Lamentations

1

¹ How the city sits alone / That was full of people! / She who was once great among the nations / Has become like a widow; / She who was a princess among the provinces / Has become tributary.
² Bitterly she weeps in the night, / And her tears are on her cheeks. / There is no one to comfort her / Among all her lovers; / All her friends have dealt treacherously with her; / They have become her enemies.
³ Judah has gone into exile, away from affliction / And away from great servitude; / She dwells among the nations / But finds no rest; / All her pursuers have overtaken her / In the midst of distress.
⁴ The ways of Zion mourn, / For no one comes to the appointed feast; / All her gates are desolate; / Her priests groan; / Her virgins are afflicted, / And she is in bitterness.
⁵ Her adversaries have become the head; / Her enemies prosper; / For Jehovah has afflicted her / Because of the multitude of her transgressions; / Her little ones have gone into captivity / Before the adversary.
⁶ And all her majesty has departed / From the daughter of Zion; / Her princes have become like deer / That find no pasture, / And they have fled without strength / Before the pursuer.
⁷ In the days of her affliction and her wanderings, / Jerusalem remembers / All her precious things / Which were in the days of old, / When her people fell into the hand of the adversary, / And there was no one to help her. / The adversaries saw her; / They mocked at her downfall.
⁸ Jerusalem has sinned grievously; / Therefore she has become an impurity. / All who honored her despise her, / Because they have seen her nakedness; / And she groans / And turns backwards.
⁹ Her uncleanness is in her skirts; / She did not remember her latter end; / Therefore she has come down astonishingly; / There is no one to comfort her. / O Jehovah, see my affliction, / For the enemy has magnified himself.
¹⁰ The adversary has spread out his hand / Over all her precious things, / For she has seen the nations / Enter her sanctuary, / Concerning whom You commanded that they should not enter / Into Your assembly.
¹¹ All her people groan; / They seek bread;They have given their precious things for food / To restore their soul. / See, O Jehovah, and look, / For I have become despised.
¹² Is it nothing to you, all who pass by the way? / Look and see / If there is any pain like my pain / Which is dealt to me, / Whom Jehovah has afflicted / In the day of His burning anger.
¹³ He has sent fire from on high / Into my bones, and it prevails against them; / He has spread out a net for my feet; / He has turned me back; / He has made me a desolation / And faint all the day.
¹⁴ The yoke of my transgressions is bound by His hand; / They are knit together; / They have come up upon my neck; / He has made my strength fail; / The Lord has delivered me into hands / From which I am not able to rise up.
¹⁵ The Lord has made light of all my mighty men / In my midst; / He has called an assembly against me / To crush my young men. / The Lord has trodden, as in a winepress, / The virgin daughter of Judah.
¹⁶ For these things I weep; / My eye, my eye runs down with water, / For the comforter who should revive my soul / Is far from me; / My children have become desolate, / Because the enemy has prevailed.
¹⁷ Zion stretches out her hands, / Yet there is no one to comfort her. / Jehovah has commanded concerning Jacob / That those around him should be his adversaries; / Jerusalem has become an impurity / Among them.
¹⁸ Jehovah is righteous, / For I have rebelled against His commandment. / Hear now, all the peoples, / And see my pain; / My virgins and my young men / Have gone into captivity.
¹⁹ I have called to my lovers; / They have deceived me; / My priests and my elders / Have perished in the city, / While they sought food for themselves / To restore their souls.
²⁰ See, O Jehovah, for I am in distress, / My bowels are in ferment; / My heart is overturned within me, / For I have been very rebellious. / In the street the sword bereaves; / In the house it is like death.
²¹ They have heard that I groan; / There is no one to comfort me; / All my enemies have heard of my trouble; / They are glad that You have done it. / You will bring the day that You have proclaimed, / And they will be like me.
²² Let all their wickedness come before You, / And deal with them / As You have dealt with me / For all my transgressions; / For my sighs are many, / And my heart is faint.

