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Nahum 1:9

New American Standard Bible (NASB ©1995) [2]
— Whatever you devise against the LORD, He will make a complete end of it. Distress will not rise up twice.
King James Version (KJV 1769) [2]
— What do ye imagine against the LORD? he will make an utter end: affliction shall not rise up the second time.
English Revised Version (ERV 1885)
— What do ye imagine against the LORD? he will make a full end: affliction shall not rise up the second time.
American Standard Version (ASV 1901) [2]
— What do ye devise against Jehovah? he will make a full end; affliction shall not rise up the second time.
Webster's Revision of the KJB (WEB 1833)
— What do ye imagine against the LORD? he will make an utter end: affliction shall not rise up the second time.
Darby's Translation (DBY 1890)
— What do ye imagine against Jehovah? He will make a full end: trouble shall not rise up the second time.
Rotherham's Emphasized Bible (EBR 1902)
— What can ye devise against Yahweh? A full end, is he making,—Distress, shall not rise up twice:
Young's Literal Translation (YLT 1898)
— What do we devise against Jehovah? An end He is making, arise not twice doth distress.
Douay-Rheims Challoner Revision (DR 1750)
— What do ye devise against the Lord? he will make an utter end: there shall not rise a double affliction.
Geneva Bible (GNV 1560)
— What doe ye imagine against the Lord? He wil make an vtter destruction: affliction shal not rise vp the seconde time.
Original King James Bible (AV 1611) [2]
— What doe ye imagine against the LORD? he will make an vtter ende: affliction shall not rise vp the second time.
Lamsa Bible (1957)
— What do you imagine against the LORD? He will make an utter end; affliction shall not rise up the second time.
Brenton Greek Septuagint (LXX, Restored Names)
— What do ye devise against the Lord? he will make a complete end: he will not take vengeance by affliction twice at the same time.
Full Hebrew Names / Holy Name KJV (2008) [2] [3]
— What do ye imagine against Yahweh? he will make an utter end: affliction shall not rise up the second time.

Strong's Numbers & Hebrew NamesHebrew Old TestamentColor-Code/Key Word Studies
What x4100
(4100) Complement
מָּה
mah
{maw}
A primitive particle; properly interrogitive what? (including how?, why? and when?); but also exclamations like what! (including how!), or indefinitely what (including whatever, and even relatively that which); often used with prefixes in various adverbial or conjugational senses.
do ye imagine 2803
{2803} Prime
חָשַׁב
chashab
{khaw-shab'}
A primitive root; properly to plait or interpenetrate, that is, (literally) to weave or (generally) to fabricate; figuratively to plot or contrive (usually in a malicious sense); hence (from the mental effort) to think, regard, value, compute.
z8762
<8762> Grammar
Stem - Piel (See H8840)
Mood - Imperfect (See H8811)
Count - 2447
against x413
(0413) Complement
אֵל
'el
{ale}
(Used only in the shortened constructive form (the second form)); a primitive particle, properly denoting motion towards, but occasionally used of a quiescent position, that is, near, with or among; often in general, to.
Yähwè יָהוֶה? 3068
{3068} Prime
יְהֹוָה
Y@hovah
{yeh-ho-vaw'}
From H1961; (the) self Existent or eternal; Jehovah, Jewish national name of God.
he x1931
(1931) Complement
הוּא
huw'
{hoo}
The second form is the feminine beyond the Pentateuch; a primitive word, the third person pronoun singular, he (she or it); only expressed when emphatic or without a verb; also (intensively) self, or (especially with the article) the same; sometimes (as demonstrative) this or that; occasionally (instead of copula) as or are.
will make 6213
{6213} Prime
עָשָׂה
`asah
{aw-saw'}
A primitive root; to do or make, in the broadest sense and widest application.
z8802
<8802> Grammar
Stem - Qal (See H8851)
Mood - Participle Active (See H8814)
Count - 5386
an utter end: 3617
{3617} Prime
כָּלָה
kalah
{kaw-law'}
From H3615; a completion; adverbially completely; also destruction.
affliction 6869
{6869} Prime
צָרָה
tsarah
{tsaw-raw'}
Feminine of H6862; tightness (that is, figuratively trouble); transitively a female rival.
shall not x3808
(3808) Complement
לֹא
lo'
{lo}
lo; a primitive particle; not (the simple or abstract negation); by implication no; often used with other particles.
rise up 6965
{6965} Prime
קוּם
quwm
{koom}
A primitive root; to rise (in various applications, literally, figuratively, intensively and causatively).
z8799
<8799> Grammar
Stem - Qal (See H8851)
Mood - Imperfect (See H8811)
Count - 19885
the second time. 6471
{6471} Prime
פַּעַם
pa`am
{pah'-am}
From H6470; a stroke, literally or figuratively (in various applications).
Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Commentary

Nahum 1:9

_ _ What do ye imagine against the Lord? — abrupt address to the Assyrians. How mad is your attempt, O Assyrians, to resist so powerful a God! What can ye do against such an adversary, successful though ye have been against all other adversaries? Ye imagine ye have to do merely with mortals and with a weak people, and that so you will gain an easy victory; but you have to encounter God, the protector of His people. Parallel to Isaiah 37:23-29; compare Psalms 1:1.

