10. Yet she was carried away; she went into captivity. Her young children also were dashed in pieces at all the street corners; lots were cast [by the Assyrian officers] for her nobles, and all her great men were bound with chains.
11. You will be drunk [Nineveh, with the cup of God's wrath]; you will be dazed. You will seek and require a refuge because of the enemy.
12. All your fortresses are fig trees with early figs; if they are shaken they will fall into the mouth of the eater.
13. Behold, your troops in the midst of you are [as weak and helpless as] women; the gates of your land are set wide open to your enemies [without effort]; fire consumes your bars.
14. Draw for yourself the water [necessary] for a [long continued] siege, make strong your fortresses! Go down into the clay pits and trample the mortar; make ready the brickkiln [to burn bricks for the bulwarks]!
15. [But] there [in the very midst of these preparations] will the fire devour you; the sword will cut you off; it will destroy you as the locusts [destroy]. Multiply yourselves like the licking locusts; make yourselves many like the swarming locusts!
16. You increased your merchants more than the [visible] stars of the heavens. The swarming locust spreads itself and destroys, and then flies away.
17. Your princes are like the grasshoppers and your marshals like the swarms of locusts which encamp in the hedges on a cold day–but when the sun rises, they fly away, and no one knows where they are.