Charles Ellicott Commentary Nahum 2:8

"But Nineveh hath been from of old like a pool of water: yet they flee away. Stand, stand, [they cry]; but none looketh back." — Nahum 2:8 (ASV)

We prefer to adopt the slight change of reading favoured by the Septuagint (mêymeyhâ for mîmêy hî) and to render it as follows: And Nineveh, like a pool of water are her waters, and they [her inhabitants] are fleeing away. The waters which formerly flowed in river-courses and dykes are now one vast expanse of inundation. A panic then seizes the inhabitants.

If the present text is maintained, the rendering of the Authorised Version will stand. We may then suppose the heterogeneous population of Nineveh to be compared to “countless drops, full, untroubled, with no ebb or flow, fenced in from the days that she has been, yet even therefore stagnant and corrupted; not ‘a fountain of living waters’” (Pusey). But this appears to us a farfetched comparison.

The pregnant terseness of the last part of the verse will give the English reader a good idea of Nahum’s style and the difficulties connected with it.