² Eternal One: Do you see how the waters are rising in the north?
        They will become an overwhelming flood.
    They will flow across the land, covering everything—
        including the towns and the people who live there.
    Those people will cry out;
        those who live in that land will weep loudly,
³     For they will hear the pounding hooves of the charging horses,
        the clatter of enemy chariots, and the rumbling of their wheels.
    Fathers will panic and abandon their children,
        their hands limp with fear.
⁴     For the time will come
        to destroy all the Philistines.
    She will find no help in Tyre and Sidon—
        these allies, too, will be cut off.
    The Eternal will destroy the Philistines,
        this remnant from the coasts of Caphtor.
⁵     The people of Gaza will shave their heads in mourning,
        for Ashkelon is no more.
    You who remain in the valley,
        how long will you cut yourselves in grief?

⁶ You cry out, “O sword of the Eternal, when will you stop?
    Return to your sheath, rest from your destruction, and be still!”
⁷ But how can His sword be still
    when the Eternal has given it a direct order?
For Ashkelon and those along the coast will be no more!