Nahum 3:14
“Draw thee waters for the siege, fortify thy strong holds: go into clay, and tread the morter, make strong the brickkiln.”
King James Version (KJV)
Read this verse in context with translation switching:
Read Full Chapter →Nineveh is mockingly told to stockpile water and make bricks to withstand the siege, though no effort can save her.
What Does Nahum 3:14 Mean?
In bitter irony the prophet commands Nineveh to prepare for the siege. Draw water to outlast the blockade, strengthen the fortresses, get down into the clay, tread the mortar, repair the brickwork. These are the frantic, sensible measures of a city bracing for attack, making fresh bricks to shore up crumbling walls. Yet the reader already knows from all that precedes that none of it will work. The commands are real labor poured out against an outcome already fixed by God.
This ironic summons echoes the taunt at the start of chapter two and makes the same sobering point: human effort, however diligent, cannot overturn the verdict of heaven. The city sweats over its bricks while its doom stands sure. There is a lesson here about the limits of self-reliance, that no amount of preparation can secure what God has appointed to fall. The energy spent on mortar might once have been spent on repentance and mercy, which alone could have changed the city's fate, as it did in Jonah's day. Without God, all our building is in vain.