1. This is the Word of the Lord which came to Jeremiah the man of God about the Philistines, before Pharaoh won the war against Gaza.
2. The Lord says, "Waters are going to rise from the north and become a flood. They will flow over the land and everything in it, the cities and all who live in them. The men will cry out. Every person living in the land will cry in a loud voice.
3. Because of the noise of the feet of horses running, the noise of war-wagons and the sound of wheels, fathers have not turned back for their children. Their hands have become too weak,
4. because of the day that is coming to destroy all the Philistines. And all those who helped Tyre and Sidon will be destroyed. For the Lord is going to destroy the Philistines, those who are left of the land of Caphtor by the sea.
5. All the hair is gone from the head of Gaza. Ashkelon has been destroyed. O you who are left of their valley, how long will you cut yourselves?
6. O, sword of the Lord, how long will it be before you are quiet? Return to your holder. Be at rest and do not move.
7. How can it be quiet, when the Lord has given it work to do? He has sent it against Ashkelon and against the land by the sea."