15. It makes my people lose courage and stumble. I am threatening their city with a sword that flashes like lightning and is ready to kill.
16. Cut to the right and the left, you sharp sword! Cut wherever you turn.
17. I also will clap my hands, and my anger will be over. I, the Lord, have spoken.”
18. The Lord spoke to me.
19. “Mortal man,” he said, “mark out two roads by which the king of Babylonia can come with his sword. Both of them are to start in the same country. Put up a signpost where the roads fork.
20. One arm will show the king the way to the Ammonite city of Rabbah, and the other the way to Judah, to the fortified city, Jerusalem.
21. The king of Babylonia stands by the signpost at the fork of the road. To discover which way to go, he shakes the arrows; he consults his idols; he examines the liver of a sacrificed animal.
22. Now! His right-hand holds the arrow marked ‘Jerusalem’! It tells him to go and set up battering rams, to shout the battle cry, to place battering rams against the gates, to throw up earthworks, and to dig trenches.