²³ “‘Whom have you mocked and reviled?
    Against whom have you raised your voice
and lifted your eyes to the heights?
    Against ^(A)the Holy One of Israel!
²⁴ By your servants you have mocked the Lord,
    and you have said, ^(B)With my many chariots
I have gone up the heights of the mountains,
    to the far recesses of Lebanon,
^(C)to cut down its tallest cedars,
    its choicest cypresses,
to come to its remotest height,
    its most fruitful forest.
²⁵ I dug wells
    and drank waters,
to dry up with the sole of my foot
    all ^(D)the streams ^(E)of Egypt.

^26 (F)“‘Have you not heard
    that I determined it long ago?
I planned from days of old
    what now I bring to pass,
that you should make fortified cities
    crash into heaps of ruins,
²⁷ while their inhabitants, shorn of strength,
    are dismayed and confounded,
and have become like plants of the field
    and like tender grass,
like grass on the housetops,
    blighted^[a] before it is grown.

²⁸ “‘I know your sitting down
    and your going out and coming in,
    and your raging against me.
^29 (G)Because you have raged against me
    and your complacency has come to my ears,
I will put my hook in your nose
    and my bit in your mouth,
and ^(H)I will turn you back on the way
    by which you came.’

¹⁵ Shall ^(A)the axe boast over him who hews with it,
    or the saw magnify itself against him who wields it?
As if a rod should wield him who lifts it,
    or as if a staff should lift him who is not wood!