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Judgment on Israel’s Enemies

Gather together, gather,

O shameless nation,

before you are driven away

like the drifting chaff,

before there comes upon you

the fierce anger of the L ord,

before there comes upon you

the day of the L ord’s wrath.

Seek the L ord, all you humble of the land,

who do his commands;

seek righteousness, seek humility;

perhaps you may be hidden

on the day of the L ord’s wrath.

For Gaza shall be deserted,

and Ashkelon shall become a desolation;

Ashdod’s people shall be driven out at noon,

and Ekron shall be uprooted.

Ah, inhabitants of the seacoast,

you nation of the Cherethites!

The word of the L ord is against you,

O Canaan, land of the Philistines;

and I will destroy you until no inhabitant is left.

And you, O seacoast, shall be pastures,

meadows for shepherds

and folds for flocks.

The seacoast shall become the possession

of the remnant of the house of Judah,

on which they shall pasture,

and in the houses of Ashkelon

they shall lie down at evening.

For the L ord their God will be mindful of them

and restore their fortunes.

I have heard the taunts of Moab

and the revilings of the Ammonites,

how they have taunted my people

and made boasts against their territory.

Therefore, as I live, says the L ord of hosts,

the God of Israel,

Moab shall become like Sodom

and the Ammonites like Gomorrah,

a land possessed by nettles and salt pits,

and a waste forever.

The remnant of my people shall plunder them,

and the survivors of my nation shall possess them.

This shall be their lot in return for their pride,

because they scoffed and boasted

against the people of the L ord of hosts.

The L ord will be terrible against them;

he will shrivel all the gods of the earth,

and to him shall bow down,

each in its place,

all the coasts and islands of the nations.

You also, O Ethiopians,

shall be killed by my sword.

And he will stretch out his hand against the north,

and destroy Assyria;

and he will make Nineveh a desolation,

a dry waste like the desert.

Herds shall lie down in it,

every wild animal;

the desert owl and the screech owl

shall lodge on its capitals;

the owl shall hoot at the window,

the raven croak on the threshold;

for its cedar work will be laid bare.

Is this the exultant city

that lived secure,

that said to itself,

“I am, and there is no one else”?

What a desolation it has become,

a lair for wild animals!

Everyone who passes by it

hisses and shakes the fist.

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

The Prophet proceeds here to the Assyrians, whom we know to have been special enemies to the Church of God. For the Moabites and the Ammonites were fans only, as we have elsewhere seen, as they could not do much harm by their own strength. Hence they stirred up the Assyrians, they stirred up the Ethiopians and remote nations. The meaning, then, is, that no one of all the enemies of the Church would be left unpunished by God, as every one would receive a reward for his cruelty. He speaks now of God in the third person; but in the last verse God himself said, that the Ethiopians would be slain by his sword. The Prophet adds here, He will extend his hand to the north; that is, God will not complete his judgments on the Ethiopians; but he will go farther, even to Nineveh and to all the Assyrians.

Nineveh, we know, was the metropolis of the empire, before the Assyrians were conquered by the Babylonians. Thus Babylon then recovered the sovereignty which it had lost; and Nineveh, though not wholly demolished, was yet deprived of its ruling power, and gradually lost its name and its wealth, until it was reduced into a waste; for the building of Ctesiphon, as we have elsewhere seen, proved its ruin. But the Prophet, no doubt, proceeds here to administer comfort to the Jews, lest they should despair, while the Lord did not interfere. And the extension of the hand means as though he said, that his own time is known to the Lord, and that he would put forth his power when needful. Assyria was north as to Judea: hence he says, to the north will the Lord extend his hand, and will destroy Assyria; he will make Nineveh a desolation, that it may be like the desert. It follows—