1. You are doomed! You make unjust laws that oppress my people.
2. That is how you prevent the poor from having their rights and from getting justice. That is how you take the property that belongs to widows and orphans.
3. What will you do when God punishes you? What will you do when he brings disaster on you from a distant country? Where will you run to find help? Where will you hide your wealth?
4. You will be killed in battle or dragged off as prisoners. Yet even so the Lord's anger will not be ended; his hand will still be stretched out to punish.
5. The Lord said, “Assyria! I use Assyria like a club to punish those with whom I am angry.
6. I sent Assyria to attack a godless nation, people who have made me angry. I sent them to loot and steal and trample on the people like dirt in the streets.”
7. But the Assyrian emperor has his own violent plans in mind. He is determined to destroy many nations.
8. He boasts, “Every one of my commanders is a king!
9. I conquered the cities of Calno and Carchemish, the cities of Hamath and Arpad. I conquered Samaria and Damascus.
10. I stretched out my hand to punish those kingdoms that worship idols, idols more numerous than those of Jerusalem and Samaria.
11. I have destroyed Samaria and all its idols, and I will do the same to Jerusalem and the images that are worshipped there.”
12. But the Lord says, “When I finish what I am doing on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, I will punish the emperor of Assyria for all his boasting and all his pride.”
13. The emperor of Assyria boasts, “I have done it all myself. I am strong and wise and clever. I wiped out the boundaries between nations and took the supplies they had stored. Like a bull I have trampled on the people who live there.
14. The nations of the world were like a bird's nest, and I gathered their wealth as easily as gathering eggs. Not a wing fluttered to scare me off; no beak opened to scream at me!”
15. But the Lord says, “Can an axe claim to be greater than the man who uses it? Is a saw more important than the man who saws with it? A club doesn't lift up a man; a man lifts up a club.”