Nahum 3:1-19
3 Ha, bloody city, all trickery, full of prey, never without a kill!
2 Hark, a sound of whips, a sound of wheels jarring, and galloping ponies and jumping chariot!
3 * rearing horse and flame of sword and lightning of spear and multitudes of dying and masses of corpses; there is no end of the bodies, they stumble on the bodies,
4 * for the multitudinous debaucheries of the handsome prostitute, mistress of witchcraft, who blotted out nations with her debaucheries and clans with her witchcraft.
5 Have at you, quoth Jehovah! I will turn your skirts up over your face and let nations see your nakedness and clans your ignominy,
6 and I will throw carrion over you and make you an object of disdain and a spectacle.
7 * And everyone that sees you shall make off, and say “Nineveh is smitten! who is to lament her? where shall I look for comforters for you?”
8 * Are you to be better than Amon’s Thebes, seated on the branching Nile with water around her, whose wall was a bulwark of sea, consisted of sea;
9 whose forces the Nubians were, and the Egyptians, no end of them; whose auxiliaries were Put and the Libyans?
10 She too went to slavery in exile; she too had children’s brains dashed out at every street-end, and over her aristocrats they threw lots and all her great men were chained in fetters.
11 You too shall overdrink and be stupefied; you too shall hunt for a refuge from an enemy.
12 All your fortresses are trees with rareripe figs, if they are shaken they drop into an eater’s mouth;
13 you find your people women in you; the gates of your country are thrown open to your enemies, fire has consumed your bars.
14 Draw yourself water for a siege; strengthen your fortresses; get into the mud and trample clay, handle a brick-mold;
15 * there fire will consume you, swords will make an end of you, they will eat you up like marching grasshoppers.
16 * Come on in masses like marching grasshoppers, come on in masses like flying grasshoppers; you have drawn more traders than there are stars in the sky—the hoppers cast their skins and take wing.
17 Your policemen are like grasshoppers and your clerks like young grasshoppers that camp in the hedges on a cold day; the sun is up and off they go, and there is no knowing what place they were in.
18 * Your shepherds are drowsy, king of Assyria, your heroes are asleep; your people are scattered over the mountains with no one to draw them together.
19 * There is no healing for your broken bones; your wound is gangrened; all who hear about you will clap their hands over you—for over whom has not your vileness taken its course continually?
Footnotes
^ 3:3 Codd. on their bodies
^ 3:4 Codd. who sold nations
^ 3:7 Or who will condole with her
^ 3:8 Conj. Nile, around her a bulwark of sea, water her wall, her forces the Nubians and the Egyptians too, no end of them, her auxiliaries Put and
^ 3:15-16 Susp.
^ 3:16 Or make their raid and take wing
^ 3:18 Conj. to omit king of Assyria
^ 3:19 Or your wound is a paralyzing one
