¹ To Judah See on the mountains the feet of the herald! 'Peace!' he proclaims. Judah, celebrate your feasts, carry out your vows, for Belial will never pass through you again; he has been utterly destroyed.

² The destroyer has advanced on you, guarding the siege-works, watching the road, bracing himself, mustering great strength!

³ (For Yahweh has restored the vine of Jacob, yes, the vine of Israel, although the plunderers had plundered them, although they had snapped off their vine-shoots!)

⁴ The shields of his fighting men show red, his warriors are dressed in scarlet; the metal of the chariots sparkles as he prepares for battle; the horsemen are impatient for action;

⁵ the chariots storm through the streets, jostling one another in the squares; they look like blazing flames, like lightning they dash to and fro.

⁶ His captains are called out; stumbling as they go, they speed towards the wall, and the mantelet is put in position.

⁷ The sluices of the River are opened, and the palace melts in terror.

⁸ Beauty is taken captive, carried away, her slave-girls moaning like doves

⁹ and beating their breasts. Nineveh is like a lake, whose waters are draining away. 'Stop! Stop!' But no one turns back.

¹⁰ 'Plunder the silver! Plunder the gold!' There is no end to the treasure, a mass of everything you could desire!

¹¹ Ravaged, wrecked, ruined! Heart fails and knees give way, anguish is in the loins of all, and every face grows pale!

¹² Where is the lions' den now, the cave of the lion's whelps, where the lion and lioness walked with their cubs and no one molested them,

¹³ where the lion would tear up food for his whelps and strangle the kill for his mates, where he filled his caverns with prey and his lairs with spoil?

¹⁴ Look, I am against you!- declares Yahweh Sabaoth- I shall send your chariots up in smoke, and the sword will devour your whelps; I shall cut short your depredations on earth, and the voices of your envoys will be heard no more.

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The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) is a Catholic translation of the Bible published in 1985. The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) has become the most widely used Roman Catholic Bible outside of the United States. It has the imprimatur of Cardinal George Basil Hume.

Like its predecessor, the Jerusalem Bible, the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) version is translated "directly from the Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic." The 1973 French translation, the Bible de Jerusalem, is followed only "where the text admits to more than one interpretation." Introductions and notes, with some modifications, are taken from the Bible de Jerusalem.

Source: The Very Reverend Dom (Joseph) Henry Wansbrough, OSB, MA (Oxon), STL (Fribourg), LSS (Rome), a monk of Ampleforth Abbey and a biblical scholar. He was General Editor of the New Jerusalem Bible. "New Jerusalem Bible, Regular Edition", pg. v.

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