What Does Nahum 1:11 Mean?
One has come out of you, planning evil against the LORD, a worthless counselor.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
There is one come out of thee, that imagineth evil against the LORD, a wicked counsellor.THE KEY
The danger is not a thought that passes through the mind, but a design shaped into counsel against the LORD.
THE MEANING
A harmful design rises from within you and takes counsel against the LORD. The verse describes deliberate intent: a thought being shaped into a plan of opposition.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that hostile intent is harmless while it remains inward dissolves here: the verse names a deliberately shaped thought as opposition.
THE ROOT
חֹשֵׁב
ḥōšēv
GROWS FROM
חשב
ḥ-š-b
Think, devise, reckon, or design.
“planning” in this verse is ḥōšēv. The word carries more than a passing image: it describes thought being formed into a plan. English “imagineth” can sound fleeting, while this root makes the deliberate shaping visible.
ALSO GROWS
maḥashavah: Thought, plan, or design.
מַחֲשָׁבָה
The same root names the formed plan behind the thought.
ḥeshbon: Account or reckoning.
חֶשְׁבּוֹן
Its connection with reckoning gives the verse’s imagining the sense of something considered and worked out.
יוֹעֵץ
yōʿēṣ
GROWS FROM
יעץ
y-ʿ-ṣ
Advise, counsel, or deliberate.
The verse does not describe harm as an isolated impulse; it gives it a counselor’s voice and direction. The root joins the person who advises with the counsel being advanced.
ALSO GROWS
ʿēṣāh: Counsel or advice.
עֵצָה
This is the counsel the counselor gives, making the verse’s opposition an intentional direction.
yāʿaṣ: To advise or deliberate.
יָעַץ
The verb shows the action behind the title: the counselor is actively giving direction.
רָעָה
rāʿāh
GROWS FROM
רעע
r-ʿ-ʿ
Be bad or bring harm.
The root can carry the sense of harm and calamity as well as evil. Here the planned opposition has a harmful aim, not merely a disagreeable opinion.
ALSO GROWS
raʿ: Bad or evil.
רַע
This form names the quality of what is being planned.
rāʿāh: Evil, harm, or calamity.
רָעָה
This form can name the harm itself, bringing the plan’s intended effect into view.
THE PATTERN
Counsel formed against the LORD cannot establish a power above him.
The kings of the earth take their stand, and the rulers sit down together against the LORD and against his anointed one, saying,There is no wisdom, no understanding, no counsel facing the LORD.But if it is of God, you cannot undo them, lest perhaps you be found even fighting against God.THE THREAD
There is no wisdom, no understanding, no counsel facing the LORD.Nahum calls the figure a counselor against the LORD; Proverbs uses the same יעץ root-family in “counsel” and says no such counsel can stand. The echo moves from identifying the plotter to revealing the limit of the plot.
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