From you, O Nineveh, ¹  one has marched forth who plots evil against the Lord, a wicked military strategist. ² 

And now, ¹  I will break Assyria’s ²  yoke bar ³  from your neck; ⁴  I will tear apart the shackles ⁵  that are on you.” ⁶ 

Your claim to have a strategy and military strength is just empty talk. ¹  In whom are you trusting that you would dare to rebel against me?

Who among all the gods of the lands has rescued their lands from my power? So how can the Lord rescue Jerusalem from my power?’” ¹ 

Because God fought for them, ¹  they killed many of the enemy. ²  They dispossessed the Hagrites and lived in their land until the exile. ³ 

Is not Calneh like Carchemish? Hamath like Arpad? Samaria like Damascus? ¹ 

For this reason ¹  the sovereign master, the Lord who commands armies, will make his healthy ones emaciated. ²  His majestic glory will go up in smoke. ³ 

This is the plan I have devised for the whole earth; my hand is ready to strike all the nations.” ¹ 

Your plunder ¹  disappears as if locusts were eating it; ²  they swarm over it like locusts! ³ 

Your claim to have a strategy and military strength is just empty talk. ¹  In whom are you trusting, that you would dare to rebel against me?

I made it beautiful with its many branches; all the trees of Eden, in the garden of God, envied it.

On its ruins all the birds of the sky will live, and all the wild animals ¹  will walk ²  on its branches.

Whatever ¹  you plot ²  against the Lord, he will completely destroy! ³  Distress ⁴  will not arise ⁵  a second time.

“‘This is what the sovereign Lord says: On the day it ¹  went down to Sheol I caused observers to lament. ²  I covered it with the deep and held back its rivers; its plentiful water was restrained. I clothed Lebanon in black for it, and all the trees of the field wilted because of it.

Even though he flourishes like a reed plant, ¹  a scorching east wind will come, a wind from the Lord rising up from the desert. As a result, his spring will dry up; ²  his well will become dry. That wind ³  will spoil all his delightful foods in the containers in his storehouse.

That day the Lord made a covenant ¹  with Abram: “To your descendants I give ²  this land, from the river of Egypt ³  to the great river, the Euphrates River –

King Ahaz took off the frames of the movable stands, and removed the basins from them. He took “The Sea” ¹  down from the bronze bulls that supported it ²  and put it on the pavement.

But each of these nations made ¹  its own gods and put them in the shrines on the high places that the people of Samaria ²  had made. Each nation did this in the cities where they lived.

After three years he captured it (in the sixth year of Hezekiah’s reign); in the ninth year of King Hoshea’s reign over Israel Samaria was captured.

Look, I will take control of his mind; ¹  he will receive ²  a report and return to his own land. I will cut him down ³  with a sword in his own land.”’”