2
1 How has the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger!
He has cast down from heaven to the earth the beauty of Israel,
And hasn’t remembered his footstool in the day of his anger.
2 The Lord has swallowed up all the habitations of Jacob,
and has not pitied:
He has thrown down in his 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 drawn back his right hand from before the enemy:
He has burned up Jacob like a flaming fire,
which devours all around.
4 He has bent his bow like an enemy,
he has stood with his right hand as an adversary,
Has killed all that were 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 as an enemy,
he has swallowed up Israel;
He has swallowed up all her palaces,
he has destroyed his strongholds;
He has multiplied in the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation.
6 He has violently taken away his tabernacle,
as if it were of a garden;
he has destroyed his place of assembly:
Yahweh has caused solemn assembly and Sabbath to be forgotten in Zion,
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 given up into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces:
They have made a noise in Yahweh’s house,
as in the day of a solemn assembly.
8 Yahweh has purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion;
He has stretched out the line,
he has not withdrawn his hand from destroying;
He has made the rampart and wall to lament;
9 Her gates are sunk into the ground;
he has destroyed and broken her bars:
Her king and her princes are among the nations where the law is not;
Yes, her prophets find no vision from Yahweh.
10 The elders of the daughter of Zion sit on the ground,
they keep silence;
They have cast up dust on their heads;
they have clothed themselves with sackcloth:
The virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground.
11 My eyes fail with tears,
my heart is troubled;
My liver is poured on the earth,
because of the destruction of the daughter of my people,
Because the young children and the infants swoon in the streets of the city.
12 They ask their mothers,
“Where is grain and wine?”
when they swoon as the wounded in the streets of the city,
when their soul is poured out into their mothers’ bosom.
13 What shall I testify to you?
what shall I liken to you, daughter of Jerusalem?
What shall I compare to you,
that I may comfort you, virgin daughter of Zion?
For your breach is great like the sea:
14 Your prophets have seen for you false and foolish visions;
They have not uncovered your iniquity,
to bring back your captivity,
but have seen for you false revelations and causes of banishment.
15 All that pass by clap their hands at you.
They hiss and wag their head at the daughter of Jerusalem, saying,
“Is this the city that men called ‘The perfection of beauty,
the joy of the whole earth’?”
16 All your enemies have opened their mouth wide against you.
They hiss and gnash the teeth.
They say, “We have swallowed her up.
Certainly this is the day that we looked for.
We have found it.
17 Yahweh has done that which he purposed;
he has fulfilled his word that he commanded in the days of old;
He has thrown down,
and has not pitied:
He has caused the enemy to rejoice over you;
he has exalted the horn of your adversaries.
18 Their heart cried to the Lord:
wall of the daughter of Zion,
let tears run down like a river day and night;
Give yourself no respite;
don’t let the apple 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 young children,
that faint for hunger at the head of every street.
20 “Look, Yahweh, and see to whom you have done thus!
Shall the women eat their offspring,
the children that are dandled in the hands?
Shall the priest and the prophet be killed 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 killed them in the day of your anger.
You have slaughtered, and not pitied.
22 “You have called, as in the day of a solemn assembly, my terrors on every side.
There was no one that escaped or remained in the day of Yahweh’s anger.
My enemy has consumed those whom I have dandled and brought up.