Your shepherds ¹  are sleeping, O king of Assyria! Your officers ²  are slumbering! ³  Your people are scattered like sheep ⁴  on the mountains and there is no one to regather them!

They mock kings and laugh at rulers. They laugh at every fortified city; they build siege ramps ¹  and capture them.

“‘Any man from the Israelites ¹  or from the foreigners who reside ²  in their ³  midst who hunts a wild animal ⁴  or a bird that may be eaten ⁵  must pour out its blood and cover it with soil,

Abram bowed down with his face to the ground, ¹  and God said to him, ² 

They were destroyed at Endor; ¹  their corpses were like manure ²  on the ground.

For I eat ashes as if they were bread, ¹  and mix my drink with my tears, ² 

The Lord lifts up the oppressed, but knocks ¹  the wicked to the ground.

Do not turn ¹  to the right or to the left; turn yourself ²  away from evil. ³ 

The memory ¹  of the righteous is a blessing, but the reputation ²  of the wicked will rot. ³ 

Those who are evil will bow ¹  before those who are good, and the wicked will bow ²  at the gates ³  of the righteous.

When it returns, ¹  it finds the house ²  swept clean and put in order. ³ 

but the one ¹  whom God raised up did not experience ²  decay.

Then he is to have the house scraped ¹  all around on the inside, ²  and the plaster ³  which is scraped off ⁴  must be dumped outside the city ⁵  into an unclean place.

“‘For a ceremonially unclean person you must take ¹  some of the ashes of the heifer ²  burnt for purification from sin and pour ³  fresh running ⁴  water over them in a vessel.

he tore down the altars and Asherah poles, demolished the idols, and smashed all the incense altars throughout the land of Israel. Then he returned to Jerusalem.

I will scatter them before their enemies like dust blowing in front of a burning east wind. I will turn my back on them and not look favorably on them ¹  when disaster strikes them.”

When the news ¹  reached the king of Nineveh, he got up from his throne, took off his royal robe, put on sackcloth, and sat on ashes.

You will trample on the wicked, for they will be like ashes under the soles of your feet on the day which I am preparing,” says the Lord who rules over all.

Job took a shard of broken pottery to scrape ¹  himself ²  with while he was sitting ³  among the ashes. ⁴ 

then you plunge me into a slimy pit ¹  and my own clothes abhor me.