Nahum 2:6
New International Version
The river gates are thrown open and the palace collapses.

New Living Translation
The river gates have been torn open! The palace is about to collapse!

English Standard Version
The river gates are opened; the palace melts away;

Berean Standard Bible
The river gates are thrown open and the palace collapses.

King James Bible
The gates of the rivers shall be opened, and the palace shall be dissolved.

New King James Version
The gates of the rivers are opened, And the palace is dissolved.

New American Standard Bible
The gates of the rivers are opened And the palace sways back and forth.

NASB 1995
The gates of the rivers are opened And the palace is dissolved.

NASB 1977
The gates of the rivers are opened, And the palace is dissolved.

Legacy Standard Bible
The gates of the rivers are opened, And the palace is melted away.

Amplified Bible
The gates of the rivers [surrounding Nineveh] are opened And the palace [of sun-dried brick] is dissolved [by the torrents].

Christian Standard Bible
The river gates are opened, and the palace erodes away.

Holman Christian Standard Bible
The river gates are opened, and the palace erodes away.

American Standard Version
The gates of the rivers are opened, and the palace is dissolved.

Aramaic Bible in Plain English
The gates of Judea were opened and the Temple shook

Brenton Septuagint Translation
The gates of the cities have been opened, and the palaces have fallen into ruin,

Contemporary English Version
The river gates fly open, and panic floods the palace.

Douay-Rheims Bible
The gates of the rivers are opened, and the temple is thrown down to the ground.

English Revised Version
The gates of the rivers are opened, and the palace is dissolved.

GOD'S WORD® Translation
The gates of the rivers are opened, and the palace melts away.

Good News Translation
The gates by the river burst open; the palace is filled with terror.

International Standard Version
The river gates will be opened, and the palace will collapse.

JPS Tanakh 1917
The gates of the rivers are opened, And the palace is dissolved.

Literal Standard Version
Gates of the rivers have been opened, | And the palace is dissolved.

Majority Standard Bible
The river gates are thrown open and the palace collapses.

New American Bible
The river gates are opened, the palace is washed away.

NET Bible
The sluice gates are opened; the royal palace is deluged and dissolves.

New Revised Standard Version
The river gates are opened, the palace trembles.

New Heart English Bible
The gates of the rivers are opened, and the palace is dissolved.

Webster's Bible Translation
The gates of the rivers shall be opened, and the palace shall be dissolved.

World English Bible
The gates of the rivers are opened, and the palace is dissolved.

Young's Literal Translation
Gates of the rivers have been opened, And the palace is dissolved.

Additional Translations ...
Audio Bible



Context
The Overthrow of Nineveh
5He summons his nobles; they stumble as they advance. They race to its wall; the protective shield is set in place. 6The river gates are thrown open and the palace collapses. 7It is decreed that the city be exiled and carried away; her maidservants moan like doves, and beat upon their breasts.…

Cross References
Nahum 2:5
He summons his nobles; they stumble as they advance. They race to its wall; the protective shield is set in place.

Nahum 2:7
It is decreed that the city be exiled and carried away; her maidservants moan like doves, and beat upon their breasts.

Nahum 3:13
Look at your troops--they are like your women! The gates of your land are wide open to your enemies; fire consumes their bars.


Treasury of Scripture

The gates of the rivers shall be opened, and the palace shall be dissolved.

gates.

Isaiah 45:1,2
Thus saith the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut; …

dissolved.

2 Peter 3:10,11
But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up…

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Collapses Dismay Dissolved Doorways Flowing Forced Gates House King's Melteth Open Opened Palace River Rivers Thrown
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Collapses Dismay Dissolved Doorways Flowing Forced Gates House King's Melteth Open Opened Palace River Rivers Thrown
Nahum 2
1. The fearful and victorious armies of God against Nineveh.














