You have increased your merchants more than the stars of the skies. The grasshopper strips, and flees away.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Parallel Translations

  • WEB World English Bible

    You have increased your merchants more than the stars of the skies. The grasshopper strips, and flees away.

  • KJV King James Version

    Thou hast multiplied thy merchants above the stars of heaven: the cankerworm spoileth, and flieth away.

  • JPS JPS Tanakh (1917)

    Thou hast multiplied thy merchants above the stars of heaven; the canker-worm spreadeth itself, and flieth away.

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Cross-references (4)

Passages linked to Nahum 3:16 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.

  • Genesis 15:5 Yahweh brought him outside, and said, “Look now toward the sky, and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” He said to Abram, “So your offspring will be.”
  • Genesis 22:17 that I will bless you greatly, and I will multiply your offspring greatly like the stars of the heavens, and like the sand which is on the seashore. Your offspring will possess the gate of his enemies.
  • Nehemiah 9:23 You also multiplied their children as the stars of the sky, and brought them into the land concerning which you said to their fathers, that they should go in to possess it.
  • Jeremiah 33:22 As the army of the sky can’t be counted, and the sand of the sea can’t be measured; so I will multiply the offspring of David my servant and the Levites who minister to me.’ ”

Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)

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Explain this verse (15 sources)

Historical commentary, presented as a primary source — not an endorsement.

John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain From these words we may learn what the Prophet…

From these words we may learn what the Prophet before meant, when he said that the Assyrians were like locusts or chafers; as though he said, — “I know that you trust in your great number; for ye are like a swarm of chafers or locusts; ye excel greatly in number; inasmuch as you have assembled your merchants and traders as the stars of heaven.” Here he shows how numerous they were. But when he says, The chafer has spoiled, and flies away, he points out another reason for the comparison; for it is not enough to lay hold on one clause of the verse, but the two clauses must be connected; and they mean this, — that the Assyrians, while they were almost innumerable, gloried in their great number, — and also, that this vast multitude would vanish away. He then makes an admission here and says, by multiplying thy merchants, thou hast multiplied them; but when he says, as chafers and as locusts, he shows that this multitude would not continue, for the Lord would scatter them here and there. As then the scattering was nigh, the Prophet says that they were chafers and locusts.

We now understand the design of the Prophet: He first ridicules the foolish confidence with which the Assyrians were inflated. They thought, that as they ruled over many nations, they could raise great armies, and set them in any quarter to oppose any one who might attack them: the Prophet concedes this to them, that is, that they were very numerous, by multiplying thou hast multiplied; but what will this avail them? They shall be locusts, they shall be chafers. — How so? A fuller explanation follows, Thou hast multiplied thy merchants as the stars of heaven: but this shall be temporary; for thou shalt see them vanishing away very soon; they shall be like the chafers, who, being in a moment scattered here and there, quit the naked field or the meadow. But by merchants or traders some understand confederates; and this comparison also, as we have before seen, frequently occurs in the Prophets: and princes at this day differ nothing from traders, for they outbid one another, and excel in similar artifices, as we have elsewhere seen, by which they carry on a system of mutual deception. This comparison then may be suitable, Thou hast multiplied thy traders, — tes practiciens. But the meaning of the Prophet may be viewed as still wider; we may apply this to the citizens of Nineveh; for the principal men no doubt were merchants: as the Venetian of the present day are all merchants, so were the Syrians, and the Ninevites, and also the Babylonians. It is then nothing strange, that the Prophet, by taking a part for the whole should include under this term all the rich, Thou hast then multiplied thy merchants

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He has hitherto allowed them to be very numerous; but he now adds, The chafer has spoiled, and flies away The verb means sometimes to spoil, and it means also to devour: The chafer then has devoured, and flies away; that is, “Thy princes, (as he afterwards calls them,) or thy principal men, have indeed devoured; they have wasted many regions by their plunders, and consumed all things on every side, like the chafers, who destroy the standing corn and all fruits: thou hast then been as a swarm of chafers.” For as chafers in great numbers attack a field, so Nineveh was wont to send everywhere her merchants to spoil and to denude the whole land. “Well,” he says “the chafer has devoured, but he flies away, he is scattered; so it shall happen,” says the Prophet, “to the citizens of Nineveh.” And hence he afterwards adds,

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Nah 3:16 Thou hast multiplied thy merchants above the…
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain Thou hast multiplied for number; and, as the word…
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain Thou hast multiplied thy merchants above the stars of…
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain The canker-worm spoileth - So these are like the…
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 16. Thou hast multiplied thy merchants] Like Tyre,…
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Nah 3:16-17. Thou hast multiplied thy merchants above the…
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain Thou hast multiplied thy merchants above the stars of…
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain Away. Thus did the merchants, at the approach of…
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain multiplied thy merchants-- (Eze 27:23-24). Nineveh, by large canals,…
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 16. spoileth] lit. strips off, i.e. probably its skin…
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (16) Spoileth.—Better, spreads itself out: swarms out to spoil.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain Its extensive commercial relations shall not save it. Thou…
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 General Information:
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 3:16 Assyrian merchants had spread throughout the Near East…

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