5. Prepare the table, spread the mat, eat and drink. Arise, you princes, anoint the shield!
6. For יהוה has said this to me, “Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he sees.”
7. And he saw a chariot with a pair of horsemen, a chariot of donkeys, and a chariot of camels, and he listened attentively, very attentively.
8. Then he cried, “A lion, O יהוה! I stand continually on the watchtower in the daytime, and I have sat at my post every night.
9. “And see this, a chariot of men coming with a pair of horsemen!” And he spoke up and said, “Baḇel is fallen, is fallen! And all the carved images of her mighty ones He has broken to the ground.”
10. Oh, my threshing and the grain of my floor! That which I have heard from יהוה of hosts, the Elohim of Yisra’ĕl, I have declared to you.
11. The message concerning Dumah. He calls to me out of Sĕ‛ir, “Watchman, how much of the night is passed? Watchman, how much of the night has passed?”
12. The watchman said, “Morning came, and also the night. If you inquire, inquire. Come again!”
13. The message concerning Araḇia. In the forest in Araḇia you stay, O you travelling companies of Deḏanites.
14. You who dwell in the land of Tĕma, bring water to him who is thirsty, meet the fugitive with bread.
15. For they fled from the swords, from the drawn sword, from the bent bow, and from the stress of battle.
16. For thus יהוה has said to me, “Within a year, according to the year of a hired man, all the esteem of Qĕḏar shall come to an end,
17. and the rest of the number of archers, the mighty men of the people of Qĕḏar, shall be few. For יהוה Elohim of Yisra’ĕl has spoken.”