Woe to the Bloody City
1 Woe to the bloody city! It is all full of lies and robbery—no end to the prey. 2 The noise of the whip, the noise of the rattling of wheels, prancing horses, and bounding chariots, 3 the horseman charging, and the flashing sword, the glittering spear, and a multitude of slain, and a great heap of corpses, and there is no end of the bodies. They stumble on their bodies 4 because of the multitude of the prostitution of the alluring prostitute, the mistress of witchcraft, who sells nations through her prostitution, and families through her witchcraft. 5 “Behold, I am against you,” says Yahweh of Armies, “and I will lift your skirts over your face. I will show the nations your nakedness, and the kingdoms your shame. 6 I will throw abominable filth on you and make you vile, and will make you a spectacle. 7 It will happen that all those who look at you will flee from you, and say, ‘Nineveh is laid waste! Who will mourn for her?’ Where will I seek comforters for you?”
The charge is finally stated outright — blood, lies, and plunder — and the punishment is public exposure rather than mere defeat.
Chapter 3 opens with the indictment the first two assumed. Woe to the bloody city, full of lies and robbery, with no end to the prey. Blood — dam H1818 — is Scripture's word when violence has become a policy rather than an incident, and Assyria's own records make the charge easy to sustain.
Verses 2 and 3 run almost without verbs: cracking whips, rattling wheels, galloping horses, flashing swords. Then the noise stops and only the field is left, with men stumbling over the bodies. Verse 4 names the deeper offense as seduction rather than force — a nation selling nations through prostitution, which is how an empire recruits collaborators. So the sentence is exposure: nakedness shown to the nations, a spectacle made, and then the question nobody answers. Who will mourn for her?
settled What this mark means