What Does Nahum 3:11 Mean?
You too will be drunk, you will be hidden, you will seek strength from the face of the enemy.
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
Thou also shalt be drunken: thou shalt be hid, thou also shalt seek strength because of the enemy.THE KEY
The word translated “strength” means a stronghold, so this verse shows a desperate search for shelter after impairment and hiding.
THE MEANING
When an enemy closes in, you can become dulled, hidden, and driven to seek a stronghold; the verse holds these responses in one sequence. The pressure shows that the strength being sought is shelter from danger.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that hiding itself makes you safe: the verse shows concealment followed by an urgent search for strength because the enemy remains.
THE ROOT
מָעוֹז
maʿoz
GROWS FROM
עזז
ʿazaz
To be strong; strength that becomes a fortified refuge.
The Hebrew noun translated “strength” names a refuge or fortress, not only an inner quality. The same noun is rendered “strong hold” in Nahum 1:7, joining this desperate search with a refuge that is present in trouble.
ALSO GROWS
ʿoz: Strength or might.
עֹז
The same root gives the idea of strength that underlies the stronghold sought here.
maʿoz: A fortified place or shelter.
מָעוֹז
This is the word in the verse: strength takes the concrete shape of somewhere to seek shelter.
נַעֲלָמָה
neʿelāmāh
GROWS FROM
עלם
ʿālam
To conceal or be out of sight.
“you will be hidden” in this verse is neʿelāmāh. The verse moves from intoxication to concealment, then to a search for refuge. The root makes hiding a state within that sequence, not an escape from the enemy.
ALSO GROWS
heʿlim: To hide or make something unseen.
הֶעְלִים
The active form shows concealment as something that can be done, while the verse describes the concealed state that follows.
neʿlam: Concealed or out of sight.
נֶעְלָם
This shares the root of the verse’s word for “hid,” reinforcing the passage’s movement into concealment.
תִּשְׁכְּרִי
tishkeri
GROWS FROM
שכר
shakar
To become drunk or intoxicated.
“drunk” in this verse is tishkeri. The root names both intoxication and the drink that causes it. Here the loss of clear awareness opens a sequence that ends in hiding and seeking refuge.
ALSO GROWS
shekhar: Strong drink.
שֵׁכָר
The root includes the drink as well as the state of intoxication named at the start of the verse.
shikkor: Someone overcome by drink.
שִׁכּוֹר
This branch shows the condition produced by the same root that describes the verse’s opening.
THE PATTERN
When danger presses, the search for strength reveals what is being treated as refuge.
To the chief Musician for the sons of Korah, A Song upon Alamoth. God is our refuge and strength, a help found very near in the narrow place.The nature of the LORD is a strong tower; the aligned one runs into it and is set on high.So that through two unshifting deeds, in which it is without power for God to lie, we might have a strong comfort, we who have fled for refuge to grip the hope lying before us.THE THREAD
The LORD is good, a stronghold in the day of the narrow place, and he perceives those who take shelter in him.The word rendered “strength” here and “strong hold” there is the same Hebrew noun, מָעוֹז (maʿoz, refuge or stronghold). Nahum places a desperate search for shelter beside a stronghold present in trouble.
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