⁸ Are you better than Thebes^[a]
    that sat by the Nile,
with water around her,
    her rampart a sea,
    water her wall?^(A)
9 Cush was her strength,
    Egypt, too, and that without limit;
    Put and the Libyans were her^[b] helpers.^(B)

¹⁰ Yet she became an exile;
    she went into captivity;
even her infants were dashed in pieces
    at the head of every street;
lots were cast for her nobles;
    all her dignitaries were bound in fetters.^(C)
11 You also will be drunken;
    you will go into hiding;^[c]
you will seek
    a refuge from the enemy.^(D)
12 All your fortresses are like fig trees
    with first-ripe figs—
if shaken they fall
    into the mouth of the eater.^(E)
13 Look at your troops:
    they are women in your midst.
The gates of your land
    are wide open to your foes;
    fire has devoured the bars of your gates.^(F)

¹⁴ Draw water for the siege;
    strengthen your forts;
trample the clay;
    tread the mortar;
    take hold of the brick mold!
¹⁵ There the fire will devour you;
    the sword will cut you off.
    It will devour you like the locust.

Multiply yourselves like the locust;
    multiply like the grasshopper!^(G)
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^[d] of locusts
settling on the fences
    on a cold day—
when the sun rises, they fly away;
    no one knows where they have gone.

¹⁸ Your shepherds are asleep,
    O king of Assyria;
    your nobles slumber.
Your people are scattered on the mountains
    with no one to gather them.^(H)
19 There is no assuaging your hurt;
    your wound is mortal.
All who hear the news about you
    clap their hands over you.
For who has ever escaped
    your endless cruelty?^(I)

Whom are you like in your greatness?^(A)
3     Consider Assyria, a cedar of Lebanon,
with fair branches and forest shade,
    and of great height,
    its top among the clouds.^(B)

³³ Look, the Sovereign, the Lord of hosts,
    will lop the boughs with terrifying power;
the tallest trees will be cut down,
    and the lofty will be brought low.^(A)
34 He will hack down the thickets of the forest with an ax,
    and Lebanon with its majestic trees^[a] will fall.