Nahum 2:10
“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.”
King James Version (KJV)
Read this verse in context with translation switching:
Read Full Chapter →Nineveh is left utterly emptied and desolate, its people gripped by melting hearts, trembling knees, and faces drained pale with dread.
What Does Nahum 2:10 Mean?
Three words in close succession hammer the city's ruin: empty, void, waste, their similar sounds in Hebrew driving home a total desolation. Then the prophet turns to the people themselves. Hearts melt with fear, knees knock together, every body is seized with anguish, and faces lose their color, gathering blackness or paleness in terror. This is the full human face of collapse, dread written on every feature, the proud now wholly unmanned.
The threefold emptiness recalls the very earliest description of the world as without form and void, as if Nineveh is unmade, returned to chaos. The detailed portrait of fear is not cruelty on the prophet's part but a sober witness to what becomes of those who trusted in violence when their hour comes. It is a mirror held up to every generation that builds on cruelty. Yet even here grace whispers, for the God who can empty a city can also fill an emptied life, and the dread described is exactly what the trusting are spared when they shelter in His goodness.