_ _ he will make an utter end — The utter overthrow of Sennacherib’s host, soon about to take place, is an earnest of the “utter end” of Nineveh itself.

_ _ affliction shall not rise up the second time — Judah’s “affliction” caused by the invasion shall never rise again. So Nahum 1:12. But Calvin takes the “affliction” to be that of Assyria: “There will be no need of His inflicting on you a second blow: He will make an utter end of you once for all” (1 Samuel 3:12; 1 Samuel 26:8; 2 Samuel 20:10). If so, this verse, in contrast to Nahum 1:12, will express, Affliction shall visit the Assyrian no more, in a sense very different from that in which God will afflict Judah no more. In the Assyrian’s case, because the blow will be fatally final; the latter, because God will make lasting blessedness in Judah’s case succeed temporary chastisement. But it seems simpler to refer “affliction” here, as in Nahum 1:12, to Judah; indeed destruction, rather than affliction, applies to the Assyrian.

Matthew Henry's Commentary

Nahum 1:9-15

_ _ These verses seem to point at the destruction of the army of the Assyrians under Sennacherib, which may well be reckoned a part of the burden of Nineveh, the head city of the Assyrian empire, and a pledge of the destruction of Nineveh itself about 100 years after; and this was an event which Isaiah, with whom probably this prophet was contemporary, spoke much of. Now observe here,

_ _ I. The great provocation which the Assyrians gave to God, the just and jealous God, for which, though slow to anger, he would take vengeance (Nahum 1:11): There is one come out of thee, that imagines evil against the Lord — Sennacherib, and his spokesman Rabshakeh. They framed an evil letter and an evil speech, not only against Hezekiah and his people, but against God himself, reflecting upon him as level with the gods of the heathen, and unable to protect his worshippers, dissuading his people from putting confidence in him, and urging them rather to put themselves under the protection of the great king, the king of Assyria. They contrived to alter the property of Jerusalem, that it should be no longer the city of the Lord, the holy city. This one, this mighty one, so he thinks himself, that comes out of Nineveh, imagining evil against the Lord, brings upon Nineveh this burden. Never was the glorious Majesty of heaven and earth more daringly, more blasphemously affronted than by Sennacherib at that time. He was a wicked counsellor who counselled them to despair of God's protection, and surrender themselves to the king of Assyria, and endeavour to put them out of conceit with Hezekiah's reformation (Isaiah 36:7); with this wicked counsellor he here expostulates (Nahum 1:9): “What do you imagine against the Lord? What a foolish wicked thing it is for you to plot against God, as if you could outwit divine wisdom and overpower omnipotence itself!” Note, There is a great deal imagined against the Lord by the gates of hell, and against the interests of his kingdom in the world; but it will prove a vain thing, Psalms 2:1, Psalms 2:2. He that sits in heaven laughs at the imaginations of the pretenders to politics against him, and will turn their counsels headlong.

_ _ II. The great destruction which God would bring upon them for it, not immediately upon the whole monarchy (the ruin of that was deferred till the measure of their iniquity was full), but,

_ _ 1. Upon the army; God will make an utter end of that; it shall be totally cut off and ruined at one blow; one fatal stroke of the destroying angel shall lay them dead upon the spot; affliction shall not rise up the second time, for it shall not need. With some sinners God makes a quick despatch, does their business at once. Divine vengeance goes not by one certain rule, nor in one constant track, but one way or other, by acute diseases or chronical ones, by slow deaths or lingering ones, he will make an utter end of all his enemies, who persist in their imaginations against him. We have reason to think that the Assyrian army were mostly of the same spirit, and spoke the same language, with their general, and now God would take them to task, though they did but say as they were taught; and it shall appear that they have laid themselves open to divine wrath by their own act and deed, Nahum 1:10. (1.) They are as thorns that entangle one another, and are folded together. They make one another worse, and more inveterate against God and his Israel, harden one another's hearts, and strengthen one another's hands, in their impiety; and therefore God will do with them as the husbandman does with a bush of thorns when he cannot part them: he puts them all into the fire together. (2.) They are as drunken men, intoxicated with pride and rage; and such as they shall be irrecoverably overthrown and destroyed. They shall be as drunkards, besotted to their own ruin, and shall stumble and fall, and make themselves a reproach, and be justly laughed at. (3.) They shall be devoured as stubble fully dry, which is irresistibly and irrecoverably consumed by the flame. The judgments of God are as devouring fire to those that make themselves as stubble to them. It is again threatened concerning this great army (Nahum 1:12) that though they be quiet and likewise many, very secure, not fearing the sallies out of the besieged upon them, because they are numerous, yet thus shall they be cut down, or certainly shall they be cut down, as grass and corn are cut down, with as little ado, when he shall pass through, even the destroying angel that is commissioned to cut them down. Note, The security of sinners, and their confidence in their own strength, are often presages of ruin approaching.

