Nahum 2:1-13
“The gates of the rivers shall be opened, and the palace shall be dissolved... Nineveh is of old like a pool of water: yet they shall flee away... She is empty, and void, and waste: and the heart melteth, and the knees smite together.”
King James Version
Nahum's vivid oracle of Nineveh's violent fall — the river-gates opened, the palace dissolved, the great Assyrian capital left empty and waste.
Fulfillment References
Nahum 3:1-19 Zephaniah 2:13-15 🏛 Historical: 612 BC Jonah 3:1-10
How Traditions Read This Prophecy
Apostolic (Oneness) PentecostalThe one God who once spared repentant Nineveh (Jonah) later judged its returned cruelty — sovereign over both the mercy and the justice of history.
JewishJudgment on Assyria, the empire that destroyed the northern kingdom; the comfort ('Nahum' = comfort) of God's justice for the oppressed.
CatholicThe fall of the violent empire — divine justice on cruelty, fulfilled in history.
ProtestantA strikingly fulfilled prophecy: Nineveh fell in 612 BC, partly via the flooding of the rivers ('gates of the rivers opened'), and was so thoroughly destroyed its very site was later doubted.
OrthodoxGod's judgment on the cruel empire, fulfilled in Nineveh's obliteration.
DispensationalFulfilled history demonstrating the certainty of God's prophetic word.
AcademicThe detail of the 'river gates' opening aligns with later accounts (Diodorus, Xenophon) of flooding in Nineveh's 612 BC fall; the city's disappearance — its location uncertain until Layard's 1840s excavations — is widely cited as remarkable, though the oracle's date relative to the event is debated.
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Bible Prophecy Explorer · based on J. Barton Payne’s Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy catalogue · an openly Apostolic (Oneness) Pentecostal study resource — all traditions presented fairly. Pastor: C. Myles Young, PhD · Bishop: Nathaniel J. Wilson, Ed.D.