Nahum Chapter 3 verse 13 Holy Bible
Behold, thy people in the midst of thee are women; the gates of thy land are set wide open unto thine enemies: the fire hath devoured thy bars.
read chapter 3 in ASV
See, the people who are in you are women; the doorways of your land are wide open to your attackers: the locks of your doors have been burned away in the fire.
read chapter 3 in BBE
Behold, thy people in the midst of thee are [as] women: the gates of thy land are set wide open unto thine enemies; the fire devoureth thy bars.
read chapter 3 in DARBY
Behold, thy people in the midst of thee are women: the gates of thy land shall be set wide open unto thine enemies: the fire shall devour thy bars.
read chapter 3 in KJV
read chapter 3 in WBT
Behold, your troops in your midst are women. The gates of your land are set wide open to your enemies. The fire has devoured your bars.
read chapter 3 in WEB
Lo, thy people `are' women in thy midst, To thine enemies thoroughly opened Have been the gates of thy land, Consumed hath fire thy bars.
read chapter 3 in YLT
Pulpit Commentary
Pulpit CommentaryVerse 13. - The reason why the fortresses are so readily taken is now given. Are women. The Assyrians were essentially a brave nation, but they should be now no more able to resist the enemy than if they were women (comp. Isaiah 19:16; Jeremiah 1:37; 51:30). The gates of thy land. The various approaches and passes which lead into Assyria (comp. Jeremiah 15:7; Micah 5:6). So Strabo (11:12. 13) speaks of certain mountain passes as "the Caspian gates" and Xenophon ('Anab.' 1:4. 4) mentions "the gates of Cilicia and Syria." The famous defile that led into Greece was called Thermopylae The fire shall devour thy bars. Hitzig, Keil, and others take the "bars" metaphorically, meaning the forts and castles which defend the passes; but the literal sense is the most natural, as in the parallel passage, Jeremiah 51:30 (see note on Amos 1:5). It was the Assyrians' custom to set fire to the gates of any city that they attacked (see Bonomi, 'Nineveh and its Palaces,' pp. 178, 185, 192). "It is incontestable," says Bonomi, in another place, "that, during the excavations, a considerable quantity of charcoal, and even pieces of wood either half burnt or in a perfect state of preservation, were found in many places. The lining of the chambers also bears certain marks of the action of fire. All these things can be explained only by supposing the fall of a burning roof, which calcined the slabs of gypsum, and converted them into dust .... It must have been a violent and prolonged fire to be able to calcine not only a few places, but every part of these slabs, which were ten feet high and several inches thick. So complete a decomposition can be attributed but to intense heat" (ibid., p. 213).
Ellicott's Commentary
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(13) Thy people . . . are women, not in their notoriously effeminate and luxurious habits (see Layard, p. 360), but with reference to their panic-stricken condition at the time of the catastrophe. They are fearful as women (comp. Jeremiah 50:37; Jeremiah 51:30), because they find avenues laid open to the enemy, and the remaining defences consuming in the flames.