_ _ 2. Upon the king. He imagined evil against the Lord, and shall he escape? No (Nahum 1:14): “The Lord has given a commandment concerning thee; the decree has gone forth, that thy name be no more sown, that thy memory perish, that thou be no more talked of as thou hast been, and that the report of thy mighty actions be dispersed upon the wings of fame and celebrated with her trumpet.” Because Sennacherib's son reigned in his stead, some make this to point at the overthrow of the Assyrian empire not long after. Note, Those that imagine evil against the Lord hasten evil upon themselves and their own families and interests, and ruin their own names by dishonouring his name. It is further threatened, (1.) That the images he worshipped should be cut off from their temple, the graven image and the molten image out of the house of his gods, which, some think, was fulfilled when Sennacherib was slain by his two sons, as he was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god, by which barbarous parricide we may suppose the temple was looked upon as defiled, and was therefore disused, and the images were cut off from it, the worshippers of those images no longer attending there. Or it may be taken more generally to denote the utter ruin of Assyria; the army of the enemy shall lay all waste, and not spare even the images of their gods, by which God would intimate to them that one of the grounds of his controversy with them was their idolatry. (2.) That Sennacherib's grave shall be made there, some think in the house of his god; there he is slain, and there he shall be buried, for he is vile; he lies under this perpetual mark of disgrace, that he had so far lost his interest in the natural affection of his own children that two of them murdered him. Or it may be meant of the ignominious fall of the Assyrian monarchy itself, upon the ruins of which that of Babylon was raised. What a noise was made about the grave of that once formidable state, but now despicable, is largely described, Ezekiel 31:3, Ezekiel 31:11, Ezekiel 31:15, Ezekiel 31:16. Note, Those that make themselves vile by scandalous sins God will make vile by shameful punishments.

_ _ III. The great deliverance which God would hereby work for his own people and the city that was called by his name. The ruin of the church's enemies is the salvation of the church, and a very great salvation it was that was wrought for Jerusalem by the overthrow of Sennacherib's army.

_ _ 1. The siege shall hereby be raised: “Now will I break his yoke from off thee, by which thou art kept in servitude, and will burst thy bonds asunder, by which thou seemest bound over to the Assyrian's wrath.” That vast victorious army, when it forced free quarters for itself throughout all the land of Judah, and lived at discretion there, was as yokes and bonds upon them. Jerusalem, when it was besieged, was, as it were, bound and fettered by it; but, when the destroying angel had done his work, Jerusalem's bonds were burst asunder, and it was set at liberty again. This was a figure of the great salvation, by which the Jerusalem that is above is made free, is made free indeed.

_ _ 2. The enemy shall be so weakened and dispirited that they shall never make any such attempt again, and the end of this trouble shall be so well gained by the grace of God that there shall be no more occasion for such a severe correction. (1.) God will not again afflict Jerusalem; his anger is turned away, and he says, It is enough; for he has by this fright accomplished his whole work upon Mount Zion (Isaiah 10:12), and therefore “though I have afflicted thee, I will afflict thee no more;” the bitter portion shall not be repeated unless there be need and the patient's case call for it; for God doth not afflict willingly. (2.) The enemy shall not dare again to attack Jerusalem (Nahum 1:15): The wicked shall no more pass through thee as they have done, to lay all waste, for he is utterly cut off and disabled to do it. His army is cut off, his spirit cut off, and at length he himself is cut off.

