Read the Bible

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

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 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.

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—
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;
⁶ I will pelt you with filth;
I will treat you with contempt;
I will make you a public spectacle.
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!"

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.
⁹ Cush and Egypt had limitless strength;
Put and the Libyans were among her allies.
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.
¹¹ You too will act like drunkards;
you will go into hiding;
you too will seek refuge from the enemy.

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!
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.
¹⁴ Draw yourselves water for a siege!
Strengthen your fortifications!
Trample the mud and tread the clay!
Make mud bricks to strengthen your walls!
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!
¹⁶ Increase your merchants more than the stars of heaven!
They are like the young locust which sheds its skin and flies away.
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.

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!
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!