3:1 Woe to the bloody city, all full of lies and booty— no end to the plunder!
3:2 The crack of whip, and rumble of wheel, galloping horse and bounding chariot!
3:3 Horsemen charging, flashing sword and glittering spear, hosts of slain, heaps of corpses, dead bodies without end— they stumble over the bodies!
3:4 And all for the countless harlotries of the harlot, graceful and of deadly charms, who betrays nations with her harlotries, and peoples with her charms.
3:5 Behold, I am against you, says the Lord of hosts, and will lift up your skirts over your face; and I will let nations look on your nakedness and kingdoms on your shame.
3:6 I will throw filth at you and treat you with contempt, and make you a gazingstock.
3:7 And all who look on you will shrink from you and say, Wasted is Nin′eveh; who will bemoan her? whence shall I seek comforters for her?
3:8 Are you better than Thebes that sat by the Nile, with water around her, her rampart a sea, and water her wall?
3:9 Ethiopia was her strength, Egypt too, and that without limit; Put and the Libyans were her helpers.
3:10 Yet she was carried away, she went into captivity; her little ones were dashed in pieces at the head of every street; for her honored men lots were cast, and all her great men were bound in chains.
3:11 You also will be drunken, you will be dazed; you will seek a refuge from the enemy.
3:12 All your fortresses are like fig trees with first-ripe figs— if shaken they fall into the mouth of the eater.
3:13 Behold, your troops are women in your midst. The gates of your land are wide open to your foes; fire has devoured your bars.
3:14 Draw water for the siege, strengthen your forts; go into the clay, tread the mortar, take hold of the brick mold!
3:15 There will the fire devour you, the sword will cut you off. It will devour you like the locust. Multiply yourselves like the locust, multiply like the grasshopper!
3:16 You increased your merchants more than the stars of the heavens. The locust spreads its wings and flies away.
3:17 Your princes are like grasshoppers, your scribes like clouds of locusts settling on the fences in a day of cold— when the sun rises, they fly away; no one knows where they are.
3:18 Your shepherds are asleep, O king of Assyria; your nobles slumber. Your people are scattered on the mountains with none to gather them.
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