⁴ so that you can avoid cowering among the captives
    or falling among the slain?
Yet after all this, his wrath has not abated;
    his hand is still outstretched.

^{5     [a]}Woe to Assyria, the rod of my anger;
    the club in their hands is my fury.
⁶ Against a godless people I send him forth,
    against a nation who aroused my wrath,
commanding him to pillage and plunder
    and to trample on them like mud in the street.