2. to deprive the helpless of justice and rob the rights of the poor of My people, so that widows may be their spoil and orphans their prey!
3. What will you do in the day of visitation, when desolation comes from afar? To whom will you flee for help? Where will you leave your wealth?
4. One can only crouch among the captives or collapse among the slain. For all this His anger is not turned away, yet His hand is still outstretched.
5. Oy to Assyria, the rod of My anger— the club in their hand is My indignation!
6. I am sending it against an ungodly nation, and against the people of My fury I am commissioning it, to take spoil and plunder, to trample them down like mud in the streets.
7. Yet that is not what Assyria intends, nor is that what he is thinking about. Rather his heart is to destroy, and to cut down nations—only a few!
8. For he says: “Aren’t all my princes kings?
9. Isn’t Calno like Carchemish? Isn’t Hamath like Arpad? Isn’t Samaria like Damascus?
10. As my hand has reached the kingdoms of the idols—with more graven images than Jerusalem and Samaria—
11. as I’ve done to Samaria and her idols, won’t I also do to Jerusalem and her idols?”
12. Therefore it will come to pass, when Adonai finishes all His work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, “I will punish the fruit of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria, and the glorying of his haughty eyes.”
13. For he said: “By the strength of my own hand I’ve done it, and my own wisdom, for I am shrewd! I abolished the borders of peoples, and plundered their treasures. As a mighty one I cast down inhabitants.
14. My hand found the riches of the peoples as a nest—like gathering forsaken eggs, I have gathered the entire earth. Not a wing fluttered, not a beak opened or chirped!”
15. Should the axe boast against the One who chops with it? Should the saw magnify itself against the One who wields it? It would be like a rod waving the One who lifts it, or like a staff hoisting up the One who is not wood!
16. Therefore will the Lord Adonai-Tzva’ot, send leanness among his fat ones. Under its glory He will kindle a burning like a blazing fire.