3:14 Draw yourselves water for a siege! 1
Strengthen your fortifications!
Trample the mud 2 and tread the clay!
Make mud bricks to strengthen your walls! 3
3:15 There the fire will consume 4 you;
the sword will cut you down;
it will devour 5 you like the young locust would.
Multiply yourself 6 like the young locust;
multiply yourself like the flying locust!
3:16 Increase 7 your merchants more than the stars of heaven!
They are like 8 the young locust which sheds 9 its skin and flies away.
3:17 Your courtiers 10 are like locusts,
your officials 11 are like a swarm of locusts!
They encamp in the walls on a cold day,
yet when the sun rises, they 12 fly away; 13
and no one knows where they 14 are. 15
3:18 Your shepherds 16 are sleeping, O king of Assyria!
Your officers 17 are slumbering! 18
Your people are scattered like sheep 19 on the mountains
and there is no one to regather them!
3:19 Your destruction is like an incurable wound; 20
your demise is like a fatal injury! 21
All who hear what has happened to you 22 will clap their hands for joy, 23
for no one ever escaped your endless cruelty! 24