What Does Nahum 1:5 Mean in the King James?
The mountains quake at him, and the hills melt, and the earth is burned at his presence, yea, the world, and all that dwell therein.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The world does not merely witness his presence; its foundations and inhabitants are caught in it.
THE MEANING
The LORD’s presence reaches what seems immovable: mountains quake, hills melt, and the earth burns before him. The whole inhabited world is within that upheaval; no life stands outside the verse’s scope.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that the world’s structures, and the people settled inside them, can remain untouched by the presence of the LORD.
THE ROOT
רָעֲשׁוּ
ra'ashu
GROWS FROM
רעש
ra'ash
To quake, shake, or tremble.
“quake” in this verse is ra'ashu. This same root names both a trembling movement and an earthquake. The verse’s mountains are not just scenery: their motion belongs to a force that reaches the ground itself.
ALSO GROWS
ra'ash: A quake or shaking.
רַעַשׁ
The root names the event as well as the movement, making the mountains’ response a real disturbance in creation’s order.
vatir'ash: The earth trembled; this form appears in Psalm 18:7.
וַתִּרְעַשׁ
The same seed describes the earth trembling, carrying the image from Nahum’s mountains to the ground beneath them.
הִתְמֹגָגוּ
hitmogagu
GROWS FROM
מוג
mug
To melt, dissolve, or become faint.
“melt” in this verse is hitmogagu. This root can describe inhabitants melting away as well as things dissolving. The verse’s scope moves from hills to “the world, and all that dwell therein”: the upheaval reaches both the land and those who live on it.
ALSO GROWS
namogu: They melted or lost their strength; this form appears in Joshua 2:9 of the land’s inhabitants.
נָמֹגוּ
The same root can describe people losing their firmness, connecting the melting hills to the people included in Nahum’s vision.
nemogim: Melting or dissolving; this form appears in Psalm 75:3 of the earth and its inhabitants.
נְמֹגִים
That shared pairing of land and inhabitants makes clear how far the image of dissolution reaches.
THE PATTERN
When the LORD’s presence arrives, creation’s apparently stable structures and those living within them are shaken.
And mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the LORD descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly.The hills melted like wax at the presence of the LORD, at the presence of the Lord of the whole earth.Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven.THE THREAD
Then the earth shook and trembled; the foundations also of the hills moved and were shaken, because he was wroth.Nahum’s רָעֲשׁוּ (ra’ashu, “they quaked”) and Psalm’s וַתִּרְעַשׁ (vatir’ash, “it trembled”) share the root רעש (ra’ash, “to quake or shake”). Psalm makes the connection visible in the earth and the foundations beneath the hills: the quake reaches what holds the landscape up.
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