Nahum 3:8-19

⁸ Are you better than No-amon, seated on the Nile streams, with waters all round her; whose wall was the sea and her earthwork the waters? ⁹ Ethiopia was her strength and Egyptians without number; Put and Lubim were her helpers. ¹⁰ But even she has been taken away, she has gone away as a prisoner: even her young children are smashed to bits at the top of all the streets: the fate of her honoured men is put to the decision of chance, and all her great men are put in chains. ¹¹ And you will be overcome with wine, you will become feeble; you will be looking for a safe place from those who are fighting against you. ¹² All your walled places will be like fig-trees and your people like the first figs, falling at a shake into the mouth which is open for them. ¹³ See, the people who are in you are women; the doorways of your land are wide open to your attackers: the locks of your doors have been burned away in the fire. ¹⁴ Get water for the time when you are shut in, make strong your towns: go into the potter's earth, stamping it down with your feet, make strong the brickworks. ¹⁵ There the fire will make you waste; you will be cut off by the sword: make yourself as great in number as the worms, as great in number as the locusts. ¹⁶ Let your traders be increased more than the stars of heaven: ¹⁷ Your crowned ones are like the locusts, and your scribes like the clouds of insects which take cover in the walls on a cold day, but when the sun comes up they go in flight, and are seen no longer in their place. ¹⁸ Sorrow! how are the keepers of your flock sleeping, O king of Assyria! your strong men are at rest; your people are wandering on the mountains, and there is no one to get them together. ¹⁹ Your pain may not be made better; you are wounded to death: all those hearing the news about you will be waving their hands in joy over you: for who has not undergone the weight of your evil-doing again and again?