15. In spite of all of your hard work, fire will burn you up inside your city. Your enemies will cut you down with their swords. They will destroy you just as grasshoppers eat up crops. Multiply like grasshoppers! Increase your numbers like locusts!
16. You have more traders than the number of stars in the sky. But like locusts they strip the land. Then they fly away.
17. Your guards are like grasshoppers. Your officials are like large numbers of locusts. They settle in the walls on a cold day. But when the sun appears, they fly away. And no one knows where they go.
18. King of Assyria, your leaders are asleep. Your nobles lie down to rest. Your people are scattered on the mountains. No one is left to gather them together.