2

¹ How the Lord in His anger / Has covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud! / He has cast from heaven to earth / The glory of Israel, / And has not remembered His footstool / In the day of His anger.
² The Lord has swallowed up all the habitations of Jacob; / He has not spared; / He has torn down in His overflowing wrath / The strongholds of the daughter of Judah. / He has brought them down to the ground; / He has profaned the kingdom and its princes.
³ He has cut off in fierce anger / All the horn of Israel.He has withdrawn His right hand / From before the enemy. / He has burned among Jacob like a flame of fire; / It consumes all around.
⁴ He has bent His bow like an enemy; / He has set His right hand like an adversary / And has slain all that was pleasant to the eye. / In the tent of the daughter of Zion / He has poured out His wrath like fire.
⁵ The Lord has become like an enemy; / He has swallowed up Israel; / He has swallowed up all her palaces; / He has destroyed her strongholds / And multiplied in the daughter of Judah / Mourning and lamentation.
⁶ And He has violently taken away His pavilion like a garden; / He has destroyed the place of His assembly; / Jehovah has caused the appointed feast and the Sabbath / To be forgotten in Zion; / He has despised, in the indignation of His anger, / The king and the priest.
⁷ The Lord has cast off His altar; / He has abhorred His sanctuary; / He has delivered up into the hand of the enemy / The walls of her palaces. / They have made a noise in the house of Jehovah / As though it were the day of an appointed feast.
⁸ Jehovah has thought to destroy / The walls of the daughter of Zion; / He has stretched out the line / And has not withdrawn His hand from destroying; / And He has made the rampart and the wall to mourn; / They languish together.
⁹ Her gates have sunk into the ground; / He has destroyed and broken her bars; / Her king and her princes are among nations / Where there is no law; / Her prophets also do not find / A vision from Jehovah.
¹⁰ The elders of the daughter of Zion / Sit on the ground; they are silent. / They have cast dust upon their head; / They have girded themselves with sackcloth. / The virgins of Jerusalem / Hang down their head to the ground.
¹¹ My eyes are consumed with tears; / My bowels are in ferment; / My liver is poured out on the earth, / Because of the brokenness of the daughter of my people, / Because the little ones and the nursing children / Faint in the streets of the city.
¹² They say to their mothers, / Where is the grain and the wine? / When they faint like one wounded / In the streets of the city, / When they pour out their soul / Into their mothers’ bosom.
¹³ What shall I testify to you? What shall I liken you to, / O daughter of Jerusalem? / What shall I compare you to, that I may comfort you, / O virgin daughter of Zion? / For your breach is great like a sea. / Who will heal you?
¹⁴ Your prophets have seen for you / Vanity and folly, / And they have not uncovered your iniquity / To turn again your captivity; / But they have seen for you burdens / Of vanity and of causes of banishment.
¹⁵ All those who pass on the way / Clap their hands at you; / They hiss and wag their head / At the daughter of Jerusalem, saying, / Is this the city which they called, / The perfection of beauty, / The joy of the whole earth?
¹⁶ All your enemies / Have opened their mouth against you; / They hiss and gnash the teeth; / They say, We have swallowed her up. / This is certainly the day that we have looked for; / We have found it; we have seen it.
¹⁷ Jehovah has done what He purposed; / He has fulfilled His word, / Which He commanded from the days of old; / He has torn down and has not spared, / And He has caused the enemy to rejoice over you; / He has exalted the horn of your adversaries.
¹⁸ Their heart cried out to the Lord: / O wall of the daughter of Zion, / Let tears run down like a stream / Day and night; / Give yourself no respite; / Let not the pupil of your eye cease.
¹⁹ Arise, cry out in the night / At the beginning of the watches; / Pour out your heart like water / Before the face of the Lord; / Lift up your hands toward Him / For the life of your little ones, / Who faint because of famine / At the head of every street.
²⁰ See, O Jehovah, and look, / With whom You have dealt thus? / Shall the women eat their fruit, / The little ones nursed by them? / Shall the priest and the prophet be slain / In the sanctuary of the Lord?
²¹ The youth and the old man / Lie on the ground in the streets; / My virgins and my young men / Have fallen by the sword; / You have slain them in the day of Your anger; / You have slaughtered; You have not spared.
²² You have called for, as though in the day of an appointed feast, / My terrors on every side, / And in the day of Jehovah’s anger / There was none who escaped or remained; / Those whom I have nursed and brought up / My enemy has consumed.

