1 Woe to those who issue wicked statutes, to the clerks who are forever writing out hardship,
2 turning the needy away from a fair hearing and robbing the poor among my people of their rights, so that widows become their prey and the fatherless their loot!
3 What will you do on the day of reckoning, when the storm of ruin comes from far away? To whom will you run for help, and where will you leave your riches?
4 Nothing remains but to cower among the captives or fall among the slain. Even so his anger has not turned back; his hand is still stretched out.
5 Woe to Assyria, rod of my anger! The club in their hand is my fury.
6 I send him against a godless nation; I give him orders against the people who provoke my wrath, to carry off plunder and seize loot and to tread them down like mud in the streets.
7 But this is not what he has in mind; this is not what his heart is planning. What is in his heart is to destroy, to cut off nations, and not just a few.
8 For he says, "Are not my officers kings, every one of them?
9 Has not Calno fared like Carchemish, Hamath like Arpad, Samaria like Damascus?
10 Since my hand has seized the kingdoms of the idols, whose images outnumbered those of Jerusalem and Samaria,
11 will I not treat Jerusalem and her idols the way I treated Samaria and her images?"
12 When the Lord has completed all his work on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, I will punish the king of Assyria for the fruit of his swollen heart and the glory of his lofty looks.
13 For he says, "I did this by the power of my own hand and by my own wisdom, because I am clever. I have moved the borders of nations and looted their stores; like a strong man I have toppled those who sat enthroned.
14 My hand reached into the riches of the peoples as into a nest; as one gathers up abandoned eggs, I gathered up the whole earth, and not one creature flapped a wing, opened its beak or let out a peep."
15 Can an axe brag against the man who swings it? Can a saw exalt itself over the one who pulls it? It would be as if a rod were to swing the hands that raise it, or a staff were to raise up one who is not wood!
16 So the Lord, the LORD of hosts, will send a wasting sickness on his well-fed warriors, and under his glory a fire will be lit, burning like a blaze.
17 The Light of Israel will turn into a fire, and his Holy One into a flame; in a single day it will burn up and consume his thorns and his briers.
18 It will destroy the splendor of his forest and his fertile fields, soul and body alike, and it will be like a sick man wasting away.
19 The trees left in his forest will be so few that a child could count them and write them down.
20 On that day the remnant of Israel and the survivors of the house of Jacob will never again rely on the one who struck them; they will truly rely on the LORD, the Holy One of Israel.
21 A remnant will return, the remnant of Jacob, to the Mighty God.
22 Though your people Israel are as many as the sand of the sea, only a remnant within them will return. Destruction has been decided, overflowing with righteousness.
23 The Lord GOD of hosts is about to carry out the destruction he has decided upon in the midst of the whole land.
24 So this is what the Lord GOD of hosts says: "My people living in Zion, do not fear the Assyrian, though he beats you with a rod and raises his staff against you the way Egypt did.
25 In just a very little while my fury will be spent, and my anger will turn to their destruction."
26 The LORD of hosts will lash him with a whip, as when he struck down Midian at the rock of Oreb; he will hold his staff out over the sea and raise it as he did in Egypt.
27 On that day his load will be lifted off your shoulder and his yoke off your neck, and the yoke will be broken because of the fatness.
28 He has reached Aiath and gone through Migron; at Michmash he stores his baggage.
29 They have gone through the pass: "We will camp tonight at Geba." Ramah shakes with fear; Gibeah of Saul has run away.
30 Scream out loud, daughter of Gallim! Hear it, Laishah! Poor Anathoth!
31 Madmenah is in flight; the people of Gebim are running for cover.
32 This very day he will stop at Nob and shake his fist at the mount of the daughter of Zion, the hill of Jerusalem.
33 Look, the Lord, the LORD of hosts, is about to hack off the branches with a dreadful crash; the highest trees will be felled, and the lofty ones will come down.
34 He will chop down the forest thickets with iron, and Lebanon will fall before the Mighty One.