Bible in 90 Days

¹¹ “Then, at that time I will rebuild the City of David, which is now lying in ruins, and return it to its former glory, ¹² and Israel will possess what is left of Edom and of all the nations that belong to me.” For so the Lord, who plans it all, has said.

¹³ “The time will come when there will be such abundance of crops that the harvesttime will scarcely end before the farmer starts again to sow another crop, and the terraces of grapes upon the hills of Israel will drip sweet wine! ¹⁴ I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel, and they will rebuild their ruined cities and live in them again; they will plant vineyards and gardens; they will eat their crops and drink their wine. ¹⁵ I will firmly plant them there upon the land that I have given them; they shall not be pulled up again,” says the Lord your God.

¹ In a vision the Lord God showed Obadiah the future of the land of Edom.^[a]

“A report has come from the Lord,” he said, “that God has sent an ambassador to the nations with this message: ‘Attention! You are to send your armies against Edom and destroy her!’”

² “I will cut you down to size among the nations, Edom, making you small and despised.

³ “You are proud because you live in those high, inaccessible cliffs. ‘Who can ever reach us way up here!’ you boast. Don’t fool yourselves! ⁴ Though you soar as high as eagles, and build your nest among the stars, I will bring you plummeting down,” says the Lord.

⁵ “Far better it would be for you if thieves had come at night to plunder you—for they would not take everything! Or if your vineyards were robbed of all their fruit—for at least the gleanings would be left! ⁶ Every nook and cranny will be searched and robbed, and every treasure found and taken.

⁷ “All your allies will turn against you and help to push you out of your land. They will promise peace while plotting your destruction. Your trusted friends will set traps for you, and all your counterstrategy will fail. ⁸ In that day not one wise man will be left in all of Edom!” says the Lord. “For I will fill the wise men of Edom with stupidity. ⁹ The mightiest soldiers of Teman will be confused, and helpless to prevent the slaughter.

¹⁰ “And why? Because of what you did to your brother Israel. Now your sins will be exposed for all to see; ashamed and defenseless, you will be cut off forever. ¹¹ For you deserted Israel in his time of need. You stood aloof, refusing to lift a finger to help him when invaders carried off his wealth and divided Jerusalem among them by lot; you were as one of his enemies.

¹² “You should not have done it. You should not have gloated when they took him far away to foreign lands; you should not have rejoiced in the day of his misfortune; you should not have mocked in his time of need. ¹³ You yourselves went into the land of Israel in the day of his calamity and looted him. You made yourselves rich at his expense. ¹⁴ You stood at the crossroads and killed those trying to escape; you captured the survivors and returned them to their enemies in that terrible time of his distress.

¹⁵ The Lord’s vengeance will soon fall upon all Gentile nations. As you have done to Israel, so will it be done to you. Your acts will boomerang upon your heads. ¹⁶ You drank my cup of punishment upon my holy mountain, and the nations round about will drink it too; yes, they will drink and stagger back and disappear from history, no longer nations anymore.

¹⁷ “But Jerusalem will become a refuge, a way of escape. Israel will reoccupy the land. ¹⁸ Israel will be a fire that sets the dry fields of Edom aflame. There will be no survivors,” for the Lord has spoken.

¹⁹ Then my people who live in the Negeb shall occupy the hill country of Edom; those living in Judean lowlands shall possess the Philistine plains and repossess the fields of Ephraim and Samaria. And the people of Benjamin shall possess Gilead.

²⁰ The Israeli exiles shall return and occupy the Phoenician coastal strip as far north as Zarephath. Those exiled in Asia Minor shall return to their homeland and conquer the Negeb’s outlying villages. ²¹ For deliverers will come to Jerusalem and rule all Edom. And the Lord shall be King!

1 The Lord sent this message to Jonah, the son of Amittai:

² “Go to the great city of Nineveh, and give them this announcement from the Lord: ‘I am going to destroy you, for your wickedness rises before me; it smells to highest heaven.’”

³ But Jonah was afraid to go and ran away from the Lord. He went down to the seacoast, to the port of Joppa, where he found a ship leaving for Tarshish. He bought a ticket, went on board, and climbed down into the dark hold of the ship to hide there from the Lord.