3

¹ I am the man who has seen affliction / By the rod of His wrath.
² He has driven me and brought me / Into darkness and not light.
³ Surely against me He has turned His hand / Again and again all the day.
⁴ He has wasted my flesh and my skin; / He has broken my bones.
⁵ He has built up a siege against me / And encircled me with gall and travail.
⁶ He has made me dwell in dark places, / Like those who have long been dead.
⁷ He has walled me about so that I cannot go forth; / He has made my bronze chain heavy.
⁸ Indeed, when I cry out and call for help, / He shuts out my prayer.
⁹ He has walled in my ways with hewn stone; / He has made my paths crooked.
¹⁰ He is to me like a bear lying in wait, / Like a lion in hidden places.
¹¹ He has turned aside my ways and torn me to pieces; / He has made me desolate.
¹² He bent His bow / And set me as a target for the arrow.
¹³ He has caused the arrows of His quiver / To enter my inward parts.
¹⁴ I have become a derision to all my people, / Their mocking song all the day.
¹⁵ He has filled me with bitterness; / He has made me drunk with wormwood.
¹⁶ He has also crushed my teeth with gravel; / He has covered me with ashes.
¹⁷ And You have removed my soul far from peace; / I have forgotten prosperity.
¹⁸ And I said, My strength has perished / As well as my hope in Jehovah.
¹⁹ Remember my affliction and my wandering, / The wormwood and the gall.
²⁰ My soul remembers them well / And is bowed down within me.
²¹ This I recall to my heart; / Therefore I have hope.
²² It is Jehovah’s lovingkindness that we are not consumed, / For His compassions do not fail;
²³ They are new every morning; / Great is Your faithfulness.
²⁴ Jehovah is my portion, says my soul; / Therefore I hope in Him.
²⁵ Jehovah is good to those who wait on Him, / To the soul that seeks Him.
²⁶ It is good for one to hope, and to do so in silence, / For the salvation of Jehovah.
²⁷ It is good for a man to bear / The yoke in his youth.
²⁸ Let him sit alone and be silent, / Because He has laid it upon him.
²⁹ Let him put his mouth in the dust — / Perhaps there is hope.
³⁰ Let him give his cheek to him who strikes him; / Let him be filled with reproach.
³¹ For the Lord will not / Cast off forever.
³² But even if He causes grief, He will have compassion / According to the multitude of His lovingkindness;
³³ For He does not afflict willingly / Or grieve the children of men.
³⁴ The crushing under his foot / Of all the prisoners of the earth,
³⁵ The turning aside of the justice due a man / Before the face of the Most High,
³⁶ The wronging of a man in his cause — / Will not the Lord see all these?
³⁷ Who is he who says, and it comes to pass, / What the Lord has not commanded?
³⁸ Out of the mouth of the Most High / Do there not proceed evil things and something good?
³⁹ Why does a living man complain, / A man for the punishment of his sins?
⁴⁰ Let us examine our ways and try them, / And let us turn again to Jehovah.
⁴¹ Let us lift up our heart with our hands / Unto God in the heavens.
⁴² We have transgressed and rebelled; / You have not pardoned.
⁴³ You have covered Yourself with anger and have pursued us; / You have slain; You have not spared.
⁴⁴ You have covered Yourself with a cloud / That prayer might not pass through.
⁴⁵ You have made us offscouring and refuse / In the midst of the peoples.
⁴⁶ All our enemies have opened / Their mouths against us.
⁴⁷ Fear and the pit are upon us, / Devastation and destruction.
⁴⁸ My eye runs down with streams of water / For the destruction of the daughter of my people.
⁴⁹ My eye pours forth and does not stop; / There is no cessation,
⁵⁰ Until Jehovah looks down / And sees from the heavens.
⁵¹ My eye pains my soul / Because of all the daughters of my city.
⁵² They have hunted me down like a bird, / They who are my enemies without cause.
⁵³ They have brought my life to its end in the pit / And have thrown a stone upon me.
⁵⁴ Water streamed over my head; / I said, I have been cut off.
⁵⁵ I called upon Your name, O Jehovah, / From the lowest pit.
⁵⁶ You have heard my voice; do not hide / Your ear at my breathing, at my cry.
⁵⁷ You drew near in the day that I called upon You; / You said, Do not fear.
⁵⁸ Lord, You have pleaded my soul’s case; / You have redeemed my life.
⁵⁹ You have seen, O Jehovah, my oppression; / Judge my cause.
⁶⁰ You have seen all their vengeance, / All their plans, against me.
⁶¹ You have heard their reproach, O Jehovah, / All their plans against me,
⁶² The lips of those who rise up against me / And their meditation against me all the day.
⁶³ Look upon their sitting down and their rising up; / I am their mocking song.
⁶⁴ You will render to them a recompense, O Jehovah, / According to the work of their hands.
⁶⁵ You will give them hardness of heart; / Your curse be upon them.
⁶⁶ You will pursue them in anger and will destroy them / From under the heavens of Jehovah.

