Draw your water for the siege; strengthen your fortresses. Work the clay and tread the mortar; repair the brick kiln!
Parallel translations
- WEB Draw water for the siege. Strengthen your fortresses. Go into the clay, and tread the mortar. Make the brick kiln strong.
- KJV Draw thee waters for the siege, fortify thy strong holds: go into clay, and tread the morter, make strong the brickkiln.
- NKJV Draw your water for the siege! Fortify your strongholds! Go into the clay and tread the mortar! Make strong the brick kiln!
- NASB Draw for yourself water for a siege! Strengthen your fortifications! Go into the clay and tread the mortar! Take hold of the brick mold!
- NLT 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.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
Nineveh is sarcastically urged to draw water, strengthen defenses, and make bricks for the siege. Such frantic preparations will prove useless.
Overview
The commands to store water and reinforce the walls mock the city's last desperate efforts to survive. No amount of siege preparation can avert the destruction God has decreed. The irony underscores the futility of resisting the Lord's judgment by human means.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 9
- 2 Chr 32:3–4he consulted with his leaders and commanders about stopping up the waters of the springs outside the city, and they helped him carry it out.
- Nah 2:1One who scatters advances against you, O Nineveh. Guard the fortress! Watch the road! Brace yourselves! Summon all your strength!
- Jer 46:3–4“Deploy your shields, small and large; advance for battle!
- Isa 8:9Huddle together, O peoples, and be shattered; pay attention, all you distant lands; prepare for battle, and be shattered; prepare for battle, and be shattered!
- Isa 22:9–11You saw that there were many breaches in the walls of the City of David. You collected water from the lower pool.
- Jer 46:9Advance, O horses! Race furiously, O chariots! Let the warriors come forth—Cush and Put carrying their shields, men of Lydia drawing the bow.
- Joel 3:9–11Proclaim this among the nations: “Prepare for war; rouse the mighty men; let all the men of war advance and attack!
- 2 Chr 32:11Is not Hezekiah misleading you to give you over to death by famine and thirst when he says, ‘The LORD our God will deliver us from the hand of the king of Assyria?’
- Isa 37:25I have dug wells and drunk foreign waters. With the soles of my feet I have dried up all the streams of Egypt.”
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Christ at the center
The certain judgment on Nineveh and the comfort that 'the LORD is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble' point to Christ, who is both the refuge of his people and the judge of their enemies.
How Nahum 3:14 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
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