⁴ But as the ship was sailing along, suddenly the Lord flung a terrific wind over the sea, causing a great storm that threatened to send them to the bottom. ⁵ Fearing for their lives, the desperate sailors shouted to their gods for help and threw the cargo overboard to lighten the ship. And all this time Jonah was sound asleep down in the hold.

⁶ So the captain went down after him. “What do you mean,” he roared, “sleeping at a time like this? Get up and cry to your god, and see if he will have mercy on us and save us!”

⁷ Then the crew decided to draw straws to see which of them had offended the gods and caused this terrible storm; and Jonah drew the short one.

⁸ “What have you done,” they asked, “to bring this awful storm upon us? Who are you? What is your work? What country are you from? What is your nationality?”

^9-10 And he said, “I am a Jew;^[b] I worship Jehovah, the God of heaven, who made the earth and sea.” Then he told them he was running away from the Lord.

The men were terribly frightened when they heard this. “Oh, why did you do it?” they shouted. ¹¹ “What should we do to you to stop the storm?” For it was getting worse and worse.

¹² “Throw me out into the sea,” he said, “and it will become calm again. For I know this terrible storm has come because of me.”

¹³ They tried harder to row the boat ashore, but couldn’t make it. The storm was too fierce to fight against. ¹⁴ Then they shouted out a prayer to Jehovah, Jonah’s God. “O Jehovah,” they pleaded, “don’t make us die for this man’s sin, and don’t hold us responsible for his death, for it is not our fault—you have sent this storm upon him for your own good reasons.”

¹⁵ Then they picked up Jonah and threw him overboard into the raging sea—and the storm stopped!

¹⁶ The men stood there in awe before Jehovah, and they sacrificed to him and vowed to serve him.

¹⁷ Now the Lord had arranged for a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was inside the fish three days and three nights.

2 Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from inside the fish:

² “In my great trouble I cried to the Lord and he answered me; from the depths of death I called, and Lord, you heard me! ³ You threw me into the ocean depths; I sank down into the floods of waters and was covered by your wild and stormy waves. ⁴ Then I said, ‘O Lord, you have rejected me and cast me away. How shall I ever again see your holy Temple?’

⁵ “I sank beneath the waves, and death was very near. The waters closed above me; the seaweed wrapped itself around my head. ⁶ I went down to the bottoms of the mountains that rise from the ocean floor. I was locked out of life and imprisoned in the land of death. But, O Lord my God, you have snatched me from the yawning jaws of death!

⁷ “When I had lost all hope, I turned my thoughts once more to the Lord. And my earnest prayer went to you in your holy Temple. ⁸ (Those who worship false gods have turned their backs on all the mercies waiting for them from the Lord!)

⁹ “I will never worship anyone but you! For how can I thank you enough for all you have done? I will surely fulfill my promises. For my deliverance comes from the Lord alone.”

¹⁰ And the Lord ordered the fish to spit up Jonah on the beach, and it did.

3 ^1-2 Then the Lord spoke to Jonah again: “Go to that great city, Nineveh,” he said, “and warn them of their doom, as I told you to before!”

³ So Jonah obeyed and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very large city with many villages around it—so large that it would take three days to walk through it.^[c]

^4-5 But the very first day when Jonah entered the city and began to preach, the people repented. Jonah shouted to the crowds that gathered around him, “Forty days from now Nineveh will be destroyed!” And they believed him and declared a fast; from the king on down, everyone put on sackcloth—the rough, coarse garments worn at times of mourning.^[d]

⁶ For when the king of Nineveh heard what Jonah was saying, he stepped down from his throne, laid aside his royal robes, put on sackcloth, and sat in ashes. ⁷ And the king and his nobles sent this message throughout the city: “Let no one, not even the animals, eat anything at all, nor even drink any water. ⁸ Everyone must wear sackcloth and cry mightily to God, and let everyone turn from his evil ways, from his violence and robbing. ⁹ Who can tell? Perhaps even yet God will decide to let us live and will hold back his fierce anger from destroying us.”

¹⁰ And when God saw that they had put a stop to their evil ways, he abandoned his plan to destroy them and didn’t carry it through.

4 This change of plans made Jonah very angry. ² He complained to the Lord about it: “This is exactly what I thought you’d do, Lord, when I was there in my own country and you first told me to come here. That’s why I ran away to Tarshish. For I knew you were a gracious God, merciful, slow to get angry, and full of kindness; I knew how easily you could cancel your plans for destroying these people.

