What Does Nahum 3:10 Mean?
Yet she was uncovered and went into captivity; her infants also were dashed at the head of every street, and they cast lots for her weighty ones, and all her great ones were bound in chains.
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
Yet was she carried away, she went into captivity: her young children also were dashed in pieces at the top of all the streets: and they cast lots for her honourable men, and all her great men were bound in chains.THE KEY
The Hebrew word for exile shares its root with uncovering: conquest strips a people of shelter and leaves them exposed.
THE MEANING
This verse names conquest without disguise: a people is torn from home, children are killed in public, honored men are put at the mercy of lots, and leaders are chained. The violence reaches every age and rank, taking safety, dignity, and freedom together. Exile leaves those taken exposed and without the shelter of home.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that conquest is only a change of rulers collapses here: its cost is inflicted on children and bodies, and no rank is spared.
THE ROOT
לַגֹּלָה
la-golah
GROWS FROM
גלה
To uncover or expose; in causative forms, to deport or send into exile.
“uncovered” in this verse is la-golah. The verse’s word for exile belongs to a root that also means uncovering. The shared consonants let displacement carry a second edge: a people forced from home is made exposed, stripped of the shelter its home gave.
ALSO GROWS
galah: To uncover, reveal.
גָּלָה
This branch shares the root גלה with the word for exile, allowing exposure and forced removal to resonate in the verse.
higlah: To deport, send into exile.
הִגְלָה
This causative form makes exile an act imposed on people, matching the verse’s forced removal.
THE PATTERN
Conquest and rule turn children into targets when power treats a people as spoil.
Their little ones also will be dashed before their eyes; their houses will be plundered, and their wives lain with.Samaria will be laid waste, for she has rebelled against her God; they will fall by the sword, their infants will be dashed to pieces, and their women with child will be split open.Then Herod, when he perceived that he had been mocked by the wise men, burned with rage, and sent forth and killed all the children who were in Bethlehem and in all its borders, from two years old and under, according to the time he had carefully learned from the wise men.THE THREAD
And he drank of the wine, and was drunk, and he was uncovered in the midst of his tent.Nahum’s word for exile and Genesis’s word “uncovered” share the root גלה (galah), whose branches include exposure and exile. Genesis uses the root for bodily exposure; Nahum shows a people exposed through forced displacement and loss of shelter.
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