1. Woe to the city guilty of bloodshed!She is full of lies;she is filled with plunder;she has hoarded her spoil!
2. The chariot drivers will crack their whips;the chariot wheels will shake the ground;the chariot horses will gallop;the war chariots will bolt forward!
3. The charioteers will charge ahead;their swords will flashand their spears will glimmer!There will be many people slain;there will be piles of the dead,and countless casualties – so many that people will stumble over the corpses.
4. “Because you have acted like a wanton prostitute – a seductive mistress who practices sorcery,who enslaves nations by her harlotry,and entices peoples by her sorcery –
5. I am against you,” declares the Lord who commands armies.“I will strip off your clothes!I will show your nakedness to the nationsand your shame to the kingdoms;
6. I will pelt you with filth;I will treat you with contempt;I will make you a public spectacle.
7. Everyone who sees you will turn away from you in disgust;they will say, ‘Nineveh has been devastated!Who will lament for her?’There will be no one to comfort you!”
8. You are no more secure than Thebes – she was located on the banks of the Nile;the waters surrounded her,herrampart was the sea,the water was her wall.
9. Cush and Egypt had limitless strength;Put and the Libyans were among her allies.
10. Yet she went into captivity as an exile;even her infants were smashed to pieces at the head of every street.They cast lots for her nobility;all her dignitaries were bound with chains.
11. You too will act like drunkards;you will go into hiding;you too will seek refuge from the enemy.
12. All your fortifications will be like fig trees with first-ripe fruit:If they are shaken, their figs will fall into the mouth of the eater!
13. Your warriors will be like women in your midst;the gates of your land will be wide open to your enemies;fire will consume the bars of your gates.
14. Draw yourselves water for a siege!Strengthen your fortifications!Trample the mud and tread the clay!Make mud bricks to strengthen your walls!
15. There the fire will consume you;the sword will cut you down;it will devour you like the young locust would.Multiply yourself like the young locust;multiply yourself like the flying locust!
16. Increase your merchants more than the stars of heaven!They are like the young locust which sheds its skin and flies away.