1. This message is about the country of Moab. This is what the Lord All-Powerful, the God of the people of Israel, says: “It will be bad for Mount Nebo. Mount Nebo will be ruined. The town of Kiriathaim will be humbled. It will be captured. The strong place will be humbled. It will be shattered.
2. Moab will not be praised again. Men in Heshbon will plan Moab’s defeat. They will say, ‘Come, let us put an end to that nation.’ Madmenah, you will also be silenced. The sword will chase you.
3. Listen to the cries from Horonaim. They are cries of much confusion and destruction.
4. Moab will be destroyed. Her little children will cry for help.
5. Moab’s people go up the path to Luhith. They are crying bitterly as they go. On the road down to the town of Horonaim, cries of pain and suffering can be heard.
6. Run away! Run for your lives! Run away like a weed blowing through the desert.
7. “You trust in the things you made and in your wealth, so you will be captured. The god Chemosh will be taken into captivity, and his priests and officials will be taken with him.
8. The Destroyer will come against every town. Not one town will escape. The valley will be ruined. The high plain will be destroyed. The Lord said this would happen, so it will happen.
9. Spread salt over the fields in Moab. The country will be an empty desert. Moab’s towns will become empty. No one will live in them.
10. Bad things will happen to those who don’t obey the Lord and don’t use their swords to kill those people.
11. “Moab has never known trouble. Moab is like wine left to settle. Moab has never been poured from one jar to another. He has not been taken into captivity. So he tastes as he did before, and his smell has not changed.”
12. This is what the Lord says: “But I will soon send men to pour you from your jars. Then they will empty the jars and smash them to pieces.”