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15 There the fire will consume you,
    the sword will cut you down;
    it will consume you like the grasshoppers.

Multiply like the grasshoppers,
    multiply like the locusts!(A)
16 You have made your traders[a] more numerous
    than the stars of the heavens;
    like grasshoppers that shed their skins and fly away.
17 Your sentries are like locusts,
    and your scribes like locust swarms
Gathered on the rubble fences
    on a cold day!
Yet when the sun rises, they vanish,
    and no one knows where they have gone.

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Footnotes

  1. 3:16 Traders: agents of the economic exploitation that sustained and enriched the Assyrian empire.

15 There the fire(A) will consume you;
    the sword(B) will cut you down—
    they will devour you like a swarm of locusts.
Multiply like grasshoppers,
    multiply like locusts!(C)
16 You have increased the number of your merchants
    till they are more numerous than the stars in the sky,
but like locusts(D) they strip the land
    and then fly away.
17 Your guards are like locusts,(E)
    your officials like swarms of locusts
    that settle in the walls on a cold day—
but when the sun appears they fly away,
    and no one knows where.

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