Nahum · 19 verses
Nahum 3
Every verse links to the people and places named in it, and to the passages readers connect it with.
The chapter
What happens here
Atlas's own reading, written from this chapter and nothing else, and published only once a person has approved it. Each scene names the verses it covers; the names inside it link to the people and places they name.
Nineveh’s fortresses are ripe figs: give them a shake, and they drop straight into the eater’s mouth.
A city put on displayvv. 1–7
The chapter opens with a city roaring under whip-cracks, wheels, horses, swords, spears, and an indecorous abundance of corpses. Nineveh is called a harlot and a mistress of sorcery, accused of betraying nations and clans. Then the LORD of Hosts announces a public humiliation so thorough that the spectators will recoil and ask where sympathy might possibly be found.
The example of Thebesvv. 8–13
Nineveh is measured against Thebes, a city apparently well supplied with water, walls, allies, and boundless strength. None of it saved Thebes from exile, captivity, shattered infants, humiliated dignitaries, and nobles in chains. Nineveh’s own fortresses are then reduced to the most unfortunate sort of fig tree: early fruit that falls into the eater’s mouth at the first shake. Its gates stand open, its bars burn, and its troops are compared to women—a line that arrives with all the tact of a trumpet.
The siege and the vanishing locustsvv. 14–19
The city is told to draw water, mend its fortresses, work clay, tread mortar, and repair the kiln—as though industry might persuade the approaching fire to wait politely. It will not. Fire and sword consume the city; merchants multiply like stars, while guards and scribes settle like locusts and vanish with the sun. At the end, the king’s shepherds sleep, the people scatter, the wound has no healing, and the news of Nineveh’s fall is greeted with applause by those who have endured its cruelty.
The text
Read it
Berean Standard Bible, public domain. Names the Hebrew and Greek put in the verse link to the person, place or people they name; the address beside each verse is a link to that verse, which is what a reader copies and shares.
Nah 3:1Woe to the city of blood, full of lies, full of plunder, never without prey.
Nah 3:2The crack of the whip, the rumble of the wheel, galloping horse and bounding chariot!
Nah 3:3Charging horseman, flashing sword, shining spear; heaps of slain, mounds of corpses, dead bodies without end—they stumble over their dead—
Nah 3:4because of the many harlotries of the harlot, the seductive mistress of sorcery, who betrays nations by her prostitution and clans by her witchcraft.
Nah 3:5“Behold, I am against you,” declares the LORD of Hosts. “I will lift your skirts over your face. I will show your nakedness to the nations and your shame to the kingdoms.
Nah 3:6I will pelt you with filth and treat you with contempt; I will make a spectacle of you.
Nah 3:7Then all who see you will recoil from you and say, ‘Nineveh is devastated; who will grieve for her?’ Where can I find comforters for you?”
Nah 3:8Are you better than Thebes, stationed by the Nile with water around her, whose rampart was the sea, whose wall was the water?
Nah 3:9Cush and Egypt were her boundless strength; Put and Libya were her allies.
Nah 3:10Yet she became an exile; she went into captivity. Her infants were dashed to pieces at the head of every street. They cast lots for her dignitaries, and all her nobles were bound in chains.
Nah 3:11You too will become drunk; you will go into hiding and seek refuge from the enemy.
Nah 3:12All your fortresses are fig trees with the first ripe figs; when shaken, they fall into the mouth of the eater!
Nah 3:13Look at your troops—they are like your women! The gates of your land are wide open to your enemies; fire consumes their bars.
Nah 3:14Draw your water for the siege; strengthen your fortresses. Work the clay and tread the mortar; repair the brick kiln!
Nah 3:15There the fire will devour you; the sword will cut you down and consume you like a young locust. Make yourself many like the young locust; make yourself many like the swarming locust!
Nah 3:16You have multiplied your merchants more than the stars of the sky. The young locust strips the land and flies away.
Nah 3:17Your guards are like the swarming locust, and your scribes like clouds of locusts that settle on the walls on a cold day. When the sun rises, they fly away, and no one knows where.
Nah 3:18O king of Assyria, your shepherds slumber; your officers sleep. Your people are scattered on the mountains with no one to gather them.
Nah 3:19There is no healing for your injury; your wound is severe. All who hear the news of you applaud your downfall, for who has not experienced your constant cruelty?
01 — Also here
Who else the chapter reaches
Names written in the English are linked in the text above. These are the ones that are not: an entity the Hebrew or Greek names under a spelling the translation does not use, or one reached only by an assertion about a verse of this chapter.
Reached by an assertion Atlas extracted from a verse of this chapter rather than by a name written in it — a pronoun, a title, or a participant the sentence carries without naming. This layer is model-read and measured at 88.6–90.3% precision, and it is kept separate from the names above for that reason.
02 — Read alongside
Where this is echoed
Readers' own connections, from OpenBible's crowd-voted cross-references — agreement about relevance, and not scholarly confidence. 170 passages were voted onto 19 verses of this chapter; the 16 shown lead on votes, and each is listed at the verse it was voted onto most strongly.
- 5Jeremiah 13:26So I will pull your skirts up over your face, that your shame may be seen.
- 4Isaiah 47:9These two things will overtake you in a moment, in a single day: loss of children, and widowhood. They will come upon you in full measure, in spite of your many sorceries and the potency of your spells.
- 1Habakkuk 2:12Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed and establishes a town by iniquity!
- 1Zephaniah 3:1–3Woe to the city of oppressors, rebellious and defiled!
- 5Ezekiel 23:29They will treat you with hatred, take all for which you have worked, and leave you naked and bare, so that the shame of your prostitution will be exposed. Your indecency and promiscuity
- 5Jeremiah 13:22And if you ask yourself, “Why has this happened to me?” It is because of the magnitude of your iniquity that your skirts have been stripped off and your body has been exposed.
- 7Jeremiah 15:5Who will have pity on you, O Jerusalem? Who will mourn for you? Who will turn aside to ask about your welfare?
- 7Isaiah 51:19These pairs have befallen you: devastation and destruction, famine and sword. Who will grieve for you? Who can comfort you?
- 13Jeremiah 51:30The warriors of Babylon have stopped fighting; they sit in their strongholds. Their strength is exhausted; they have become like women. Babylon’s homes have been set ablaze, the bars of her gates are broken.
- 19Micah 1:9For her wound is incurable; it has reached even Judah; it has approached the gate of my people, as far as Jerusalem itself.
- 1Ezekiel 24:6–9Therefore this is what the Lord GOD says: ‘Woe to the city of bloodshed, to the pot now rusted, whose rust will not come off! Empty it piece by piece; cast no lots for its contents.
- 1Hosea 4:2Cursing and lying, murder and stealing, and adultery are rampant; one act of bloodshed follows another.
- 1Ezekiel 22:2–3“As for you, son of man, will you judge her? Will you pass judgment on the city of bloodshed? Then confront her with all her abominations
- 2Jeremiah 47:3at the sound of the galloping hooves of stallions, the rumbling of chariots, and the clatter of their wheels. The fathers will not turn back for their sons; their hands will hang limp.
- 3Habakkuk 3:11Sun and moon stood still in their places at the flash of Your flying arrows, at the brightness of Your shining spear.
- 3Ezekiel 39:4On the mountains of Israel you will fall—you and all your troops and the nations with you. I will give you as food to every kind of ravenous bird and wild beast.
Onward