Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Locusts Fly Away
Nahum 3:14-19
14 Draw water for the siege. Strengthen your fortresses. Go into the clay, and tread the mortar. Make the brick kiln strong. · WEB
The last taunt tells Nineveh to prepare thoroughly for a siege she will lose, and ends on the one thing an empire cannot survive: universal relief at its death.
The closing orders are sarcastic and entirely practical. Draw water for the siege, tread the mortar, make the brick kiln strong. It is a competent list, and verse 15 answers it in a sentence: there the fire will devour you.
Then the locusts take the poem, and the image turns on Assyria twice. Her merchants had multiplied beyond the stars, but the grasshopper strips a field and flies — wealth with no loyalty to the place it fed on. Her guards settle on the walls like locusts on a cold day, and when the sun rises they are gone — an administration described as a swarm, impressive while cold and absent by noon. Verse 18 finds the shepherds asleep and the people scattered. The book ends on a wound that will not heal and a sound — everyone who hears the news claps — and the last line asks why, then answers itself: who has not felt your endless cruelty?
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