2. to keep the poor from getting fair treatment,and to deprive the oppressed among my people of justice,so they can steal what widows own,and loot what belongs to orphans.
3. What will you do on judgment day,when destruction arrives from a distant place?To whom will you run for help?Where will you leave your wealth?
4. You will have no place to go, except to kneel with the prisoners,or to fall among those who have been killed.Despite all this, his anger does not subside,and his hand is ready to strike again.
5. Assyria, the club I use to vent my anger, is as good as dead,a cudgel with which I angrily punish.
6. I sent him against a godless nation,I ordered him to attack the people with whom I was angry,to take plunder and to carry away loot,to trample them down like dirt in the streets.
7. But he does not agree with this,his mind does not reason this way,for his goal is to destroy,and to eliminate many nations.
8. Indeed, he says:“Are not my officials all kings?
9. Is not Calneh like Carchemish?Hamath like Arpad?Samaria like Damascus?
10. I overpowered kingdoms ruled by idols,whose carved images were more impressive than Jerusalem’s or Samaria’s.
11. As I have done to Samaria and its idols,so I will do to Jerusalem and its idols.”
12. But when the sovereign master finishes judging Mount Zion and Jerusalem, then I will punish the king of Assyria for what he has proudly planned and for the arrogant attitude he displays.
13. For he says:“By my strong hand I have accomplished this,by my strategy that I devised.I invaded the territory of nations,and looted their storehouses.Like a mighty conqueror, I brought down rulers.
14. My hand discovered the wealth of the nations, as if it were in a nest,as one gathers up abandoned eggs,I gathered up the whole earth.There was no wing flapping,or open mouth chirping.”
15. Does an ax exalt itself over the one who wields it,or a saw magnify itself over the one who cuts with it?As if a scepter should brandish the one who raises it,or a staff should lift up what is not made of wood!
16. For this reason the sovereign master, the Lord who commands armies, will make his healthy ones emaciated. His majestic glory will go up in smoke.
17. The light of Israel will become a fire,their Holy One will become a flame;it will burn and consume the Assyrian king’s briersand his thorns in one day.
18. The splendor of his forest and his orchardwill be completely destroyed, as when a sick man’s life ebbs away.
19. There will be so few trees left in his forest,a child will be able to count them.
20. At that time those left in Israel, those who remain of the family of Jacob, will no longer rely on a foreign leader that abuses them. Instead they will truly rely on the Lord, the Holy One of Israel.