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Nahum 3:16-18
New Catholic Bible
Nahum 3:16-18
New Catholic Bible
Like the Locusts, Strip the Land and Fly Away[a]
16 You have increased the number of your merchants
until they now outnumber the stars of the heavens,
but like the locusts, they strip the land
and then fly away.
17 Your guards are like locusts,
and your scribes are like swarms of grasshoppers
that settle in the walls
on a cold day.
However, when the sun rises, they fly away,
and no one knows where they have gone.
Incurable Is Your Sickness[b]
18 Alas, your shepherds are asleep,
O king of Assyria;
your neighbors lie down to rest.
Your people are scattered on the mountains
with no one to gather them.
Footnotes
- Nahum 3:16 Like a swarm of insects, a crowd of businessmen and functionaries had battered the Orient. The wind turns and goes, and takes away the evil-doing swarm.
- Nahum 3:18 This funereal chant, full of irony, reveals to what point the Assyrian tyranny had reached.