Texts in Conversation
The Hebrew version of Nahum mocks Assyria’s officials as locusts that settle on the walls then fly off at sunrise, abandoning the city. The Greek translation interpreted this as a mixed foreign army swarming to attack, turning deserters into invaders.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Nahum 3:17
Hebrew Bible
16 Increase your merchants more than the stars of heaven! They are like the young locust that sheds its skin and flies away. 17 Your courtiers are like locusts, your officials are like a swarm of locusts! They encamp in the walls on a cold day, yet when the sun rises, they fly away, and no one knows where they are. 18 Your shepherds are sleeping, O king of Assyria. Your officers are slumbering! Your people are scattered like sheep on the mountains, and there is no one to regather them.
LXX Nahum 3:17
Septuagint
16 You have increased your trade above the stars of heaven; the locust hastens on and spreads out. 17 Your mixed people leapt like a locust, like a locust going upon a fence in the day of frost; the sun arose and it leaped off, and did not know its place. Woe to them! 18 Your shepherds napped. The king of Assyria put your mighty men to sleep. Your people departed to the mountains, and there was no one awaiting.
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Notes and References
... In the Septuagint it is found as a substantive often designating an army made up of several nationalities (Judith 1:16; Jeremiah 32:20). The combination of ἐξάλλομαι (a term possibly implying an attack) and σύμμικτος shows that the translator had probably understood this verse to refer to an attacking multinational army which was compared to a locust—a sense not obvious in the Masoretic Text. This image of the locust created by the Septuagint translator is not very different from the image portrayed in the Septuagint of Amos 7:1. ...
Theocharous, Myrto
Lexical Dependence and Intertextual Allusion in the Septuagint of the Twelve Prophets: Studies in Hosea, Amos and Micah
(p. 239) T&T Clark, 2012
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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