²⁵ 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,^(A)

²⁶ “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,^(A)
27 while their inhabitants, shorn of strength,
    are dismayed and confounded;
they have become like plants of the field
    and like tender grass,
like grass on the housetops
    that is scorched before the east wind.^[a](B)

¹⁵ Shall the ax vaunt itself over the one who wields it
    or the saw magnify itself against the one who handles it?
As if a rod should raise the one who lifts it up,
    or as if a staff should lift the one who is not wood!^(A)

¹⁰ Human wrath serves only to praise you,
    when you bind the last bit of your^[a] wrath around you.^(A)