3
1 Hoy (woe) to the ir damim (bloody city)!
It is all full of lies and booty;
no end to the plunder;
2 The crack of the shot (whip),
and the noise of the rattling of the wheels,
and of the prancing susim,
and of the jolting merkavah (chariot);
3 The parash (horsemen, cavalry) charging,
the flash of the cherev and the glittering spear;
and there is a multitude of slain, and a great number of dead bodies;
and there is no end of their geviyot (corpses);
they stumble over their geviyot;
4 Because of the multitude of the harlotries of the alluring zonah,
the ba'alat keshafim (the mistress of sorceries),
that enslaveth Goyim through her prostitutions,
and mishpochot through her keshafim;
5 Hineni, I am against thee, saith Hashem Tzva'os;
and I will lift thy skirts over thy faces,
and I will show the Goyim thy nakedness,
and the mamlachot thy shame.
6 And I (Hashem) will cast abominable filth upon thee,
and make thee contemptibly vile, and will make thee a spectacle.
7 And it shall come to pass, that all they that look upon thee
shall flee from thee, and say:
Nineveh is in ruins; who will bemoan her?
From where shall I seek menachamim (comforters) for thee?
8 Art thou better than No Amon (Thebes),
that was situated on the Nile, that had the mayim round about it,
whose rampart was the yam, and her waters were her chomah?
9 Ethiopia and Mitzrayim were her strength, and it was boundless;
Put and Luvim (Libya) were her allies.
10 Yet she went into golus,
she went into captivity;
her olalim also were dashed in pieces
at the head of all the streets;
and they cast goral (lots) for her honorable men,
and all her gedolim were bound in chains.
11 Thou also shalt be drunken, thou shalt be hid,
thou also shalt seek maoz from the enemy.
12 All thy strongholds shall be like te'enim (fig trees) with the first ripe figs;
if they be shaken,
they shall even fall into the peh (mouth) of the ochel (eater).
13 Hinei, thy troops in the midst of thee are nashim (women);
the gates of thy land
shall be set wide open unto thine enemies;
the eish shall devour thy (gate) bars.
14 Draw thee water for the matzor (siege),
fortify thy strongholds,
go unto clay, and tread the mortar,
repair the brickwork.
15 There shall the eish devour thee,
the cherev shall consume thee,
it shall eat thee up like the grasshopper.
Make thyself many as the grasshopper,
make thyself many as the arbeh (locust).
16 Thou hast multiplied thy merchants more than the kokhavim of HaShomayim;
but, like the locust, they strip the land, then fly away.
17 Thy commanders are as the swarming locusts,
and thy officials as the great grasshoppers,
which camp in the hedges on a cold day,
but when the shemesh ariseth they flee away,
and their place is whereabouts unknown.
18 Thy ro'im (shepherds) slumber, O melech of Ashur (Assyria);
thy nobles sleep;
thy people are scattered upon the mountains,
and no man gathereth them.
19 There is no healing of thy shever (fracture, injury);
thy wound is grievous;
all that hear the news of thee
shall clap their hands over thy fall;
for upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed tamid (continually)?