What Does Nahum 2:10 Mean?
She is emptied, poured out, and laid waste. The heart melts, the knees knock together, and writhing is in every loin, and the faces of them all gather darkness.
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
She is empty, and void, and waste: and the heart melteth, and the knees smite together, and much pain is in all loins, and the faces of them all gather blackness.THE KEY
Nahum renders collapse as an emptying that becomes bodily: the city is vacant, and its people lose firmness from heart to knees.
THE MEANING
Here, devastation is total: the city is emptied, and fear shows in the heart, the knees, the loins, and every face. The verse leaves no intact surface, tracing ruin from public space into the body’s involuntary response.
THE ROOT
בּוּקָה
buqah
GROWS FROM
בָּקַק
To empty out, hollow, or make waste.
“She is emptied” in this verse is buqah. English gives three near-synonyms, but the Hebrew begins with forms tied to בָּקַק (baqaq, empty out): it sounds the city being emptied, hollowed, and made waste. Then the heart loses firmness; devastation is both what remains of the place and what the emptied place does to living bodies.
ALSO GROWS
baqaq: To empty out or make waste.
בָּקַק
Isaiah 24:1 uses this verb for making the earth empty and waste, showing the condition in Nahum as an emptying that has been done.
mevuqah: Emptiness or void.
מְבוּקָה
Nahum places this form beside בּוּקָה (buqah), making the emptiness sound cumulative rather than like a single loss.
נָמֵס
nāmēs
GROWS FROM
מָסַס
To melt, dissolve, or lose firmness.
“heart melts” in this verse is nāmēs. The same root can describe a heart losing firmness and wax dissolving before heat. Here the inner center yields as part of the city’s ruin, so ‘melt’ holds physical dissolution and fear in one image.
ALSO GROWS
yimmās: Melted or dissolved.
יִמַּס
In Joshua 2:11 this form describes hearts melting, linking Nahum’s bodily terror to the same loss of inner firmness.
yimmassu: They melt or dissolve.
יִמַּסּוּ
Psalm 68:2 uses this form of wax melting before fire, giving the root a concrete image of something losing its shape.
THE PATTERN
Desolation becomes visible as the body’s inner firmness gives way.
Behold, the LORD empties the earth and strips it bare, and crooks its face, and scatters those who settle in it.And when we heard these things, our hearts melted, and no breath stood up any longer in any man from your face. For the LORD your God, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth below.People breathing out their living souls from fear in their hearts, and from watching for what is coming upon the inhabited earth, for the strength of the heavens will be shaken.THE THREAD
And when we heard these things, our hearts melted, and no breath stood up any longer in any man from your face. For the LORD your God, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth below.The Hebrew verb translated “melt” shares the root מָסַס (masas) with נָמֵס (nāmēs) in Nahum. Joshua names the heart’s collapse; Nahum widens that same bodily yielding to the knees, loins, and faces.
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