1 A shatterer has come up to face you. Keep watch on the fortress; post a lookout on the road; gird your waist; muster all your might.
2 For the LORD will bring back Jacob's splendor, like Israel's splendor, since robbers have stripped them bare and destroyed their vines.
3 His warriors' shields are dyed red; his fighting men are dressed in crimson; the chariots gleam like fire of steel on the day he makes ready, and the spears of cypress are shaken.
4 Through the streets the chariots charge wildly; they jostle one another in the squares; they look like blazing torches; they flash about like lightning.
5 He summons his nobles; they trip as they advance; they hurry to her wall, and the mantelet is put in place.
6 The sluice gates of the rivers are thrown open, and the palace collapses.
7 It is decreed: she is exposed and hauled away, while her slave women moan like the cooing of doves and beat their breasts.
8 Nineveh has been like a pool of water all her days, and now they run off. "Stand! Stand!" — but no one turns around.
9 Take the silver! Take the gold! The hoard is endless, riches of every costly kind.
10 Emptied, plundered, stripped! Hearts dissolve, knees knock together, every waist is gripped with pain, and every face turns pale.
11 What has become of the lions' lair, the place where young lions fed, where lion and lioness prowled with the cub, and nobody disturbed them?
12 The lion killed plenty for his whelps and throttled game for his mates, and he crammed his lairs with kills and his dens with mangled flesh.
13 Here I am against you, declares the LORD of hosts: I will send her chariots up in smoke, the sword will eat up your young lions, I will wipe your prey off the earth, and never again will your envoys' voice be heard.