Beginning

“Go, swift messengers,
to a nation tall and smooth,
    to a people feared far and wide,
a nation strong and oppressive,
    whose land the rivers have divided.”

³ All you inhabitants of the world,
    and dwellers on the earth:
When he lifts up a banner on the mountains,
    you will see it;
and when he blows a trumpet,
    you will hear it.
⁴ For so the Lord said to me:
    I will look from My dwelling place quietly,
like dazzling heat in the sunshine,
    like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest.
⁵ For before the harvest, when the bud is perfect
    and the sour grape is ripening in the flower,
then He shall both cut off the sprigs with pruning hooks
    and take away and cut down the branches.
⁶ They shall be left together for the fowl of the mountains
    and for the beasts of the earth;
and the fowl shall spend the summer feeding on them,
    and all the beasts of the earth shall spend the winter on them.

from a people tall and smooth,
    and from a people feared far and wide,
a nation strong and oppressive,
    whose land the rivers have divided,

See, the Lord is riding on a swift cloud
    and shall come into Egypt;
and the idols of Egypt shall tremble at His presence,
    and the heart of Egypt shall melt in its midst.

² I will set the Egyptians against the Egyptians,
    and they shall fight every one against his brother,
    and every one against his neighbor,
    city against city,
    and kingdom against kingdom.
³ The spirit of Egypt shall be discouraged in their midst,
    and I will destroy their counsel;
then they shall seek for the idols and for the charmers
    and for the mediums and the sorcerers.
⁴ The Egyptians I will give over
    into the hand of a cruel lord,
and a fierce king shall rule over them,
    says the Lord, the Lord of Hosts.

⁵ The waters from the sea shall dry up,
    and the river shall be parched and dry.
⁶ The canals shall emit a stench;
    the streams of Egypt shall diminish and dry up;
the reeds and rushes shall wither.
⁷     The papyrus reeds by the brooks,
    by the mouth of the brooks,
and everything sown by the brooks,
    shall wither, be driven away, and be no more.
⁸ The fishermen also shall mourn,
    and all those who cast a line into the brooks shall lament,
and those who spread nets on the waters
    shall languish.
⁹ Moreover those who work with fine flax
    and those who weave white cloth shall be humiliated;
¹⁰ and the pillars of Egypt shall be crushed.
    All the hired workers shall be grieved in soul.

¹¹ Surely the princes of Zoan are fools;
    the counsel of the wise counselors of Pharaoh has become stupid.
How can you say to Pharaoh,
    “I am a son of the wise,
    a son of ancient kings?”

¹² Where are they? Where are your wise men?
    Let them tell you now, and let them understand
what the Lord of Hosts
    has purposed against Egypt.
¹³ The princes of Zoan have become fools;
    the princes of Memphis are deceived;
they have also seduced Egypt,
    even those who are the cornerstone of her tribes.
¹⁴ The Lord has mingled
    a perverse spirit in her;
so they have caused Egypt to err in her every work,
    as a drunken man staggers in his vomit.
¹⁵ Nor shall there be any work for Egypt,
    which its head or tail, its branch or bulrush, may do.

As whirlwinds in the Negev pass through,
    so it comes from the desert,
    from a terrible land.

² A grievous vision is declared to me;
    the treacherous one still deals treacherously, and the destroyer still destroys.
Go up, O Elam. Lay siege, O Media.
    All her sighing I have made to cease.

³ Therefore, my loins are filled with pain;
    pangs have taken hold of me as the pangs of a woman who travails.
I am so perplexed at the hearing of it;
    I am so dismayed at the seeing of it.
⁴ My heart panted,
    fearfulness overwhelmed me;
the night for which I longed
    has turned into trembling for me.

⁵ Prepare the table,
    watch in the watchtower,
    eat and drink.
Arise, you princes,
    and oil the shields.

“Go, station a watchman;
    let him declare what he sees.
⁷ When he sees chariots
    with horsemen in pairs,
a chariot of donkeys,
    and a chariot of camels,
then let him pay close attention,
    very close attention.”

“O Lord, I stand continually on the watchtower in the daytime,
    and I am stationed at my guard post every night.
⁹ Look, here comes a chariot of men,
    horsemen in pairs.”
And he answered and said,
    “Fallen, fallen is Babylon.
And all the graven images of her gods
    lie shattered on the ground.”

¹⁰ O my threshed people and my afflicted of the threshing floor!
    What I have heard from the Lord of Hosts,
the God of Israel,
    I have declared to you.

He calls to me out of Seir,
    “Watchman, how far gone is the night?
    Watchman, how far gone is the night?”
¹² The watchman says,
    “The morning comes and also the night.
If you would inquire, inquire;
    return again.”

In the forest of Arabia you shall lodge,
    O traveling companies of Dedanites.
¹⁴     Bring water for the thirsty,
O inhabitants of the land of Tema;
    meet the fugitive with bread.
¹⁵ For they fled from the swords,
    from the drawn sword,
and from the bent bow,
    and from the grievousness of war.

What ails you now,
    that you all have gone up to the housetops,
² you who were full of noise,
    a tumultuous city, a joyous city?
Your slain are not slain with the sword,
    nor did they die in battle.
³ All your rulers have fled together;
    they are captured by the archers.
All of you who were found were taken captive together,
    although they had fled from afar.
⁴ Therefore, I say, “Look away from me,
    I will weep bitterly;
do not try to comfort me
    because of the destruction of the daughter of my people.”

⁵ For it is a day of trouble and of treading down and of perplexity
    by the Lord God of Hosts
    in the Valley of Vision,
a breaking down of the walls
    and a crying to the mountains.
⁶ Elam took up the quiver
    with chariots of men and horsemen,
    and Kir uncovered the shield.
⁷ Your choicest valleys shall be full of chariots,
    and the horsemen shall set themselves in array at the gate.

⁸ And He shall remove the protection of Judah.
    You shall depend in that day
    on the weapons of the house of the forest;
⁹ you have seen also that the breaches
    of the City of David are many;
and you gathered together the waters
    of the lower pool.
¹⁰ You have numbered the houses of Jerusalem,
    and the houses you have broken down to fortify the wall.
¹¹ You also made a reservoir between the two walls
    for the water of the old pool.
But you have not looked to its Maker,
    nor did you respect Him who fashioned it long ago.

¹² In that day the Lord God of Hosts
    called you to weeping and mourning,
    and to tear your hair and wear sackcloth.
¹³ Yet, there is joy and gladness,
    slaying of oxen and killing of sheep,
    eating of meat and drinking wine:
“Let us eat and drink,
    for tomorrow we may die.”

Come, go to this treasurer,
    even to Shebna, who is over the royal household, and say:
¹⁶ What right do you have here? And whom do you have here
    that you have dug out for yourself a tomb here,
as he who hews out for himself a tomb on high,
    and who cuts a habitation for himself in a rock?

¹⁷ Indeed, the Lord is about to hurl you headlong, O man;
    He is about to seize you firmly.
¹⁸ He will surely violently turn
    and toss you like a ball into a large country;
there you shall die,
    and there the chariots of your glory shall be
    the shame of your lord’s house.
¹⁹ I will drive you from your office
    and pull you down from your station.