“Why do I see them afraid, turned back? And their fighters are beaten down. And they have fled in haste, and did not look back, for fear was all around,” declares יהוה.
“Their tents and their flocks, their curtains and all their vessels shall be taken. And they shall take away their camels for themselves. And they shall cry out to them, ‘Fear is on every side!’
“Her hired ones too, in her midst, are like fattened calves, for they too shall turn, they shall flee away together. They shall not stand, for the day of their calamity has come upon them, the time of their punishment.
‘And I shall make many peoples appalled at you, and their sovereigns shall be greatly afraid of you when I swing My sword before them. And they shall tremble continually, every man for his own life, in the day of your fall.’
For I heard many mocking, “Fear on every side!” “Expose,” they say, “yea, let us expose him!” All my friends watched for my stumbling, saying, “He might be lured away, so that we prevail against him, and take our revenge on him.”
And it came to be, when they had brought them outside, that he said, “Escape for your life! Do not look behind you nor stay anywhere in the plain. Escape to the mountains, lest you be consumed.”
Therefore the displeasure of יהוה has burned against His people, and He stretches out His hand against them and smites them, and the mountains tremble. And their carcass is as filth in the middle of the streets. With all this His displeasure has not turned back, and His hand is still stretched out!
and they shall be afraid. Pangs and sorrows take hold of them, they are in pain as a woman in labour; they are amazed at one another, their faces aflame!
“See, I am bringing fear upon you, from all those around you,” declares the Master יהוה of hosts. “And you shall be driven out, each one straight ahead, with no one to bring home the wanderer.