Nahum, 3

1. Woe to the bloody city, city of lies and booty, O city of unending plunder!

2. But what! Crack of whips, rumble of wheels and clatter of hoofs!

3. See the frenzied chargers, the flashing swords and glittering spears, the heaps of the wounded, the dead and dying - we trip over corpses!

4. The harlot is paying for her harlotries, her deadly charms, her sorceries. She traded nations with her prostitutions and caught peoples by her spells.

5. "I am against you," Yahweh Sabaoth says. "I will lift your skirts over your face. I will show the nations your nakedness and the kingdoms your disgrace.

6. I will pelt you with filth, I will treat you with contempt and make of you a shameful show,

7. so that all who look on you will turn their backs in disgust and say: Nineveh - a city of lust - is in ruins. Who will mourn for her? Where can we find one to comfort her?

8. Are you any better than Thebes by the Nile, surrounded by water, her rampart the river, and the water her wall?

9. Ethiopia and Egypt were her stay, Put and Libya were her allies,

10. yet she was carried away and held captive among the exiles. Her infants were dashed to pieces at the head of every road; lots were cast for her nobles, her great men bound in chains.

11. You, too, shall drink of this: you will also hide from your enemies.

12. Your fortresses are like fig trees laden with early-ripening fruits which fall, when shaken, into the waiting mouths.

13. Look at your braves - they are like women! Your gates are wide open, the bars consumed by fire, and the enemies freely enter.

14. Brace yourselves for the siege: draw water, strengthen the bulwark, tread the clay and the mortar and repair the brickwork.

15. There the fire will devour you and the sword will cut you down though you were numerous as locusts, beyond count like grasshoppers.

16. You had multiplied your merchants more than the stars of the sky;

17. like grasshoppers were your officials and your soldiers like swarms of locusts which settle on the walls on a cold day. But the sun appears, they fly away and they are gone, no one knows where.

18. O king of Assyria, your shepherds slumber, your nobles lie down fast asleep, while over the mountains your people scatter, and there is no one to gather them up.

19. Nothing can heal your wounds; your injury is fatal. All clap their hands when they hear about your fall. for who has not suffered constantly the plague of your cruelty?