³ “Please kill me, Lord; I’d rather be dead than alive when nothing that I told them happens.^[e]”

⁴ Then the Lord said, “Is it right to be angry about this?”

⁵ So Jonah went out and sat sulking^[f] on the east side of the city, and he made a leafy shelter to shade him as he waited there to see if anything would happen to the city. ⁶ And when the leaves of the shelter withered in the heat, the Lord arranged for a vine to grow up quickly and spread its broad leaves over Jonah’s head to shade him. This made him comfortable and very grateful.

⁷ But God also prepared a worm! The next morning the worm ate through the stem of the plant, so that it withered away and died.

⁸ Then when the sun was hot, God ordered a scorching east wind to blow on Jonah, and the sun beat down upon his head until he grew faint and wished to die. For he said, “Death is better than this!”

⁹ And God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry because the plant died?”

“Yes,” Jonah said, “it is; it is right for me to be angry enough to die!”

¹⁰ Then the Lord said, “You feel sorry for yourself when your shelter is destroyed, though you did no work to put it there, and it is, at best, short-lived. ¹¹ And why shouldn’t I feel sorry for a great city like Nineveh with its 120,000 people in utter spiritual darkness^[g] and all its cattle?”

1 These are messages from the Lord to Micah, who lived in the town of Moresheth during the reigns of King Jotham, King Ahaz, and King Hezekiah, all kings of Judah. The messages were addressed to both Samaria and Judah and came to Micah in the form of visions.

² Attention! Let all the peoples of the world listen. For the Lord in his holy Temple has made accusations against you!

³ Look! He is coming! He leaves his throne in heaven and comes to earth, walking on the mountaintops. ⁴ They melt beneath his feet and flow into the valleys like wax in fire, like water pouring down a hill.

⁵ And why is this happening? Because of the sins of Israel and Judah. What sins? The idolatry and oppression centering in the capital cities, Samaria and Jerusalem!

⁶ Therefore, the entire city of Samaria will crumble into a heap of rubble and become an open field, her streets plowed up for planting grapes! The Lord will tear down her wall and her forts, exposing their foundations, and pour their stones into the valleys below. ⁷ All her carved images will be smashed to pieces; her ornate idol temples, built with the gifts of worshipers, will all be burned.^[h]

⁸ I will wail and lament, howling as a jackal, mournful as an ostrich crying across the desert sands at night. I will walk naked and barefoot in sorrow and shame; ⁹ for my people’s wound is far too deep to heal. The Lord stands ready at Jerusalem’s gates to punish her. ¹⁰ Woe to the city of Gath. Weep, men of Bakah. In Beth-leaphrah roll in the dust in your anguish and shame. ¹¹ There go the people of Shaphir,^[i] led away as slaves—stripped, naked and ashamed. The people of Zaanan dare not show themselves outside their walls. The foundations of Beth-ezel are swept away—the very ground on which it stood. ¹² The people of Maroth vainly hope for better days, but only bitterness awaits them as the Lord stands poised against Jerusalem.

¹³ Quick! Use your swiftest chariots and flee, O people of Lachish, for you were the first of the cities of Judah to follow Israel in her sin of idol worship. Then all the cities of the south began to follow your example.

¹⁴ Write off Moresheth^[j] of Gath; there is no hope of saving her. The town of Achzib has deceived the kings of Israel, for she promised help she cannot give. ¹⁵ You people of Mareshah will be a prize to your enemies. They will penetrate to Adullam, the “Pride of Israel.”

¹⁶ Weep, weep for your little ones. For they are snatched away, and you will never see them again. They have gone as slaves to distant lands. Shave your heads in sorrow.

2 Woe to you who lie awake at night, plotting wickedness; you rise at dawn to carry out your schemes; because you can, you do. ² You want a certain piece of land or someone else’s house (though it is all he has); you take it by fraud and threats and violence.

³ But the Lord God says, “I will reward your evil with evil; nothing can stop me; never again will you be proud and haughty after I am through with you. ⁴ Then your enemies will taunt you and mock your dirge of despair: ‘We are finished, ruined. God has confiscated our land and sent us far away; he has given what is ours to others.’” ⁵ Others will set your boundaries then. “The People of the Lord” will live where they are sent.

