This is the heavy burden of Nineveh, which Nahum of Elkosh did write, as he saw it.

Whatever [plot] you [Assyrians] devise against the Lord,
He will make a complete end of it;
Affliction [of God’s people by the hand of Assyria] will not occur twice.

For like entangled thorns, and like their drink which is drunk, they will be consumed like fully dry chaff.

He that dasheth in pieces is come up before thy face: keep the munition, watch the way, make thy loins strong, fortify thy power mightily.

Where is the den of the lions (Assyria)
And the feeding place of the young lions,
Where the lion, lioness, and lion’s cub prowled
With nothing to fear?

Woe to that bloodthirsty city, which is all full of lies and robbery, and will not leave off from ravishing.

And that for the great and manifold whoredom of the fair and beautiful harlot: which is a mistress of witchcraft, yea and selleth the people through her whoredom, and the nations through her witchcraft.

"Are you any better than Thebes, which sits by the upper Nile, surrounded by water? The sea was her defense, the waters her wall of protection.

All your walled places will be like fig-trees and your people like the first figs, falling at a shake into the mouth which is open for them.

Increase your merchants more than the stars of heaven! They are like the young locust which sheds its skin and flies away.

Thy crowned are as the locusts, and thy captains as the great grasshoppers, which camp in the hedges in the cold day, but when the sun ariseth they flee away, and their place is not known where they are.