⁸ The Lord God has sworn by himself
(says the Lord, the God of hosts):
I abhor the pride of Jacob
    and hate his strongholds,
    and I will deliver up the city and all that is in it.^(A)

²⁵ I will repay you for the years
    that the swarming locust has eaten,
the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter,
    my great army that I sent against you.^(A)

Multiply yourselves like the locust;
    multiply like the grasshopper!^(A)
16 You increased your merchants
    more than the stars of the heavens.
    The locust sheds its skin and flies away.
¹⁷ Your guards are like grasshoppers,
    your scribes like swarms^[a] of locusts
settling on the fences
    on a cold day—
when the sun rises, they fly away;
    no one knows where they have gone.

³ Fire devours in front of them,
    and behind them a flame burns.
Before them the land is like the garden of Eden,
    but after them a desolate wilderness,
    and nothing escapes them.^(A)

⁴ They have the appearance of horses,
    and like war horses they charge.^(B)

⁴ What the cutting locust left,
    the swarming locust has eaten;
what the swarming locust left,
    the hopping locust has eaten;
and what the hopping locust left,
    the destroying locust has eaten.^(A)

⁵ Wake up, you drunkards, and weep,
    and wail, all you wine drinkers,
over the sweet wine,
    for it is cut off from your mouth.
⁶ For a nation has invaded my land,
    powerful and innumerable;
its teeth are lions’ teeth,
    and it has the fangs of a lioness.^(B)
7 It has laid waste my vines
    and splintered my fig trees;
it has stripped off their bark and thrown it down;
    their branches have turned white.^(C)