⁶ “Don’t say such things,” the people say. “Don’t harp on things like that. It’s disgraceful, that sort of talk. Such evils surely will not come our way.”

⁷ Is that the right reply for you to make, O House of Jacob? Do you think the Spirit of the Lord likes to talk to you so roughly? No! His threats are for your good, to get you on the path again.

⁸ Yet to this very hour my people rise against me. For you steal the shirts right off the backs of those who trusted you, who walk in peace.

⁹ You have driven out the widows from their homes and stripped their children of every God-given right. ¹⁰ Up! Begone! This is no more your land and home, for you have filled it with sin, and it will vomit you out.

¹¹ “I’ll preach to you the joys of wine and drink”—that is the kind of drunken, lying prophet that you like!

¹² “The time will come, O Israel, when I will gather you—all that are left—and bring you together again like sheep in a fold, like a flock in a pasture—a noisy, happy crowd. ¹³ The Messiah^[k] will lead you out of exile and bring you through the gates of your cities of captivity, back to your own land. Your King will go before you—the Lord leads on.”

3 Listen, you leaders of Israel—you are supposed to know right from wrong, ² yet you are the very ones who hate good and love evil; you skin my people and strip them to the bone.

³ You devour them, flog them, break their bones, and chop them up like meat for the cooking pot— ⁴ and then you plead with the Lord for his help in times of trouble! Do you really expect him to listen? He will look the other way! ⁵ You false prophets! You who lead his people astray! You who cry “Peace” to those who give you food and threaten those who will not pay!

This is God’s message to you: ⁶ “The night will close about you and cut off all your visions; darkness will cover you with never a word from God. The sun will go down upon you, and your day will end. ⁷ Then at last you will cover your faces in shame and admit that your messages were not from God.”

⁸ But as for me, I am filled with power, with the Spirit of the Lord, fearlessly announcing God’s punishment on Israel for her sins.

⁹ Listen to me, you leaders of Israel who hate justice and love unfairness ¹⁰ and fill Jerusalem with murder and sin of every kind— ¹¹ you leaders who take bribes; you priests and prophets who won’t preach and prophesy until you’re paid. (And yet you fawn upon the Lord and say, “All is well—the Lord is here among us. No harm can come to us.”) ¹² It is because of you that Jerusalem will be plowed like a field and become a heap of rubble; the mountaintop where the Temple stands will be overgrown with brush.

4 But in the last days Mount Zion will be the most renowned of all the mountains of the world, praised by all nations; people from all over the world will make pilgrimages there.

² “Come,” they will say to one another, “let us visit the mountain of the Lord, and see the Temple of the God of Israel; he will tell us what to do, and we will do it.” For in those days the whole world will be ruled by the Lord from Jerusalem! He will issue his laws and announce his decrees from there.

³ He will arbitrate among the nations and dictate to strong nations far away. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nations shall no longer fight each other, for all war will end. There will be universal peace, and all the military academies and training camps will be closed down.

⁴ Everyone will live quietly in his own home in peace and prosperity, for there will be nothing to fear. The Lord himself has promised this. ⁵ (Therefore we will follow the Lord our God forever and ever, even though all the nations around us worship idols!)

⁶ In that coming day, the Lord says that he will bring back his punished people—sick and lame and dispossessed— ⁷ and make them strong again in their own land, a mighty nation, and the Lord himself shall be their King from Mount Zion forever. ⁸ O Jerusalem—the Watchtower of God’s people—your royal might and power will come back to you again, just as before.

⁹ But for now, you scream in terror. Where is your king to lead you? He is dead! Where are your wise men? All are gone! Pain has gripped you like a woman in labor. ¹⁰ Writhe and groan in your terrible pain, O people of Zion, for you must leave this city and live in the fields; you will be sent far away into exile in Babylon. But there I will rescue you and free you from the grip of your enemies.

¹¹ True, many nations have gathered together against you, calling for your blood, eager to destroy you. ¹² But they do not know the thoughts of the Lord nor understand his plan, for the time will come when the Lord will gather together the enemies of his people like sheaves upon the threshing floor, helpless before Israel.

¹³ Rise, thresh, O daughter of Zion; I will give you horns of iron and hoofs of brass; you will trample to pieces many people, and you will give their wealth as offerings to the Lord, the Lord of all the earth.

