﻿Nahum.
Chapter 2.
The scatterer has come up against you. Guard the fortress! Watch the road! Brace your waist! Muster all your strength! 
For the LORD is restoring the splendor of Jacob like the splendor of Israel, for plunderers have plundered them and ruined their vine branches. 
The shields of his warriors are red; his soldiers are clothed in scarlet. The chariots flash with fiery metal on the day of his preparation, and the cypress shafts quiver. 
The chariots race wildly through the streets and rush through the squares. They look like torches; they dart like lightning. 
He calls his nobles to mind; they stumble as they advance. They hurry to her wall, and the protective shelter is made ready. 
The river gates are opened, and the palace melts away. 
It is decreed: she is stripped and carried away. Her slave girls moan like doves, beating their breasts. 
Nineveh has long been like a pool of water, but they are fleeing. “Stop! Stop!” Yet no one turns back. 
Plunder the silver! Plunder the gold! There is no end to the treasure, a wealth of every precious object. 
Empty, desolate, devastated! Hearts melt and knees shake; every waist trembles, and every face grows pale. 
Where is the lions’ den, the feeding place of the young lions, where lion, lioness, and cub walked with no one to frighten them? 
The lion tore enough prey for his cubs and strangled it for his lionesses. He filled his caves with prey and his dens with torn flesh. 
“Look, I am against you,” declares the LORD of hosts. “I will burn her chariots in smoke, and the sword will consume your young lions. I will cut off your prey from the earth, and the voice of your messengers will be heard no more.” 