4

¹ How the gold has become dim! / How the most pure gold has changed! / The stones of the sanctuary lie poured out / At the head of every street.
² The precious sons of Zion, / Comparable to fine gold, / How they are esteemed as earthen pitchers, / The work of the hands of a potter.
³ Even the jackals present the breast; / They nurse their young ones; / But the daughter of my people has become cruel, / Like the ostriches in the wilderness.
⁴ The tongue of the sucking child cleaves / To the roof of his mouth for thirst; / The little ones ask for bread, / But no one breaks it for them.
⁵ Those who fed on delicacies / Are desolate in the streets; / Those who were brought up in scarlet / Embrace dung heaps.
⁶ And the iniquity of the daughter of my people is greater / Than the sin of Sodom, / Which was overthrown as in a moment; / And no hands were laid on her.
⁷ Her nobles were purer than snow; / They were whiter than milk; / They were redder in body than corals; / Their figure was like sapphire.
⁸ Their visage is darker than black coal; / They are not recognized in the streets. / Their skin has shriveled up on their bones; / It has dried up; it has become like wood.
⁹ Those who were slain by the sword are better / Than those slain by famine; / For these pine away stricken through, / Because of the lack of the produce of the field.
¹⁰ The hands of compassionate women / Have boiled their own children; / They have become their food / In the destruction of the daughter of my people.
¹¹ Jehovah has accomplished His wrath; / He has poured out His burning anger. / And He has kindled a fire in Zion, / And it has consumed its foundations.
¹² The kings of the earth did not believe, / Neither did any of the inhabitants of the world, / That the adversary and the enemy would enter / Into the gates of Jerusalem.
¹³ It is because of the sins of her prophets, / And the iniquities of her priests, / Who have shed the blood of the righteous / In her midst.
¹⁴ They have wandered about blind in the streets; / They are polluted with blood; / So that men cannot touch / Their garments.
¹⁵ They cried out to them, Depart! Unclean! / Depart, depart; do not touch! / When they fled away and wandered about, men said among the nations, / They will no longer sojourn there.
¹⁶ The anger of Jehovah has scattered them; / He will no longer regard them. / They did not honor the priests, / Nor did they favor the elders.
¹⁷ Our eyes do yet fail, / Looking in vain for our help; / In our watching we watched / For a nation that could not save.
¹⁸ They hunted our steps, / So that we cannot walk in our streets; / Our end drew near; our days were fulfilled; / For our end had come.
¹⁹ Our pursuers were swifter / Than the eagles of heaven; / They hotly pursued us on the mountains; / They lay in wait for us in the wilderness.
²⁰ The breath of our nostrils, the anointed of Jehovah, / Has been captured in their pits, / Of whom we said, Under his shadow / We will live among the nations.
²¹ Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom, / Who dwells in the land of Uz. / Yet the cup will pass through to you also; / You will become drunk and make yourself naked.
²² The punishment for your iniquity has been accomplished, O daughter of Zion; / He will no longer take you into exile. / But He will punish your iniquity, O daughter of Edom; / He will uncover your sins.

5

¹ Remember, O Jehovah, what has come upon us; / Look and see our reproach.
² Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, / Our houses to foreigners.
³ We are orphans without father; / Our mothers are like widows.
⁴ We have drunk our water for money; / Our wood comes to us at a price.
⁵ On our necks are our pursuers; / We are weary; we have no rest.
⁶ We have given our hand to Egypt / And to Assyria, so as to be satisfied with bread.
⁷ Our fathers sinned and they are not, / And we ourselves bear their iniquities.
⁸ Slaves rule over us; / There is no one to deliver us from their hand.
⁹ We get our bread at the risk of our lives / Because of the sword from the wilderness.
¹⁰ Our skin is black like an oven / Because of the burning heat of famine.
¹¹ They have ravished the women in Zion, / The virgins in the cities of Judah.
¹² Princes were hanged by them. / The faces of the elders were not honored.
¹³ The young men bore the mill, / And the young boys stumbled under the wood.
¹⁴ The old men have ceased from the gate, / The young men from their music.
¹⁵ The joy of our heart has ceased; / Our dance has been turned into mourning.
¹⁶ The crown has fallen from our head. / Woe to us! For we have sinned.
¹⁷ Because of this our heart is faint; / Because of these things our eyes are dim;
¹⁸ Because of Mount Zion, which is desolate — / Foxes rove in it.
¹⁹ You, O Jehovah, abide forever; / Your throne is from generation to generation.
²⁰ Why do You forget us forever / And forsake us for so long a time?
²¹ Turn us back to You, O Jehovah, and we will be turned; / Renew our days as before.
²² Or have You utterly rejected us? / Are You exceedingly angry with us?