5 Mobilize! The enemy lays siege to Jerusalem! With a rod they shall strike the Judge of Israel on the face.

² “O Bethlehem Ephrathah, you are but a small Judean village, yet you will be the birthplace of my King who is alive from everlasting ages past!” ³ God will abandon his people to their enemies until she who is to give birth has her son; then at last his fellow countrymen—the exile remnants of Israel—will rejoin their brethren in their own land.

⁴ And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God, and his people shall remain there undisturbed, for he will be greatly honored all around the world. ⁵ He will be our Peace. And when the Assyrian^[l] invades our land and marches across our hills, he will appoint seven shepherds to watch over us, eight princes to lead us. ⁶ They will rule Assyria with drawn swords and enter the gates of the land of Nimrod. He will deliver us from the Assyrians when they invade our land.

⁷ Then the nation of Israel will refresh the world like a gentle dew or the welcome showers of rain, ⁸ and Israel will be as strong as a lion. The nations will be like helpless sheep before her! ⁹ She will stand up to her foes; all her enemies will be wiped out.

¹⁰ “At that same time,” says the Lord, “I will destroy all the weapons you depend on, ¹¹ tear down your walls, and demolish the defenses of your cities. ¹² I will put an end to all witchcraft—there will be no more fortune-tellers to consult— ¹³ and destroy all your idols. Never again will you worship what you have made, ¹⁴ for I will abolish the heathen shrines from among you, and destroy the cities where your idol temples stand.

¹⁵ “I will pour out my vengeance upon the nations who refuse to obey me.”

6 Listen to what the Lord is saying to his people:

“Stand up and state your case against me. Let the mountains and hills be called to witness your complaint.

² “And now, O mountains, listen to the Lord’s complaint! For he has a case against his people Israel! He will prosecute them to the full. ³ O my people, what have I done that makes you turn away from me? Tell me why your patience is exhausted! Answer me! ⁴ For I brought you out of Egypt and cut your chains of slavery. I gave you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam to help you.

⁵ “Don’t you remember, O my people, how Balak, king of Moab, tried to destroy you through the curse of Balaam, son of Beor, but I made him bless you instead? That is the kindness I showed you again and again. Have you no memory at all of what happened at Acacia and Gilgal and how I blessed you there?”

⁶ “How can we make up to you for what we’ve done?” you ask. “Shall we bow before the Lord with offerings of yearling calves?”

Oh no! ⁷ For if you offered him thousands of rams and ten thousands of rivers of olive oil—would that please him? Would he be satisfied? If you sacrificed your oldest child, would that make him glad? Then would he forgive your sins? Of course not!

⁸ No, he has told you what he wants, and this is all it is: to be fair, just, merciful, and to walk humbly with your God.

⁹ The Lord’s voice calls out to all Jerusalem—listen to the Lord if you are wise! “The armies of destruction are coming; the Lord is sending them. ¹⁰ For your sins are very great—is there to be no end of getting rich by cheating? The homes of the wicked are full of ungodly treasures and lying scales. ¹¹ Shall I say ‘Good!’ to all your merchants with their bags of false, deceitful weights? How could God be just while saying that? ¹² Your rich men are wealthy through extortion and violence; your citizens are so used to lying that their tongues can’t tell the truth!

¹³ “Therefore I will wound you! I will make your hearts miserable for all your sins. ¹⁴ You will eat but never have enough; hunger pangs and emptiness will still remain. And though you try and try to save your money, it will come to nothing at the end, and what little you succeed in storing up I’ll give to those who conquer you!^{[m] 15} You will plant crops but not harvest them; you will press out the oil from the olives and not get enough to anoint yourself! You will trample the grapes but get no juice to make your wine.

¹⁶ “The only commands you keep are those of Omri; the only example you follow is that of Ahab! Therefore, I will make an awesome example of you—I will destroy you. I will make you the laughingstock of the world; all who see you will snicker and sneer!”

7 ^1-2 Woe is me! It is as hard to find an honest man as grapes and figs when harvest days are over. Not a cluster to eat, not a single early fig, however much I long for it! The good men have disappeared from the earth; not one fair-minded man is left. They are all murderers, turning against even their own brothers.

³ They go at their evil deeds with both hands, and how skilled they are in using them! The governor and judge alike demand bribes. The rich man pays them off and tells them whom to ruin. Justice is twisted between them. ⁴ Even the best of them are prickly as briars; the straightest is more crooked than a hedge of thorns. But your judgment day is coming swiftly now; your time of punishment is almost here; confusion, destruction, and terror will be yours.