_ _ 3. The tidings of this great deliverance shall be published and welcomed with abundance of joy throughout the kingdom, Nahum 1:15. While Sennacherib prevailed, and carried all before him, every day brought bad news; but now, behold, upon the mountains, the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, the feet of the evangelist; he is seen coming at a distance upon the mountains, as fast as his feet will carry him; and how pleasant a sight is it once more to see a messenger of peace, after we have received so many of Job's messengers! We find these words made use of by another prophet to illustrate the mercy of the deliverance of the people of God out of Babylon (Isaiah 52:7), not that the prophets stole the word one from another (as those did, Jeremiah 23:30), but speaking by the same Spirit, they often used the same expressions; and it may be of good use for ministers to testify their consent to wholesome truths (1 Timothy 6:3) by concurring in the same forms of sound words, 2 Timothy 1:13. These words are also quoted by the apostle, both from Isaiah and Nahum, and applied to the great redemption wrought out for us by our Lord Jesus, and the publishing of it to the world by the everlasting gospel, Romans 10:15. Christ's ministers are those messengers of good tidings, that preach peace by Jesus Christ. How beautiful are the feet of those messengers! How welcome their message to those that see their misery and danger by reason of sin! And observe, He that brings these good tidings brings with them a call to Judah to keep her solemn feasts and perform her vows. During the trouble, (1.) The ordinary feasts had been intermitted. Inter arma silent legesThe voice of law cannot be heard amidst the shouts of battle. While Jerusalem was encompassed with armies they could not go thither to worship; but now that the embargo is taken off they must return to the observance of their feasts; and the feasts of the Lord will be doubly sweet to the people of God when they have been for some time deprived of the benefit of them and God graciously restores them their opportunities again, for we are taught the worth of such mercies by the want of them. (2.) They had made vows to God, that, if he would deliver them out of this distress, they would do something extraordinary in his service, to his honour; and now that the deliverance is wrought they are called upon to perform their vows; the promise they had then made must now be made good, for better it is not to vow than to vow and not to pay. And those words, The wicked shall no more pass through thee, may be taken as a promise of the perfecting of the good work of reformation which Hezekiah had begun; the wicked shall not, as they have done, walk on every side, but they shall be cut off, and the baffling of the attempts from the wicked enemies abroad is a mercy indeed to a nation when it is accompanied with the restraint and reformation of the wicked at home, who are its more dangerous enemies.

John Wesley's Explanatory Notes

Nahum 1:9

Against the Lord — What you imagine or design against his people, ye design against him? Make an utter end — He will bring you to utter desolation.

Geneva Bible Translation Notes

Nahum 1:9

What do ye (k) imagine against the LORD? he will make an utter end: affliction shall not rise up the second time.

(k) He shows that the undertakings of the Assyrians against Judah and the Church were against God, and therefore he would so destroy them the first time, that he would not need to return the second time.

Cross-Reference Topical ResearchStrong's Concordance
do:

Nahum 1:11 There is [one] come out of thee, that imagineth evil against the LORD, a wicked counsellor.
Psalms 2:1-4 Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? ... He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.
Psalms 21:11 For they intended evil against thee: they imagined a mischievous device, [which] they are not able [to perform].
Psalms 33:10 The LORD bringeth the counsel of the heathen to nought: he maketh the devices of the people of none effect.
Proverbs 21:30 [There is] no wisdom nor understanding nor counsel against the LORD.
Isaiah 8:9-10 Associate yourselves, O ye people, and ye shall be broken in pieces; and give ear, all ye of far countries: gird yourselves, and ye shall be broken in pieces; gird yourselves, and ye shall be broken in pieces. ... Take counsel together, and it shall come to nought; speak the word, and it shall not stand: for God [is] with us.
Ezekiel 38:10-11 Thus saith the Lord GOD; It shall also come to pass, [that] at the same time shall things come into thy mind, and thou shalt think an evil thought: ... And thou shalt say, I will go up to the land of unwalled villages; I will go to them that are at rest, that dwell safely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having neither bars nor gates,
Acts 4:25-28 Who by the mouth of thy servant David hast said, Why did the heathen rage, and the people imagine vain things? ... For to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done.
2 Corinthians 10:5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;

he:

1 Samuel 3:12 In that day I will perform against Eli all [things] which I have spoken concerning his house: when I begin, I will also make an end.
1 Samuel 26:8 Then said Abishai to David, God hath delivered thine enemy into thine hand this day: now therefore let me smite him, I pray thee, with the spear even to the earth at once, and I will not [smite] him the second time.
2 Samuel 20:10 But Amasa took no heed to the sword that [was] in Joab's hand: so he smote him therewith in the fifth [rib], and shed out his bowels to the ground, and struck him not again; and he died. So Joab and Abishai his brother pursued after Sheba the son of Bichri.
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Chain-Reference Bible SearchCross References with Concordance

1S 3:12; 26:8. 2S 20:10. Ps 2:1; 21:11; 33:10. Pv 21:30. Is 8:9. Ezk 38:10. Na 1:11. Ac 4:25. 2Co 10:5.

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