And I will fan them with a fan in the gates of the land; I will bereave them of children, I will destroy my people, since they return not from their ways.
I will fan them with a fan - tribulation (from tribulum, a threshing instrument), which separates the chaff from the wheat (Matthew 3:12).
Gates of the land - i:e., the extreme bounds of the land through which the entrance to and exit from it lie (Nahum 3:13). Maurer translates, 'I will fan' - i:e., cast them forth-`to the gates of the land'-namely, with a view to their being cast out of the land. "In the gates:" the English version draws the image from a man cleaning grain with a fan; he stands at the gate of the threshing-floor in the open air to remove the wheat from the chaff by means of the wind; so God threatens to remove Israel out of the bounds of the land (Houbigant). The English version accords with the historic fulfillment of the prophecy; because it was IN the gates of the land, in Riblah, in the land of Hamath (which, from its being the best avenue into the Holy Land is called "the entering in of Hamath"), that Nebuchadnezzar "gave judgment" upon Zedekiah and the Jewish captives (Jeremiah 39:5).