One shall rush, running to meet [another] runner, and one [shall go] with tidings to meet [another] with tidings, to bring tidings to the king of Babylon, that his city is taken.

Howl, for the day of the Lord is near, and destruction from God shall arrive.

The elders shall be troubled, and pangs shall seize them, as of a woman in labor; and they shall mourn one to another, and shall be amazed, and shall change their countenance as a flame.

Therefore are my loins filled with feebleness, and pangs have seized me as a travailing woman; I dealt wrongfully that I might not hear; I hastened that I might not see.

My heart wanders, and transgression overwhelms me; my soul is occupied with fear.

In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand, and wrote in front of the lamp on the plaster of the wall of the king's house: and the king saw the knuckles of the hand that wrote.

Then the king's countenance changed, and his thoughts troubled him, and the joints of his hips were loosed, and his knees knocked one another.

Behold, He shall look [upon her] as an eagle, and spread forth [His] wings over her strongholds; and the heart of the mighty men of Edom shall be in that day as the heart of a woman in her pangs.

Damascus is utterly weakened, she is put to flight; trembling has seized upon her.