King James Bible
"The LORD is slow to anger, and great in power, and will not at all acquit the wicked: the LORD hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet."
God's patience is paired with His omnipotence, showing He restrains His wrath not from weakness but from deliberate mercy. This echoes Exodus 34:6-7, establishing that divine forbearance coexists with unlimited strength. Despite His patience, God's justice remains absolute—He cannot overlook evil or declare the guilty innocent. This tension between mercy and justice frames Nahum's prophecy against Nineveh, which had exhausted God's long-suffering. Natural disasters become the pathways of divine judgment, depicting God as sovereign over creation's most chaotic forces. The imagery transforms destructive weather into instruments of His purposeful will. This poetic hyperbole portrays God's transcendent majesty—what appears massive to humans (storm clouds) is merely dust stirred by His movement. The image reinforces His incomparable greatness above all earthly powers, including Assyria.