1See, there on the mountains, the feet of one who brings good news, one who proclaims peace.
Judah, celebrate your feasts
and carry out your vows.
For the wicked have been destroyed,
they will not attack you any more.
2Yahweh will now restore
Jacob’s magnificence, like Israel’s splendor.
For they had been plundered,
laid waste as a ravaged vineyard.
Nineveh shall fall
3Against Nineveh a destroyer advances.
Watch the road, man the fortress;
brace yourselves, muster your forces.
4The shields of his soldiers are red;
his warriors are crimson-clad.
His chariots gleam as if on fire
when mustered in battle array,
while prancing horses and frenzied horsemen
wait impatiently for bloody action.
5As chariots storm through the streets
and dash madly through the squares,
they look like flashing torches
or darting lightning bolts.
6The picked troops are called out;
ranks break at their charge.
Having set up the mantelet
they rushed toward the rampart.
7The river gates are thrown open,
and the palace defense collapses.
8The goddess is taken captive
together with all her handmaids,
moaning like doves and beating their breasts.
9Nineveh looks like a pool
with its waters running away:
All flee: “Stop, stop!”
but no one comes back.
10All kinds of wealth, gold and silver –
it is an endless treasure, a heap of the most precious things.
11Waste and ruin, desolation and emptiness, failing hearts and trembling knees,
terror and agony on all blanched faces!
12Where now is the lion’s cave,
the den of the cubs
where the lion would bring his prey,
and the cubs lie down undisturbed?
13The lion tore to pieces for his whelps,
and strangled for his mates;
he filled his caves with prey
and his dens with mangled flesh.
14Yahweh Sabaoth speaks:
I have come against you.
I will send up your chariots in smoke,
give your cubs to the sword;
wipe the earth clear of your plunder,
and your envoys’ voices will be heard no more.
