Nahum 2:8
“But Nineveh is of old like a pool of water: yet they shall flee away. Stand, stand, shall they cry; but none shall look back.”
King James Version (KJV)
Read this verse in context with translation switching:
Read Full Chapter →Once a brimming pool of people, Nineveh now drains away as its inhabitants flee, deaf to every cry to hold their ground.
What Does Nahum 2:8 Mean?
Nineveh had long been like a full pool of water, teeming with people and surrounded by its rivers and reservoirs. But now the pool breaks and drains; the population flees away. Officers cry out, Stand, stand, trying to rally the runners, but no one turns back. The image is of water that cannot be held once the wall is breached, a perfect picture of a panic that no command can stop. The city's great population becomes its great exodus.
There is a haunting reversal here. The very abundance that made Nineveh formidable, its multitudes, now becomes the measure of its emptying as those multitudes scatter. No call to courage can reverse a collapse that God has decreed. The verse exposes how quickly apparent strength can become uncontainable flight. For the reader it presses the question of where lasting stability is found, for it is not in numbers or walls. What is gathered around the Lord remains; what is gathered around pride pours away like water and does not look back.