| 2:1 | The juggernaut's coming! Post guards, lay in supplies. Get yourselves together, get ready for the big battle. |
| 2:2 | GOD has restored the Pride of Jacob, the Pride of Israel. Israel's lived through hard times. He's been to hell and back. |
| 2:3 | Weapons flash in the sun, the soldiers splendid in battle dress, Chariots burnished and glistening, ready to charge, A spiked forest of brandished spears, lethal on the horizon. |
| 2:4 | The chariots pour into the streets. They fill the public squares, Flaming like torches in the sun, like lightning darting and flashing. |
| 2:5 | The Assyrian king rallies his men, but they stagger and stumble. They run to the ramparts to stem the tide, but it's too late. |
| 2:6 | Soldiers pour through the gates. The palace is demolished. |
| 2:7 | Soon it's all over: Nineveh stripped, Nineveh doomed, Maids and slaves moaning like doves, beating their breasts. |
| 2:8 | Nineveh is a tub from which they've pulled the plug. Cries go up, "Do something! Do something!" but it's too late. Nineveh's soon empty--nothing. |
| 2:9 | Other cries come: "Plunder the silver! Plunder the gold! A bonanza of plunder! Take everything you want!" |
| 2:10 | Doom! Damnation! Desolation! Hearts sink, knees fold, stomachs retch, faces blanch. |
| 2:11 | So, what happened to the famous and fierce Assyrian lion And all those cute Assyrian cubs? To the lion and lioness Cozy with their cubs, fierce and fearless? |
| 2:12 | To the lion who always returned from the hunt with fresh kills for lioness and cubs, The lion lair heaped with bloody meat, blood and bones for the royal lion feast? |
| 2:13 | "Assyria, I'm your enemy," says GOD-of-the-Angel-Armies. "I'll torch your chariots. They'll go up in smoke. 'Lion Country' will be strewn with carcasses. The war business is over--you're out of work: You'll have no more wars to report, No more victories to announce. You're out of war work forever." |
Nahum 2 - The Message Bible
