What Does Nahum 3:15 Mean in the King James?
There shall the fire devour thee; the sword shall cut thee off, it shall eat thee up like the cankerworm: make thyself many as the cankerworm, make thyself many as the locusts.
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 swarm can multiply, but multiplication only gives destruction more to consume.
THE MEANING
Here the threat reaches everything: fire consumes, the sword cuts off, and even what multiplies like locusts is swallowed. The verse speaks now of a scale that offers no shelter; becoming many does not place a thing beyond destruction.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that sheer numbers, growth, or force make a thing untouchable.
THE ROOT
תֹּאכְלֵךְ
toʾkhlēkh
GROWS FROM
א־כ־ל
ʾ-k-l
Eat, consume.
The same root names the act of eating, the eater, and food. English makes “devour” sound only destructive, while the Hebrew connects this threat to the ordinary language of what eats and what is eaten.
ALSO GROWS
ʾokhel: eater
אֹכֵל
In Nahum 3:12, ripe figs fall into the mouth of the eater; the same root makes that image echo here, where the city itself is consumed.
ʾokhel: food
אֹכֶל
The root also names what is eaten, revealing how the threatened city becomes the object of consumption.
הִתְכַּבֵּד
hithkabbed
GROWS FROM
כ־ב־ד
k-b-d
Be heavy or weighty; in this form and context, become numerous or abundant.
The verb translated “make thyself many” carries the root’s sense of weight: the swarm swells into a mass. Yet that apparent abundance does not protect it from the fire and sword named in the same verse.
ALSO GROWS
kavod: weight, honor, glory
כָּבוֹד
The familiar word for glory retains the concrete sense of weight, giving the swarm’s abundance the feel of gathered mass.
hikhbid: make heavy, intensify
הִכְבִּיד
This causative form of the same root describes adding weight; here, becoming more numerous still leaves the swarm exposed to being consumed.
THE PATTERN
Multiplication and apparent strength cannot outrun the force that consumes what has become vulnerable.
Therefore as the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff, so their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust: because they have cast away the law of the LORD of hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.But that which beareth thorns and briers is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing; whose end is to be burned.Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her.THE THREAD
All thy strong holds shall be like fig trees with the firstripe figs: if they be shaken, they shall even fall into the mouth of the eater.“Eater” in this verse shares the same Hebrew root as “devour” in Nahum 3:15. The strongholds that seem like defenses become ripe fruit in an eater’s mouth, opening the image of the city itself as what gets consumed.
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