¹⁴ “Announce in Egypt, proclaim in Migdol.
    Proclaim also in Memphis and Tahpanhes.
Say, ‘Take your positions and be ready,
    for the sword will devour all around you.’
¹⁵ Why are your warriors prostrate?
    They don’t stand^[b] because the Lord has brought them down.
¹⁶ They repeatedly stumble and fall.
    They say to each other, ‘Get up!
Let’s go back to our people
    and to the land of our birth,
        away from the oppressor’s sword.’
¹⁷ There they’ll cry out,
‘Pharaoh, king of Egypt, is just a big noise.
    He has let the appointed time pass by.’^[c]
18 As certainly as I’m alive and living,” declares the King,
    whose name is the Lord of the Heavenly Armies,
“Indeed, one will come like Tabor among the mountains
    and like Carmel by the sea.
¹⁹ Prepare your baggage for exile,
    daughter living in Egypt,
for Memphis will become a desolate place.
    It will become a ruin without inhabitant.
²⁰ Egypt is a beautiful calf,^[d]
    but a horsefly from the north is surely coming.
²¹ Even the mercenary troops in her ranks
    are like a fattened calf.
They too will turn around,
    and will flee together.
They won’t stand,
    for the day of their disaster is coming on them,
        the time of their punishment.
²² Her cry will be like that of a fleeing serpent
    when they come in strength.
        They’re coming to her with axes like woodcutters.
²³ They’ll cut down her forest, though it’s impenetrable,”
    declares the Lord,
“for they’re more numerous than locusts,
    and there are too many of them to count.
²⁴ The daughter of Egypt will be put to shame,
    she will be given into the hands of the people from the north.”