Nahum 3

Woe to the Bloody City

1 Woe to the city of blood, full of lies and robbery, never running out of victims.

2 Crack of the whip, rumble of wheels, galloping horses, bouncing chariots.

3 Charging cavalry, flashing swords, gleaming spears, piles of slain, heaps of bodies, dead everywhere, they stumble over the corpses.

4 All because of the countless acts of prostitution of the seductive prostitute, the mistress of sorcery, who sold nations through her prostitution and peoples through her witchcraft.

Nineveh Exposed and Shamed

5 “Look, I am against you,” declares the LORD of armies. “I will lift your skirts over your face. I will show the nations your nakedness and the kingdoms your shame.

6 I will throw filth on you, disgrace you, and make you a spectacle.

7 Everyone who sees you will run from you and say, ‘Nineveh is devastated. Who will mourn for her, Where can I find anyone to comfort you,’”

8 Are you better than Thebes, sitting by the Nile with water around her, her rampart the sea, her wall made of water,

9 Cush and Egypt were her strength, Put and Libya were her allies.

10 Yet she too was exiled and went into captivity. Her infants were smashed at street corners. They cast lots for her nobles, and all her great men were chained.

Nineveh’s Fall Is Certain

11 You too will get drunk and hide. You too will look for refuge from the enemy.

12 All your fortresses are like fig trees with ripe fruit. When shaken, they fall straight into the eater’s mouth.

13 Look at your troops, they are like women in your midst. The gates of your land are wide open to your enemies. Fire devours your bars.

14 Draw water for the siege. Strengthen your fortresses. Go into the mud, tread the clay, grab the brick mold.

15 There the fire will consume you, the sword will cut you down. It will eat you like locusts. Multiply like locusts. Multiply like grasshoppers.

16 You increased your merchants more than the stars of the sky. The locust strips and flies away.

17 Your guards are like locusts, your officials like swarms of grasshoppers settling on walls on a cold day. When the sun rises, they fly off, and nobody knows where they went.

18 King of Assyria, your shepherds are asleep. Your nobles are lying down. Your people are scattered on the mountains with nobody to gather them.

19 There is no healing for your wound. Your injury is fatal. Everyone who hears the news about you claps their hands over you. For who has not felt your endless cruelty,