Nahum 3:16
“You have increased your merchants more than the stars of the skies. The grasshopper strips, and flees away.”
What does Nahum 3:16 mean?
Nahum is speaking to Nineveh, the mighty Assyrian capital, which had grown wealthy and powerful through relentless trade and commerce. The prophet is saying that despite all their merchants and riches spreading across the world like countless stars, it will all vanish as quickly as a grasshopper stripped bare and fleeing. The image is brutal and sudden: all that accumulated wealth and influence, built up over generations, will be picked clean and scattered. This is a warning that no amount of economic power or material success can protect a nation that has become corrupt and cruel, and that God sees through outward prosperity to judge what lies beneath.