(6) The gates of the rivers.--This verse is one of great importance. The account of Ctesias, preserved by Diodorus Siculus, tells us that for over two years the immense thickness of the walls of Nineveh baffled the engineering skill of the besiegers; but that "in the third year it happened that by reason of a continual discharge of great storms, the Euphrates (sic) being swollen, both inundated a part of the city and overthrew the wall to the extent of twenty stadia." The king saw in this the fulfilment of an oracle, which had declared that the city should fall when "the river became an enemy to the city." Determined not to fall into the hands of his foes, he shut himself up with all his treasures in the royal citadel, which he then set on fire. We believe that this account, though inaccurate in detail, may be regarded as based on a substratum of historical fact. So gigantic were the fortifications of Nineveh, that of those on the east, where the city was most open to attack, Mr. Layard writes: "The remains still existing . . . almost confirm the statements of Diodorus Siculus that the walls were a hundred feet high, and that three chariots could drive upon them abreast" (Nineveh and Babylon, p. 660). Against ramparts such as these the most elaborate testudo of ancient times may well have been comparatively powerless. On the other hand, the force of a swollen river has often proved suddenly fatal to the strongest modern masonry. It would be specially destructive where, as in the case of Nineveh, the walls inundated were of sun-dried brick or "clay-bat." Thus the fate of the city may well have been precipitated in accordance with the terse prediction of this verse. The "gates of the rivers" (i.e., the dams which fenced the Khausser, which ran through Nineveh, and the Tigris, which was outside it) are forced open by the swelling torrents, and lo, the fate of the city is sealed! ramparts against which the battering-ram might have plied in vain are sapped at the very foundation; palace walls are undermined, and literally "dissolve;" the besieger hastens to avail himself of the disaster, and (in the single word of Nahum 2:7) it-is-decided. It is unnecessary to identify the "palace" which thus succumbs. Neither is it a reasonable objection that the palaces of Khorsabad and Kouyunjik, lying near the Khausser, bear the marks of fire, not water. If Nahum must have in mind some particular palace, it may be fairly argued that water is not such a demonstrative agency as the sister element; and that nothing would so effectively conceal the damage done by the inundation as the subsequent conflagrations effected by the victorious besieger. The verb namog, "dissolved," we thus take in its literal signification of the dissolution of a solid substance by the action of water; not as Dr. Pusey, figuratively, of the "dissolution of the empire itself.

Verse 6. - All defence is vain. The prophet describes the last scene. The gates of the rivers shall be (are) opened. The simplest explanation of this much disputed clause is, according to Strauss and others, the following: The gates intended are those adjacent to the streams which encircled the city, and which were therefore the best defended and the hardest to capture. When these were carried, there was no way of escape for the besieged. But, as Rosenmuller remarks, it would have been an act of folly in the enemy to attack just that part of the city which was most strongly defended by nature and art. We are, therefore, induced to take "the gates of the rivers," not literally, but as a metaphorical expression (like "the windows of heaven," Genesis 7:1 l; Isaiah 24:18) for an overwhelming flood, and to see in this a reference to the fact mentioned by Diod. Sic. (2:27), that the capture of Nineveh was owing to a great and unprecedented inundation, which destroyed a large portion of the fortifications, and laid the city open to the enemy. "At the northwest angle of Nineveh," says Professor Rawlinson, "there was a sluice or flood gate, intended mainly to keep the water of the Khosr-su, which ordinarily filled the city moat, from flowing off too rapidly into the Tigris, but probably intended also to keep back the water of the Tigris, when that stream rose above its common level. A sudden and great rise in the Tigris would necessarily endanger this gate, and if it gave way beneath the pressure, a vast torrent of water would rush up the moat along and against the northern wall, which may have been undermined by its force, and have fallen in" (Rawlinson, 'Ancient Monarchies,' 2. p. 397, edit. 1871). The suggestion that the course of its rivers was diverted, and that the enemy entered the town through the dried channels, has no historical basis. Dr. Pusey explains the term to mean the gates by which the inhabitants had access to the rivers. But these would be well guarded, and the open. ing of them would not involve the capture of the city, which the expression in the text seems to imply. The LXX. gives, πόλεων διηνοίχθησαν, "The gates of the cities were opened." The palace shall be (is) dissolved; or, melteth away. Some take this to signify that the hearts of the in. habitants melt with fear, or the royal power vanishes in terror. That the clause is to be taken literally, to denote the destruction of the royal palace by the action of the waters, seems to be negatived by the fact that the Assyrian palaces were built on artificial mounds of some thirty or forty feet in elevation, composed of sun-dried bricks united into a solid mass, and were thus secured from the effects of an inundation (see Bosoms, 'Nineveh and its Discoveries,' p. 129, etc.). There is evidence, too, that fire played a great part in the destruction of the temples and palaces (see note on Nahum 3:13).

Parallel Commentaries ...


Hebrew
The river
הַנְּהָר֖וֹת (han·nə·hā·rō·wṯ)
Article | Noun - masculine plural
Strong's 5104: A stream, prosperity

gates
שַׁעֲרֵ֥י (ša·‘ă·rê)
Noun - masculine plural construct
Strong's 8179: An opening, door, gate

are thrown open,
נִפְתָּ֑חוּ (nip̄·tā·ḥū)
Verb - Nifal - Perfect - third person common plural
Strong's 6605: To open wide, to loosen, begin, plough, carve

and the palace
וְהַֽהֵיכָ֖ל (wə·ha·hê·ḵāl)
Conjunctive waw, Article | Noun - masculine singular
Strong's 1964: A large public building, palace, temple

erodes away.
נָמֽוֹג׃ (nā·mō·wḡ)
Verb - Nifal - Perfect - third person masculine singular
Strong's 4127: To melt


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OT Prophets: Nahum 2:6 The gates of the rivers are opened (Nah. Na)
Nahum 2:5
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