⁵ Don’t trust anyone, not your best friend—not even your wife! ⁶ For the son despises his father; the daughter defies her mother; the bride curses her mother-in-law. Yes, a man’s enemies will be found in his own home.

⁷ As for me, I look to the Lord for his help; I wait for God to save me; he will hear me. ⁸ Do not rejoice against me, O my enemy, for though I fall, I will rise again! When I sit in darkness, the Lord himself will be my Light. ⁹ I will be patient while the Lord punishes me, for I have sinned against him; then he will defend me from my enemies and punish them for all the evil they have done to me. God will bring me out of my darkness into the light, and I will see his goodness. ¹⁰ Then my enemy will see that God is for me and be ashamed for taunting, “Where is that God of yours?” Now with my own eyes I see them trampled down like mud in the street.

¹¹ Your cities, people of God, will be rebuilt, much larger and more prosperous than before. ¹² Citizens of many lands will come and honor you—from Assyria to Egypt, and from Egypt to the Euphrates, from sea to sea and from distant hills and mountains.

¹³ But first comes terrible destruction to Israel^[n] for the great wickedness of her people. ¹⁴ O Lord, come and rule your people; lead your flock; make them live in peace and prosperity; let them enjoy the fertile pastures of Bashan and Gilead as they did long ago.

¹⁵ “Yes,” replies the Lord, “I will do mighty miracles for you, like those when I brought you out of slavery in Egypt. ¹⁶ All the world will stand amazed at what I will do for you and be embarrassed at their puny might. They will stand in silent awe, deaf to all around them.” ¹⁷ They will see what snakes they are, lowly as worms crawling from their holes. They will come trembling out from their fortresses to meet the Lord our God. They will fear him; they will stand in awe.

¹⁸ Where is another God like you, who pardons the sins of the survivors among his people? You cannot stay angry with your people, for you love to be merciful. ¹⁹ Once again you will have compassion on us. You will tread our sins beneath your feet; you will throw them into the depths of the ocean! ²⁰ You will bless us as you promised Jacob long ago. You will set your love upon us, as you promised our father Abraham!

1 This is the vision God gave to Nahum, who lived in Elkosh, concerning the impending doom of Nineveh:^[o]

² God is jealous over those he loves; that is why he takes vengeance on those who hurt them. He furiously destroys their enemies. ³ He is slow in getting angry, but when aroused, his power is incredible, and he does not easily forgive. He shows his power in the terrors of the cyclone and the raging storms; clouds are billowing dust beneath his feet! ⁴ At his command the oceans and rivers become dry sand; the lush pastures of Bashan and Carmel fade away; the green forests of Lebanon wilt. ⁵ In his presence mountains quake and hills melt; the earth crumbles, and its people are destroyed.

⁶ Who can stand before an angry God? His fury is like fire; the mountains tumble down before his anger.

⁷ The Lord is good. When trouble comes, he is the place to go! And he knows everyone who trusts in him! ⁸ But he sweeps away his enemies with an overwhelming flood; he pursues them all night long.

⁹ What are you thinking of, Nineveh, to defy the Lord? He will stop you with one blow; he won’t need to strike again. ¹⁰ He tosses his enemies into the fire like a tangled mass of thorns. They burst into flames like straw. ¹¹ Who is this king^[p] of yours who dares to plot against the Lord? ¹² But the Lord is not afraid of him! “Though he build his army millions strong,” the Lord declares, “it will vanish.

“O my people, I have punished you enough! ¹³ Now I will break your chains and release you from the yoke of slavery to this Assyrian king.” ¹⁴ And to the king he says, “I have ordered an end to your dynasty; your sons will never sit upon your throne. And I will destroy your gods and temples, and I will bury you! For how you stink with sin!”

¹⁵ See, the messengers come running down the mountains with glad news: “The invaders have been wiped out and we are safe!” O Judah, proclaim a day of thanksgiving and worship only the Lord, as you have vowed. For this enemy from Nineveh will never come again. He is cut off forever; he will never be seen again.

