You increased your merchants more than the stars of the heavens: Good News Translation expresses the meaning in more natural English as “You produced more merchants than there are stars in the sky!” The use of the stars of the heavens as an example of great quantity is common in Scripture (compare Gen 15.5; Exo 32.13; Deut 1.10; Heb 11.12). Nineveh was indeed a great commercial center where many merchants lived. Probably most communities in the world have the equivalent of merchants, those people who engage in buying and selling for profit. In some languages they are referred to as “shop (or, stall) owners (or, managers),” while in other languages they will be described idiomatically; for example, “fathers (or, mothers) who buy and sell.” But in still other languages it will be necessary to render this first sentence in a more general way and say “You increased the number of people who buy and sell until they were more numerous than the stars in the sky.”

The last part of the verse returns abruptly to the picture of the locusts: The locust (Hebrew yeleq) spreads its wings and flies away. Some scholars think that this sentence would be more appropriate near the end of verse 17, and some translations print it at that point (Bible de Jérusalem, Jerusalem Bible, New American Bible). Others, however, try to show how it can fit here, and there is no need to move it. Good News Translation compares the merchants with locusts in the way they fly off: “But now they are gone, like locusts that spread their wings and fly away.” New International Version is even more explicit about the point of the comparison: “like locusts, they strip the land and then fly away.” It is often true that when danger threatens a city, the merchants are the first to leave and take themselves and their wealth off somewhere else.

Quoted with permission from Clark, David J. & Hatton, Howard A . A Handbook on the Book of Nahum. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1989. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .