to the wall thereof, and the mantelet is prepared.

King James Version (1611)
The gates of the riuers shall bee opened, and the palace shall bee dissolued.

New Life Bible
The river gates are opened, and the king's house falls down.

New Revised Standard
The river gates are opened, the palace trembles.

Geneva Bible (1587)
The gates of the riuers shalbe opened, and the palace shall melt.

George Lamsa Translation
The city gates are opened and the palace trembles.

J.B. Rotherham Emphasized Bible
The gates of the rivers, have been opened, - and, the palace, doth quake.

Douay-Rheims Bible
The gates of the rivers are opened, and the temple is thrown down to the ground.

Revised Standard Version
The river gates are opened, the palace is in dismay;

Bishop's Bible (1568)
The riuer gates are opened, and the palace dissolued.

Brenton's Septuagint (LXX)
The gates of the cities have been opened, and the palaces have fallen into ruin,

Good News Translation
The gates by the river burst open; the palace is filled with terror.

Christian Standard Bible®
The river gates are opened,and the palace erodes away.

Hebrew Names Version
The gates of the rivers are opened, and the palace is dissolved.

King James Version
The gates of the rivers shall be opened, and the palace shall be dissolved.

Lexham English Bible
The gates of the river are opened; the palace trembles.

Literal Translation
The gates of the rivers shall be opened, and the palace shall be melted.

Young's Literal Translation
Gates of the rivers have been opened, And the palace is dissolved.

Miles Coverdale Bible (1535)
The water portes shal be opened, and the kinges palace shall fall.

New English Translation
The sluice gates are opened; the royal palace is deluged and dissolves.

New King James Version
The gates of the rivers are opened, And the palace is dissolved.

New American Standard Bible (1995)
The gates of the rivers are opened And the palace is dissolved.

Legacy Standard Bible
The gates of the rivers are opened,And the palace is melted away.

Contextual Overview

¹ Your enemy is coming to crush you, Nineveh. Man the ramparts! Watch the roads! Prepare your defenses! Call out your forces! ² Even though the destroyer has destroyed Judah, the Lord will restore its honor. Israel's vine has been stripped of branches, but he will restore its splendor. ³ Shields flash red in the sunlight! See the scarlet uniforms of the valiant troops! Watch as their glittering chariots move into position, with a forest of spears waving above them. ⁴ The chariots race recklessly along the streets and rush wildly through the squares. They flash like firelight and move as swiftly as lightning. ⁵ The king shouts to his officers; they stumble in their haste, rushing to the walls to set up their defenses. ⁶ The river gates have been torn open! The palace is about to collapse! ⁷ Nineveh's exile has been decreed, and all the servant girls mourn its capture. They moan like doves and beat their breasts in sorrow. ⁸ Nineveh is like a leaking water reservoir! The people are slipping away. "Stop, stop!" someone shouts, but no one even looks back. ⁹ Loot the silver! Plunder the gold! There's no end to Nineveh's treasures— its vast, uncounted wealth. ¹⁰ Soon the city is plundered, empty, and ruined. Hearts melt and knees shake. The people stand aghast, their faces pale and trembling.

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

gates: Isaiah 45:1, Isaiah 45:2

dissolved: or, molten, 2 Peter 3:10, 2 Peter 3:11

Reciprocal: Nahum 3:13 - the gates Nahum 3:18 - Thy shepherds

Gill's Notes on the Bible

The gates of the rivers shall be opened,.... Of Diava and Adiava, or Lycus and Caprus, between which, according to some writers i, Nineveh was situated; or the gates of the city, which lay nearest to the river Tigris, are meant; or that river itself, the plural for the singular, which overflowing, broke down the walls of the city for two and a half miles, and opened a way for the Medes and Chaldeans to enter in; of which see Nahum 1:8:

and the palace shall be dissolved; by the inundation, or destroyed by the enemy; meaning the palace of the king, which might be situated near the river; or the temple of Nisroch the Assyrian deity, or Jupiter Belus; for the same word k signifies a temple as well as palace.

