Nahum 3

3¹ Ah! City of bloodshed, utterly deceitful, full of booty- no end to the plunder! ² The crack of whip and rumble of wheel, galloping horse and bounding chariot! ³ Horsemen charging, flashing sword and glittering spear, piles of dead, heaps of corpses, dead bodies without end- they stumble over the bodies! ⁴ Because of the countless debaucheries of the prostitute, gracefully alluring, mistress of sorcery, who enslaves nations through her debaucheries, and peoples through her sorcery, ⁵ 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. ⁶ I will throw filth at you and treat you with contempt, and make you a spectacle. ⁷ Then all who see you will shrink from you and say, "Nineveh is devastated; who will bemoan her?" Where shall I seek comforters for you?

⁸ Are you better than Thebes that sat by the Nile, with water around her, her rampart a sea, water her wall? ⁹ Ethiopia was her strength, Egypt too, and that without limit; Put and the Libyans were her helpers. ¹⁰ Yet she became an exile, she went into captivity; even her infants were dashed in pieces at the head of every street; lots were cast for her nobles, all her dignitaries were bound in fetters. ¹¹ You also will be drunken, you will go into hiding; you will seek a refuge from the enemy. ¹² All your fortresses are like fig trees with first-ripe figs- if shaken they fall into the mouth of the eater. ¹³ Look at your troops: they are women in your midst. The gates of your land are wide open to your foes; fire has devoured the bars of your gates. ¹⁴ Draw water for the siege, strengthen your forts; trample the clay, tread the mortar, take hold of the brick mold! ¹⁵ There the fire will devour you, the sword will cut you off. It will devour you like the locust. Multiply yourselves like the locust, multiply like the grasshopper! ¹⁶ You increased your merchants more than the stars of the heavens. The locust sheds its skin and flies away. ¹⁷ Your guards are like grasshoppers, your scribes like swarms of locusts settling on the fences on a cold day- when the sun rises, they fly away; no one knows where they have gone. ¹⁸ Your shepherds are asleep, O king of Assyria; your nobles slumber. Your people are scattered on the mountains with no one to gather them. ¹⁹ There is no assuaging your hurt, your wound is mortal. All who hear the news about you clap their hands over you. For who has ever escaped your endless cruelty?