1A scatterer has come up against your face. Guard the fortress, watch the road, brace your loins, muster your strength greatly!
2For Yahweh is restoring the majesty of Jacob like the majesty of Israel, though plunderers have plundered them and ruined their vine-branches.
3The shield of his warriors is reddened, the men of valor are clothed in scarlet; the iron fittings of the chariots flash like fire on the day he prepares them, and the cypress spears are brandished.
4In the streets the chariots race madly, they dash to and fro in the squares; their appearance is like torches, they dart like lightning bolts.
5He remembers his nobles; they stumble in their march. They hasten to its wall, and the mantelet is set up.
6The gates of the rivers are opened, and the palace melts away.
7It is decreed: she is stripped, she is carried off; her maidservants moan like the sound of doves, beating upon their hearts.
8Nineveh is like a pool of water, from her earliest days; yet they are fleeing. “Stop! Stop!”—but no one turns back.
9Plunder the silver! Plunder the gold! There is no end to the store, the splendor from all the precious vessels.
10Emptiness and desolation and devastation! The heart melts and knees give way, anguish is in all loins, and the faces of all of them grow pale.
11Where is the lair of the lions, the feeding place of the young lions, where the lion, the lioness, went, where the lion’s cub was, with none to make them afraid?
12The lion tore enough for his cubs and strangled prey for his lionesses; he filled his caves with prey and his dens with torn flesh.
13“Behold, I am against you,” declares Yahweh of hosts, “and I will burn your chariots in smoke, and the sword will devour your young lions; I will cut off your prey from the earth, and the voice of your messengers will no longer be heard.”
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