NETtext - Nahum - 3

3:1  Woe to the city guilty of bloodshed! She is full of lies; she is filled with plunder; she has hoarded her spoil!

3:2  The chariot drivers will crack their whips; the chariot wheels will shake the ground; the chariot horses will gallop; the war chariots will bolt forward!

3:3  The charioteers will charge ahead; their swords will flash and their spears will glimmer! There will be many people slain; there will be piles of the dead, and countless casualties - so many that people will stumble over the corpses.

3:4  "Because you have acted like a wanton prostitute - a seductive mistress who practices sorcery, who enslaves nations by her harlotry, and entices peoples by her sorcery -

3:5  I am against you," declares the LORD who commands armies. "I will strip off your clothes! I will show your nakedness to the nations and your shame to the kingdoms;

3:6  I will pelt you with filth; I will treat you with contempt; I will make you a public spectacle.

3:7  Everyone who sees you will turn away from you in disgust; they will say, 'Nineveh has been devastated! Who will lament for her?' There will be no one to comfort you!"

3:8  You are no more secure than Thebes - she was located on the banks of the Nile; the waters surrounded her, her rampart was the sea, the water was her wall.

3:9  Cush and Egypt had limitless strength; Put and the Libyans were among her allies.

3:10  Yet she went into captivity as an exile; even her infants were smashed to pieces at the head of every street. They cast lots for her nobility; all her dignitaries were bound with chains.

3:11  You too will act like drunkards; you will go into hiding; you too will seek refuge from the enemy.

3:12  All your fortifications will be like fig trees with first-ripe fruit: If they are shaken, their figs will fall into the mouth of the eater!

3:13  Your warriors will be like women in your midst; the gates of your land will be wide open to your enemies; fire will consume the bars of your gates.

3:14  Draw yourselves water for a siege! Strengthen your fortifications! Trample the mud and tread the clay! Make mud bricks to strengthen your walls!

3:15  There the fire will consume you; the sword will cut you down; it will devour you like the young locust would. Multiply yourself like the young locust; multiply yourself like the flying locust!

3:16  Increase your merchants more than the stars of heaven! They are like the young locust which sheds its skin and flies away.

3:17  Your courtiers are like locusts, your officials are like a swarm of locusts! They encamp in the walls on a cold day, yet when the sun rises, they fly away; and no one knows where they are.

3:18  Your shepherds are sleeping, O king of Assyria! Your officers are slumbering! Your people are scattered like sheep on the mountains and there is no one to regather them!

3:19  Your destruction is like an incurable wound; your demise is like a fatal injury! All who hear what has happened to you will clap their hands for joy, for no one ever escaped your endless cruelty!