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Nahum 3:19

in Nahum 3

There is no healing for your injury; your wound is severe. All who hear the news of you applaud your downfall, for who has not experienced your constant cruelty?

BSB

The same verse in ASV and KJV

ASV

There is no assuaging of thy hurt; thy wound is grievous: all that hear the report of thee clap their hands over thee; for upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually?

KJV

There is no healing of thy bruise; thy wound is grievous: all that hear the bruit of thee shall clap the hands over thee: for upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually?

This verse in Nahum 3

Commentary

7 notes on this verse
There is no healing of thy bruise,.... Made by the fatal blow given to the empire by the taking of Nineveh; the ruin of it was irreparable and irrecoverable; the city of Nineveh was no more, and the Assyrian empire sunk, and never rose again: or, "there is no contraction of thy bruise" (r); as when a wound is healed, or near it, the skin round about is wrinkled and contracted.

This site's exposition

Thy shepherds slumber

on Nahum 3:18-19

The book closes by naming the king of Assyria directly, his shepherds asleep, his nobles in the dust, his people scattered on the mountains with no one left to gather them, the same abandonment the locusts pictured now stated plainly of the throne itself. There is no healing of thy bruise answers the question left open at verse 7, no comforters are found because none exist to be found, the wound past any remedy. The last line turns outward to every nation that had felt Assyria's cruelty, all that hear the report clap their hands, for her wickedness had passed over all of them continually, the burden ending not in triumph but in the relief of the whole world she had oppressed.

The record, by era

The Church Fathers1 voice

A commentator

Jerome

Commentary on Nahum · Written before 420.

proposed

(Verse 18 onwards) Your shepherds have fallen asleep, O king of Assyria; your princes shall be buried, your people are scattered on the mountains. There is no one to gather them, your injury is not hidden, your wound is severe. All who hear of your downfall clap their hands over you, for against whom has your evil not passed continually?

The Puritans and the Awakening1 voice

A commentator

Matthew Henry

1662–1714

Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710)

proposed

) and thy neighbours, instead of lending a hand to help thee, shall clap their hands over thee, and triumph in thy fall; and the reason is, because thou hast been one way or other injurious to them all: Upon whom has not thy wickedness passed continually?

quarantine:debris (2026-07-29) — leading-punctuation+unbalanced-parens

The Nineteenth Century3 voices

There is no healing - (literally, “dulling”) of thy bruise It cannot be softened or mitigated; and so thy wound is grievous (literally, sick), incurable, for when the wound ever anew inflames, it cannot be healed. The word, bruise, is the more expressive, because it denotes alike the abiding wound in the body Lev 21:19, and the shattering of a state, which God can heal Psa 60:4; Isa 30:26, or which may be great, incurable Jer 30:

A commentator

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown

1802–1910

Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)

The sole descendants of the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians in the whole country are the Nestorian Christians, who speak a Chaldean language [LAYARD]. upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually?--implying God's long forbearance, and the consequent enormity of Assyria's guilt, rendering her case one that admitted no hope of restoration.

A commentator

Adam Clarke

1762–1832

Commentary on the Bible · Written before 1832.

proposed

There is no healing of thy bruise - Thou shalt never be rebuilt. All that hear the bruit of thee - The report or account. Shall clap the hands - Shall exult in thy downfall. For upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed - Thou hast been a universal oppressor, and therefore all nations rejoice at thy fall and utter desolation. Bp. Newton makes some good remarks on the fall and total ruin of Nineveh. “What probability was there that the capital city of a great kingdom, a city which was sixty miles in compass, a city which contained so many thousand inhabitants, a city which had walls a hundred feet high, and so thick that three chariots could go abreast upon them, and which had one thousand five hundred towers, of two hundred feet in height; what probability was there that such a city should ever be totally destroyed? And yet so totally was it destroyed that the place is hardly known where it was situated. What we may suppose helped to complete its ruin and devastation, was Nebuchadnezzar’s enlarging and beautifying Babylon, soon after Nineveh was taken. From that time no mention is made of Nineveh by any of the sacred writers; and the most ancient of the heathen authors, who have occasion to say any thing about it, speak of it as a city that was once great and flourishing, but now destroyed and desolate. Great as it was formerly, so little of it is remaining, that authors are not agreed even about its situation. From the general suffrage of ancient historians and geographers, it appears to have been situated upon the Tigris, though others represent it as placed upon the Euphrates. […]

The words behind it

18 Hebrew words

Every Hebrew word of this verse in the order it stands, with what it means and the door to its own study. The last column counts the times a word stands in the whole Bible: the rarer the word, the more the places it appears belong together.

A shaded row is a word that stands 400 times or fewer in the Bible.

The walk

8 stops

Each card is a verse this one points to, and under it the verses that one points to in turn. Where several paths arrive at the same place, that place is listed first: the text keeps returning to it.

  • Through

    Lamentations 2:15

    All who pass by clap their hands at you in scorn. They hiss and shake their heads at the Daughter of Jerusalem: “Is this the city that was called the perfection of beauty, the…

    it leads to

    • Jeremiah 19:8

      I will make this city a desolation and an object of scorn. All who pass by will be appalled and will scoff at all her wounds.

      Reached by 2 separate paths from here.

    • Jeremiah 18:16

      They have made their land a desolation, a perpetual object of scorn; all who pass by will be appalled and shake their heads.

    • Psalms 48:2

      Beautiful in loftiness, the joy of all the earth, like the peaks of Zaphon is Mount Zion, the city of the great King.

    • Psalms 50:2

      From Zion, perfect in beauty, God shines forth.

    • Ezekiel 25:6

      For this is what the Lord GOD says: ‘Because you clapped your hands and stomped your feet and rejoiced over the land of Israel with a heart full of contempt,

  • Through

    Jeremiah 46:11

    Go up to Gilead for balm, O Virgin Daughter of Egypt! In vain you try many remedies, but for you there is no healing.

    it leads to

    • Jeremiah 8:22

      Is there no balm in Gilead? Is no physician there? Why then has the health of the daughter of my people not been restored?

  • Through

    Job 27:23

    It claps its hands at him and hisses him out of his place.

    it leads to

    • Lamentations 2:15

      All who pass by clap their hands at you in scorn. They hiss and shake their heads at the Daughter of Jerusalem: “Is this the city that was called the perfection of beauty, the…

  • Through

    Isaiah 37:18

    Truly, O LORD, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all these countries and their lands.

    it leads to

    • Nahum 2:11–12

      Where is the lions’ lair or the feeding ground of the young lions, where the lion and lioness prowled with their cubs, with nothing to frighten them away?

Where this verse is studied

About Nahum

This page draws on Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869); Edward Bouverie Pusey, The Minor Prophets: A Commentary; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; Jerome, Commentary on Nahum; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament (1748-1763) and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.