i Vid. Fuller. Miscel. Sacr. l. 3. c. 6. k ההיכל "templum", V. L. Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Drusius, Cocceius.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The gates of the rivers shall be opened, and the palace shall be disolved - All gives way in an instant at the will of God; the strife is hushed; no more is said of war and death; there is no more resistance or bloodshed; no sound except the wailing of the captives, the flight of those who can escape, while the conquerors empty it of the spoil, and then she is left a waste. The swelling of the river and the opening made by it may have given rise to the traditional account of Ctesias, although obviously exaggerated as to the destruction of the wall. The exaggerated character of that tradition is not inconsistent with, it rather implies, a basis of truth. It is inconceivable that it should have been thought, that walls, of the thickness which Ctesias had described, were overthrown by the swelling of any river, unless some such event as Ctesias relates, that the siege was ended by an entrance afforded to the enemy through some bursting in of the river, had been true.

Nahum speaks nothing of the wall, but simply of the opening of “the gates of the river,” obviously the gates, by which the inhabitants could have access to the rivers , which otherwise would be useless to them except as a wall. These “rivers” correspond to the “rivers,” the artificial divisions of the Nile, by which No or Thebes was defended, or “the rivers of Babylon” Psalms 137:1 which yet was washed by the one stream, the Euphrates. But Nineveh was surrounded and guarded by actual rivers, the Tigris and the Khausser, and, (assuming those larger dimensions of Nineveh, which are supported by evidences so various ) the greater Zab, which was “called the frantic Zab on account of the violence of its current.” “The Zab contained (says Ainsworth ), when we saw it, a larger body of water than the Tigris, whose tributaries are not supplied by so many snow-mountains as those of the Zab.” Of these, if the Tigris be now on a level lower than the rains of Nineveh, it may not have been so formerly.

The Khausser, in its natural direction, ran through Nineveh where, now as of old, it turns a mill, and must, of necessity, have been fenced by gates; else any invader might enter at will: as, in modern times, Mosul has its “gate of the bridge.” A break in these would obviously let in an enemy, and might the more paralyze the inhabitants, if they had any tradition, that the river alone could or would be their enemy, as Nahum himself prophesied. Subsequently inaccuracy or exaggeration might easily represent this to be an overthrow of the walls themselves. It was all one, in which way the breach was made.

The palace shall be dissolved - The prophet unites the beginning and the end. The river-gates were opened; what had been the fence against the enemy became an entrance for them: with the river, there poured in also the tide of the people of the enemy. The palace, then, the imperial abode, the center of the empire, embellished with the history of its triumphs, sank, was disolved , and ceased to be. It is not a physical loosening of the sun-dried bricks by the stream which would usually flow harmless by; but the dissolution of the empire itself. : “The temple, that is, his kingdom was destroyed.” The palaces both of Khorsabad and Kouyunjik lay near the Khausser and both bear the marks of fire .

Clarke's Notes on the Bible

Verse 6. The gates of the rivers shall be opened — I have already referred to this, Nahum 1:8; but it will be necessary to be more particular. The account given by Diodorus Siculus, lib. ii., is very surprising. He begins thus: Ην δ' αυτῳ λογιον παραδεδομενον εκ προγονων, κ.τ.λ. - "There was a prophecy received from their forefathers, that Nineveh should not be taken till the river first became an enemy to the city. It happened in the third year of the siege, that the Euphrates [query, Tigris] being swollen with continued rains, overflowed part of the city, and threw down twenty stadia of the wall. The king then imagining that the oracle was accomplished, and that the river was now manifestly become an enemy to the city, casting aside all hope of safety, and lest he should fall into the hands of the enemy, built a large funeral pyre in the palace, (εντοιςβασιλειοις,) and having collected all his gold and silver and royal vestments, together with his concubines and eunuchs, placed himself with them in a little apartment built in the pyre; burnt them, himself, and the palace together. When the death of the king (Sardanapalus) was announced by certain deserters, the enemy entered in by the breach which the waters had made, and took the city."

Thus the prophecy of Nahum was literally fulfilled: "the gates of the river were opened, and the palace dissolved," i.e., burnt.