Zephaniah Chapter 2 verse 13 Holy Bible
And he will stretch out his hand against the north, and destroy Assyria, and will make Nineveh a desolation, and dry like the wilderness.
read chapter 2 in ASV
And his hand will be stretched out against the north, for the destruction of Assyria; and he will make Nineveh unpeopled and dry like the waste land.
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And he will stretch out his hand against the north, and destroy Assyria; and will make Nineveh a desolation, a place of drought like the wilderness.
read chapter 2 in DARBY
And he will stretch out his hand against the north, and destroy Assyria; and will make Nineveh a desolation, and dry like a wilderness.
read chapter 2 in KJV
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He will stretch out his hand against the north, destroy Assyria, and will make Nineveh a desolation, and dry like the wilderness.
read chapter 2 in WEB
And He stretcheth His hand against the north, And doth destroy Asshur, And he setteth Nineveh for a desolation, A dry land like a wilderness.
read chapter 2 in YLT
Pulpit Commentary
Pulpit CommentaryVerse 13. - The north, represented by Assyria, as yet unconquered, and still apparently flourishing. Though this country lay to the northeast of Palestine, its armies attacked from the north, and it is generally represented as a northern power. Its destruction was foretold (Isaiah 10:12; Ezekiel 31:11, etc.; Nahum 1:14, etc.). In this verse the Hebrew verbs are not in the simple future, but in the imperative or optative mood, "Let him stretch out his hand," etc., as though the prophet were praying that the enemies of his people might be overthrown. Nineveh. St. Jerome gives speciosam, rendering the proper name according to his notion of its Hebrew etymology. Its proper meaning, in Accadian, would be "Fish house,". i.e. house consecrated to the god of fish. (For a description of Nineveh, see note on Jonah 1:2. For the destruction of Nineveh, see the Introduction to Nahum, ยง I.) Dry like a wilderness. The country shall become an and desert. Assyria was greatly indebted for its remarkable fertility to a very successful system of artificial irrigation, and when this was not maintained, great tracts soon relapsed into a wilderness (Layard, 'Nineveh,' 2:68). "Cultivation," says Professor Rawlinson, "is now the exception instead of the rule. 'Instead of the luxuriant fields, the groves and gardens of former times, nothing now meets the eye but an arid waste' (Chesny). Large tracts are covered by unwholesome marshes, producing nothing but enormous reeds; others lie waste and bare, parched up by the fierce heat of the sun, and utterly destitute of water; in some places sand drifts accumulate, and threaten to make the whole region a mere portion of the desert" ('Anc. Men.,' 1:41).
