---
title: Nahum 1:3
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/nahum-1-3/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/nahum-1-3.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: Nahum 1:3
testament: OT
section: Prophets
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# Nahum 1:3

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> The LORD is slow to anger and great in power; the LORD will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. His path is in the whirlwind and storm, and clouds are the dust beneath His feet.

## NWT Wording of the Key Phrase

- NWT (2013 revision): "Jehovah is slow to anger and great in power, But by no means will Jehovah hold back due punishment. His path is in destructive wind and storm, And the clouds are the dust of his feet."

## JW Usage

Cited for Jehovah's patience alongside his certainty of judgment — he is slow to anger but will not leave the guilty unpunished. The storm and cloud imagery is treated as poetry describing his power, without further significance.

## Protestant Usage

The third line is the one to notice: the clouds are the dust of his feet. Nahum is imagining Jehovah striding, with storm clouds kicked up behind him the way dust rises behind a walker. The clouds are not his setting; they are beneath him. That completes the picture the other two verses draw. Psalm 104:3 makes the clouds his chariot; Isaiah 19:1 has him riding one into Egypt to judge; Nahum has them as dust under his feet. Three different prophets, one consistent association — the cloud belongs to God's movement, and to no one else's. Which is why Daniel 7:13 is not a neutral detail. When Daniel sees someone like a son of man coming with the clouds of the heavens, he is describing a figure travelling the way Jehovah travels. And when Jesus told the high priest he would be seen coming on the clouds of heaven, the response was torn robes and a charge of blasphemy. They understood the vocabulary. Compare Psalms 104:3, Isaiah 19:1, Matthew 26:63.

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [The Son of Man on the Clouds — A Divine Prerogative](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/daniel7-son-of-man-deity.md) — Daniel 7:13-14 [Deity of Christ]