Chapter 25

Word came to me from the Lord:

Son of man, turn thy regard towards the Ammonites, and prophesy their doom.

Give Ammon this message from the Lord God: Joy, joy! was thy cry when my sanctuary was profaned, Israel ravaged, the men of Juda carried off into exile;

what shall be thy reward? The eastern folk shall enjoy thy lands; sheep-cote of theirs, tent of theirs shall be found in thee, crop of thine they shall eat, milk of thine drink;

camels lodged in Rabbath, and all Ammon a pasture-land of sheep! Thus you shall know what power is mine.

For clapping of hand and stamping of foot, and heart that rejoiced at Israel’s fall,

that power shall be used in vengeance; all the world shall have the pillaging of thee, till thou art a nation no longer, a kingdom no longer; thy ruin shall teach thee what manner of God I am.

This doom, too, the Lord God pronounces: Boasted they, the Moabites and the men of Seir, that Juda had gone the way of other lands?

I will lay open the valleys of Moab, that climb up from the cities, those frontier cities, fair Bethjesimoth, and Beelmeon and Cariathaim;

open them to the men of the east in their pursuit of the Ammonites, and all shall be overrun. Ammon shall be blotted out from the memory of mankind,

and there is justice, too, awaiting the Moabites; they too shall learn my power.

And this: Ill did the Edomites to glut their malice, by taking their revenge on Juda.

This doom the Lord God pronounces: My hand is raised to smite Edom, sparing neither man nor beast, making a desert of it all the way from Teman in the south to Dedan, that shall be put to the sword.

My own people of Israel shall execute this sentence against Edom, avenge for me the grudge I bear it; then it shall be seen how I punish my enemies, the Lord God says.

And this: Rancour of the Philistines, that murderous toll would take, old scores would settle!

Against the Philistines, too, this hand is raised; executed they shall be, the executioners;2 the dwellers on the sea-coast, all that is left of them, I mean to exterminate.

Great havoc I mean to make of them, unrelenting in my anger; such havoc as shall teach them to know what the Lord is.