15. But can the ax boast greater power than the person who uses it?Is the saw greater than the person who saws?Can a rod strike unless a hand moves it?Can a wooden cane walk by itself?
16. Therefore, the Lord, the lord of Heaven’s Armies,will send a plague among Assyria’s proud troops,and a flaming fire will consume its glory.
17. The lord, the Light of Israel, will be a fire;the Holy One will be a flame.He will devour the thorns and briers with fire,burning up the enemy in a single night.
18. The lord will consume Assyria’s glorylike a fire consumes a forest in a fruitful land;it will waste away like sick people in a plague.
19. Of all that glorious forest, only a few trees will survive—so few that a child could count them!
20. In that day the remnant left in Israel,the survivors in the house of Jacob,will no longer depend on allieswho seek to destroy them.But they will faithfully trust the lord,the Holy One of Israel.
21. A remnant will return;yes, the remnant of Jacob will return to the Mighty God.
22. But though the people of Israel are as numerousas the sand of the seashore,only a remnant of them will return.The lord has rightly decided to destroy his people.
23. Yes, the Lord, the lord of Heaven’s Armies,has already decided to destroy the entire land.
24. So this is what the Lord, the lord of Heaven’s Armies, says: “O my people in Zion, do not be afraid of the Assyrians when they oppress you with rod and club as the Egyptians did long ago.
25. In a little while my anger against you will end, and then my anger will rise up to destroy them.”
26. The lord of Heaven’s Armies will lash them with his whip, as he did when Gideon triumphed over the Midianites at the rock of Oreb, or when the lord’s staff was raised to drown the Egyptian army in the sea.