11 People of Nineveh, you too will get drunk. You will try to hide from your enemies. You will look for a place of safety.
12 All of your forts are like fig trees that have their first ripe fruit on them. When the trees are shaken, the figs fall into the mouths of those who eat them.
13 Look at your troops. All of them are weak. The gates of your forts are wide open to your enemies. Fire has destroyed their heavy metal bars.
14 Prepare for the attack by storing up water! Make your walls as strong as you can! Make some bricks out of clay! Mix the mud to hold them together! Use them to repair the walls!
15 In spite of all of your hard work, fire will burn you up inside your city. Your enemies will cut you down with their swords. They will destroy you just as grasshoppers eat up crops. Multiply like grasshoppers! Increase your numbers like locusts!
16 You have more traders than the number of stars in the sky. But like locusts they strip the land. Then they fly away.
17 Your guards are like grasshoppers. Your officials are like large numbers of locusts. They settle in the walls on a cold day. But when the sun appears, they fly away. And no one knows where they go.