The Book of the Prophet Nahum 3 The Crimes of Nineveh: Its Inevitable Ruin

 The Book of the Prophet Nahum 3

The Crimes of Nineveh: Its Inevitable Ruin

1 Woe to the bloody city! It is full of lies and plunder! Robbery never departs from it.

2 There is a din of whips, and the thunder of wheels; horses trample, chariots leap.

3 The horseman raises his flaming sword and his flashing spear; there will be a multitude of slain, a multitude of corpses, and the dead will have no end; they will stumble over their bodies.

4 Because of the multitude of sins of the very gracious harlot, the mistress of witchcraft, who sold the peoples with her pleasures, and the generations with her witchcrafts.

5 Behold, I am against you, says the Lord of hosts, and I will expose you to your face, and I will show your nakedness to the nations, and your shame to the kingdoms.

6 I will bring abominations upon you, and I will shame you, and make you a spectacle.

7 And it shall come to pass, that all who see you shall flee from you, and shall say, Nineveh is destroyed; who will have pity on her? Whence shall I seek comforters for you?

8 Are you better than No-Ammon, which is situated between the rivers, surrounded by waters, having the sea as its rampart, and the sea as its wall?

9 Ethiopia and Egypt were her strength, and she had no end; Put and Libya were her help.

10 Yet she was carried away, she went into captivity; her children also were dashed to pieces on the tops of all the streets, and lots were cast for her nobles, and all her great men were bound with fetters.

11 You also shall be drunk, and shall hide yourself; you also shall seek strength because of the enemy.

12 All your fortresses will be like fig trees with ripe figs; when shaken, they fall into the mouth of the one who is to eat them.

13 Behold, your people in your midst will be like women; the gates of your land will be wide open to your enemies; fire will consume your bars.

14 Draw water for the siege, fortify your fortresses, go into the mud, and tread the clay, repair the kiln for the bricks.

15 There the fire will consume you, the sword will exterminate you; it will consume you like the locust; multiply like the locust, multiply like the grasshoppers.

16 You have multiplied your merchants more than the stars of the sky; the locust will spread and fly away.

17 Your crowned ones are like locusts, and your princes like great grasshoppers, which encamp in hedges on cold days; when the sun rises they fly away, and no one knows where they are.

18 Your shepherds will slumber, O king of Assyria; your nobles will lie down, your people will be scattered on the mountains, with no one to gather them.

19 There is no healing for your wound; your injury is grievous: all who hear of your fame will clap their hands over you; for upon whom has not your wickedness continually come?