What Does Nahum 1:13 Mean?
And now I will break his yoke from you, and tear away your cords.
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
For now will I break his yoke from off thee, and will burst thy bonds in sunder.THE KEY
Freedom is a clean severing: the weight is broken off, and the bonds lose their hold.
THE MEANING
The pressure over your life is not permanent: the speaker says the yoke is broken off and the bonds are severed. Release reaches both what weighs on you and what keeps you fastened to it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The false belief is that because a burden has held you, it owns your future movement. This verse declares that the imposed weight and the ties that bind you can both be ended.
THE ROOT
אֲנַתֵּק
ʾanatteq
GROWS FROM
נתק
n-t-q
To tear off, detach, or sever.
“tear away” in this verse is ʾanatteq. The Hebrew verb pictures the bonds being torn loose from the one they hold. Isaiah 58:6 uses this same root for breaking every yoke, so release is not merely relief from pressure: what binds is disconnected.
ALSO GROWS
tenattequ: You will sever or break off; Isaiah 58:6 uses this form for breaking every yoke.
תְּנַתֵּקוּ
The same root links Nahum’s severed bonds with Isaiah’s broken yoke.
wattinnāteq: And it snapped apart; Judges 16:9 uses this root of a bowstring giving way.
וַתִּנָּתֵק
The bond does not merely loosen its grip; it can snap and cease to hold.
אֶשְׁבֹּר
ʾeshbōr
GROWS FROM
שבר
sh-b-r
To break or shatter.
“break” in this verse is ʾeshbōr. The yoke is shattered while the bonds are severed: the verse names two parts of release. The structure bearing down is broken, and the ties that connect you to it are torn away.
ALSO GROWS
shever: A break, fracture, or ruin.
שֶׁבֶר
This noun carries the breaking into the result: the yoke’s power to hold is undone.
shavur: Broken or shattered.
שָׁבוּר
This form makes the result plain: what once imposed weight is left broken.
THE PATTERN
Release means removing the imposed weight and severing the bonds that keep it in place.
Is this not the fast I have chosen, to open the bonds of wickedness, to untie the cords of the yoke, to send the crushed away free, and to tear away every yoke?He brings them out of darkness and the valley of deepest darkness, and tears their bonds apart.The breath of the LORD is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the emptied. He has sent me to heal the shattered in heart, to herald release to the captives, and the return of sight for the blind, to send the crushed away into release.THE THREAD
Is this not the fast I have chosen, to open the bonds of wickedness, to untie the cords of the yoke, to send the crushed away free, and to tear away every yoke?Isaiah’s phrase for breaking every yoke uses the same Hebrew root, נתק (n-t-q), as Nahum’s bursting of bonds in sunder. The shared root reveals the same movement: liberation severs what binds.
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