1: The juggernaut's coming! Post guards, lay in supplies. Get yourselves together, get ready for the big battle. [JC]
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.
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.
4: The chariots pour into the streets. They fill the public squares, Flaming like torches in the sun, like lightning darting and flashing.
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.
6: Soldiers pour through the gates. The palace is demolished.
7: Soon it's all over: Nineveh stripped, Nineveh doomed, Maids and slaves moaning like doves, beating their breasts.
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.
9: Other cries come: "Plunder the silver! Plunder the gold! A bonanza of plunder! Take everything you want!"
10: Doom! Damnation! Desolation! Hearts sink, knees fold, stomachs retch, faces blanch.
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?
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? [JC]
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."