CHAPTER 10

                 ¹Woe, who inscribe crime’s inscriptions

                     and writs of wretchedness write,

                 ²to tilt from their cause the poor

                     and rob justice from My people’s needy,

                 making widows their booty

                     and despoiling orphans.

                 ³And what will you do for the day of reckoning,

                     for disaster that comes from afar?

                 To whom will you flee for help,

                     and where will you leave your glory?

                 ⁴Only, they shall kneel beneath the captive,

                     and beneath the slain they shall fall.

                 ⁵Woe, Assyria, rod of My wrath,

                     in whose hand is a club—My fury.

                 ⁶Against a tainted nation I will send him,

                     against the people of My anger I will charge him

                 to take the booty and to seize the spoils,

                     and to turn it to trampling like mire in the streets.

                 ⁷But he shall not imagine so,

                     and his heart not so shall plot.

                 For destruction is in his heart,

                     to cut off nations, not a few.

                 ⁸For he shall say:

                     Are not my commanders all of them kings?

                 ⁹Is not Calno like Carchemish?

                     Is not Hamath like Arpad?

                         Is not Samaria like Damascus?

                 ¹⁰As my hand has seized worthless kingdoms,

                     and their idols more than Jerusalem’s or Samaria’s,

                 ¹¹why, as I have done to Samaria and its ungods,

                     so I will do to Jerusalem and its icons.

                 ¹²And it shall happen, when the Master carries out all His acts

                     against Zion and against Jerusalem,

                 I will reckon with the fruit of the swollen heart of Assyria’s king

                     and with the grandeur of his haughty gaze.

                 ¹³For he has said:

                     “Through the power of my hand I have done it,

                         and through my wisdom, for I was discerning.

                 I have wiped out the borders of peoples

                     and their riches I plundered

                         and brought down to the dust those who dwelled there.

                 ¹⁴And my hand, as with a nest, has seized

                     the wealth of peoples,

                 as one gathers abandoned eggs,

                     all the earth I have gathered,

                 and none fluttered a wing,

                     opened a mouth and peeped.”

                 ¹⁵Should the axe boast over its wielder,

                     the saw vaunt over him who plies it?

                 As though the rod had swung him who raised it,

                     a club had raised the one not-wood!

                 ¹⁶Therefore shall the Master, LORD of Armies,

                     send a wasting into his fatness,

                 and in his glory’s stead a burning shall rage

                     like the burning of fire.

                 ¹⁷And Israel’s Light shall turn to fire

                     and its Holy One to flame,

                 and it shall burn and consume his thorns

                     and his thistles on a single day.

                 ¹⁸And the glory of his woods and his farmland

                     from life-breath to flesh shall be destroyed,

                         and shall be like a failing sick man.

                 ¹⁹And the remnant of his woods’ trees shall be so few

                     that a lad can write them down.

²⁰And is shall happen on that day, the remnant of Israel and the survivors of the house of Jacob shall no longer lean on him who strikes them but shall lean on the LORD, Israel’s Holy One, in truth. ²¹A remnant shall come back, a remnant of Jacob, to mighty God. ²²For if your people Israel be like the sand of the sea, but a remnant within it shall come back. Decreed destruction sweeps down, vindication. ²³For it is irrevocably decreed: the Master, LORD of Armies, is about to do it in the midst of the land. ²⁴Therefore, this said the Master, LORD of Armies: “Do not be afraid, My people dwelling in Zion, of Assyria, who strikes you with the rod, and raises his club against you in the way he did to Egypt. ²⁵For in just a little while, My wrath and fury shall be utterly ended.” ²⁶And the LORD of Armies shall rouse against him a scourge, like the striking down of Midian at the Rock of Oreb, and like His rod over the sea, and bear him off like the way of Egypt. ²⁷And it shall happen on that day,

                 his burden shall be removed from your shoulder

                     and his yoke shall be shattered from your neck.

                 He shall come up from the desert

                     ²⁸come up to Ajath,

                 pass through Migron

                     in Michmash place his gear.

                 ²⁹He shall pass over a ford,

                     Geva his lodging.

                 Ramah shall tremble,

                     Saul’s Gibeah flee.

                 ³⁰With your voice give a piercing call, Bath-Gallim,

                     Listen, O Laish, speak out, Anathoth.

                 ³¹Madmenah shall decamp,

                     Gebim’s dwellers take refuge.

                 ³²That very day he shall stand at Nob,

                     wave his hand against the Mount of Zion’s Daughter,

                         the hill of Jerusalem.

                 ³³Look, the Master, LORD of Armies,

                     hacks away the treetops with an axe,

                 and the lofty in stature are cut down

                     and the tall ones brought low.

                 ³⁴And he slashes the wood’s thickets with iron,

                     and Lebanon trees thunderously fall.