2 Nineveh, you are finished!^[q] You are already surrounded by enemy armies! Sound the alarm! Man the ramparts! Muster your defenses, full force, and keep a sharp watch for the enemy attack to begin! ² For the land of the people of God lies empty and broken after your attacks, but the Lord will restore their honor and power again!

³ Shields flash red in the sunlight! The attack begins! See their scarlet uniforms! See their glittering chariots moving forward side by side, pulled by prancing steeds! ⁴ Your own chariots race recklessly along the streets and through the squares, darting like lightning, gleaming like torches. ⁵ The king shouts for his officers; they stumble in their haste, rushing to the walls to set up their defenses. ⁶ But too late! The river gates are open! The enemy has entered! The palace is in panic!

⁷ The queen of Nineveh is brought out naked to the streets and led away, a slave, with all her maidens weeping after her; listen to them mourn like doves and beat their breasts! ⁸ Nineveh is like a leaking water tank! Her soldiers slip away, deserting her; she cannot hold them back. “Stop, stop,” she shouts, but they keep on running.

⁹ Loot the silver! Loot the gold! There seems to be no end of treasures. Her vast, uncounted wealth is stripped away. ¹⁰ Soon the city is an empty shambles; hearts melt in horror; knees quake; her people stand aghast, pale-faced and trembling.

¹¹ Where now is that great Nineveh, lion of the nations, full of fight and boldness, where even the old and feeble, as well as the young and tender, lived unafraid?

¹² O Nineveh, once mighty lion! You crushed your enemies to feed your children and your wives, and filled your city and your homes with captured goods and slaves.

¹³ But now the Lord Almighty has turned against you. He destroys your weapons. Your chariots stand there, silent and unused. Your finest youths lie dead. Never again will you bring back slaves from conquered nations; never again will you rule the earth.

3 Woe to Nineveh, City of Blood, full of lies, crammed with plunder. ² Listen! Hear the crack of the whips as the chariots rush forward against her, wheels rumbling, horses’ hoofs pounding, and chariots clattering as they bump wildly through the streets! ³ See the flashing swords and glittering spears in the upraised arms of the cavalry! The dead are lying in the streets—bodies, heaps of bodies, everywhere. Men stumble over them, scramble to their feet, and fall again.

⁴ All this because Nineveh sold herself to the enemies of God. The beautiful and faithless city, mistress of deadly charms, enticed the nations with her beauty, then taught them all to worship her false gods,^[r] bewitching people everywhere.

⁵ “No wonder I stand against you,” says the Lord Almighty; “and now all the earth will see your nakedness and shame. ⁶ I will cover you with filth and show the world how really vile you are.” ⁷ All who see you will shrink back in horror: “Nineveh lies in utter ruin.” Yet no one anywhere regrets your fate!

⁸ Are you any better than Thebes,^[s] straddling the Nile, protected on all sides by the river? ⁹ Ethiopia and the whole land of Egypt were her mighty allies, and she could call on them for infinite assistance, as well as Put and Libya. ¹⁰ Yet Thebes fell and her people were led off as slaves; her babies were dashed to death against the stones of the streets. Soldiers drew straws to see who would get her officers as servants. All her leaders were bound in chains.

¹¹ Nineveh, too, will stagger like a drunkard and hide herself in fear. ¹² All your forts will fall. They will be devoured like first-ripe figs that fall into the mouths of those who shake the trees. ¹³ Your troops will be weak and helpless as women. The gates of your land will be opened wide to the enemy and set on fire and burned. ¹⁴ Get ready for the siege! Store up water! Strengthen the forts! Prepare many bricks for repairing your walls! Go into the pits to trample the clay, and pack it in the molds!

¹⁵ But in the middle of your preparations, the fire will devour you; the sword will cut you down; the enemy will consume you like young locusts that eat up everything before them. There is no escape, though you multiply like grasshoppers. ¹⁶ Merchants, numerous as stars, filled your city with vast wealth, but your enemies swarm like locusts and carry it away. ¹⁷ Your princes and officials crowd together like grasshoppers in the hedges in the cold, but all of them will flee away and disappear, like locusts when the sun comes up and warms the earth.

¹⁸ O Assyrian king, your princes lie dead in the dust; your people are scattered across the mountains; there is no shepherd now to gather them. ¹⁹ There is no healing for your wound—it is far too deep to cure. All who hear your fate will clap their hands for joy, for where can one be found who has not suffered from your cruelty?