12 All your fortresses are fig trees with early figs; if they are shaken they will fall into the mouth of the eater.
13 Behold, your troops in the midst of you are [as weak and helpless as] women; the gates of your land are set wide open to your enemies [without effort]; fire consumes your bars.
14 Draw for yourself the water [necessary] for a [long continued] siege, make strong your fortresses! Go down into the clay pits and trample the mortar; make ready the brickkiln [to burn bricks for the bulwarks]!
15 [But] there [in the very midst of these preparations] will the fire devour you; the sword will cut you off; it will destroy you as the locusts [destroy]. Multiply yourselves like the licking locusts; make yourselves many like the swarming locusts!
16 You increased your merchants more than the [visible] stars of the heavens. The swarming locust spreads itself and destroys, and then flies away.
17 Your princes are like the grasshoppers and your marshals like the swarms of locusts which encamp in the hedges on a cold day–but when the sun rises, they fly away, and no one knows where they are.
18 Your shepherds are asleep, O king of Assyria; your nobles are lying still [in death]. Your people are scattered on the mountains and there is no one to gather them.