1How terrible for the city full of bloodshed! It is completely full of lies and robbery. There is always prey there.
2Hear the sound of the whip, the sound of rattling wheels, horses galloping, and chariots bouncing,
3horsemen charging, flashing swords, gleaming spears, a huge number of people killed, piled up corpses, an endless number of bodies. They trip over the bodies.
4This is all because of the widespread prostitution of the seductive prostitute, the master of witchcraft, who sells nations through her prostitution and families through her witchcraft.
5“Look, I am against you,” says Yahweh of Armies. “I will pull your skirt up over your face. I will show your nakedness to the nations and your shame to the kingdoms.
6I will throw disgusting filth on you, make you vile, and put you on display as a spectacle.
7Everyone who sees you will run away from you and say, ‘Nineveh is destroyed! Who will mourn for her?’ Where will I find anyone to comfort you?”
8Are you any better than No-Amon, who was located among the rivers, surrounded by water? Her defenses were the sea, and her wall was made of the sea.
9Cush and Egypt provided her limitless strength. Put and Libya were her allies.
10Yet, she was taken away and went into captivity. Her young children were also smashed to pieces at the top of every street. They cast lots for her honorable men, and all her great men were bound in chains.
11You, too, will become drunk. You will hide yourselves. You, too, will look for a fortress because of your enemy.
12All your strongholds will be like fig trees with the first-ripe figs: if they are shaken, they fall into the mouth of the one who eats them.
13Look, your troops among you are like women. The gates of your land are wide open to your enemies. Fire has burned up your gate bars.
14Draw water for the siege. Strengthen your forts. Go into the clay and mix the mortar. Make the brick kiln strong.
15There, fire will consume you. The sword will cut you down. It will devour you like a grasshopper. Multiply like grasshoppers. Multiply like locusts.
16You have more merchants than there are stars in the sky. The grasshopper sheds its skin and then flies away.
17Your guards are like locusts, and your officials are like swarms of locusts that settle on walls on a cold day, but when the sun appears, they fly away, and no one knows where they went.
18Your shepherds are sleeping, king of Assyria. Your nobles are resting. Your people are scattered on the mountains, and there is no one to gather them.
19Your wound cannot be healed; your injury is deadly. Everyone who hears about you claps their hands in joy, because who hasn't suffered from your endless cruelty?