The northern advance

19Prepare your baggage for exile, O daughter dwelling in Egypt, for Noph will become a desolation, laid waste, without inhabitant.

20Egypt is a beautiful heifer; destruction from the north has come, it has come.

21Even her hired soldiers in her midst are like fattened calves; for even they have turned and fled together; they did not stand, for the day of their disaster has come upon them, the time of their punishment.

22Her sound goes like a serpent, for they go with an army and come against her with axes, like woodcutters.

23They have cut down her forest, declares Yahweh, though it cannot be searched out, because they are more numerous than locusts, and they are without number.

24The daughter of Egypt is put to shame; she is given into the hand of a people from the north.

25Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel, says: Behold, I am about to punish Amon of No, and Pharaoh, and Egypt, and her gods, and her kings, and Pharaoh, and those who trust in him.

26And I will give them into the hand of those who seek their life, and into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and into the hand of his servants. But afterward she will dwell as in days of old, declares Yahweh.