Chapter 2

Band together, men of a nation so little loved, bind yourselves in one;

ere resolve can bear fruit, like flying chaff passes the day.1 Before the divine vengeance falls on you, before the day of divine retribution comes, to the Lord betake you!

To honest doing and patient suffering betake you, men of humble heart wherever you be, men obedient to his will; it may be, when the hour of the Lord’s vengeance comes, you shall find refuge.

Gaza and Ascalon to rack and ruin left, Azotus stormed ere the day is out, root and branch destroyed is Accaron!

Out upon the forfeited race2 that holds yonder strip of coast-land; the Lord’s doom is on it, the little Chanaan of the Philistines; wasted it shall be, and never a man to dwell in it.

There on the coast-land shepherds shall lie at ease, there shall be folds for flocks;

and who shall dwell there? The remnant that is left of Juda’s race; there they shall find pasturage, take their rest, when evening comes, in the ruins of Ascalon, when the Lord their God brings them relief, restores their fortunes again.

And what of Moab, what of Ammon? Doubt not I have heard the blasphemous taunts they uttered against my own people, as they encroached upon its borders.

As I am a living God, says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, no better shall Moab and Ammon be than Sodom and Gomorrha, all waste and brushwood and salt-pits, for ever desolate; of my own people enough remnant shall be left, a nation still, to plunder and to conquer them.

Pride that would mock and overreach his own people he, the Lord of hosts, knows how to punish;

see what terror he strikes into them! Peak and pine they, gods of the other nations; rise they from their places, one by one, to adore him, island-dwellers of the world.

You too, men of Ethiopia, shall feel my sword.

That hand shall stretch out northward, and make an end of Assyria; Nineve shall be left forlorn, a trackless desert.

Flocks shall lie down there … all the wild things of earth; bittern and hedgehog make their dwelling in its doorways, bird-song there shall be in the windows, and raven perched on lintel; so ebbs the strength of it.

And this was the proud city that dwelt so free from alarms, thinking to herself, Here I stand, with no rival; a desert now, lair of the wild beasts! Hisses the passer-by in mockery, and shakes his fist.