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Lamentations 1
How does the city sit solitary, that was full of people!
She has become as a widow, that was great among the nations!
She that was a princess among the provinces has become tributary!
2 She weeps bitterly in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks;
Among all her lovers she has no one to comfort her:
All her friends have dealt treacherously with her; they have become her enemies.
3 Judah has gone into captivity because of affliction, and because of great servitude;
She dwells among the nations, she finds no rest:
All her persecutors overtook her within the straits.
4 The ways of Zion mourn, because none come to the solemn assembly;
All her gates are desolate, her priests sigh:
Her virgins are afflicted, and she herself is in bitterness.
5 Her adversaries have become the head, her enemies prosper;
For Yahweh has afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions:
Her young children have gone into captivity before the adversary.
6 And from the daughter of Zion all her majesty has departed:
Her princes have become like harts that find no pasture,
and they are gone without strength before the pursuer.
7 Jerusalem remembers in the days of her affliction and of her miseries
all her pleasant things that were from the days of old:
When her people fell into the hand of the adversary, and none did help her,
The adversaries saw her, they did mock at her desolations.
8 Jerusalem has grievously sinned; therefore she has become as an unclean thing;
All that honored her despise her, because they have seen her nakedness:
Yes, she sighs, and turns backward.
9 Her filthiness was in her skirts; she remembered not her latter end;
Therefore she has come down wonderfully; she has no comforter:
Behold, O Yahweh, my affliction; for the enemy has magnified himself.
10 The adversary has spread out his hand upon all her pleasant things:
For she has seen that the nations have entered into her sanctuary,
Concerning whom you did command that they should not enter into your assembly.
11 All her people sigh, they seek bread;
They have given their pleasant things for food to refresh the soul:
See, O Yahweh, and behold; for I have become abject.
12 Is it nothing to you, all you that pass by?
Behold, and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow, which is brought upon me,
With which Yahweh has afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger.
13 From on high has he sent fire into my bones, and it prevails against them;
He has spread a net for my feet, he has turned me back:
He has made me desolate 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 to fail:
Yahweh has delivered me into their hands, against whom I am not able to stand.
15 Yahweh has rejected all my mighty men in the middle of me;
He has called a solemn assembly against me to crush my young men:
Yahweh 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;
Because the comforter that should refresh my soul is far from me:
My children are desolate, because the enemy has prevailed.
17 Zion spreads forth her hands; there is no one to comfort her;
Yahweh has commanded concerning Jacob, that they that are all around him
should be his adversaries:
Jerusalem is among them as an unclean thing.
18 Yahweh is righteous; for I have rebelled against his commandment:
Hear, I pray you, all you peoples, and behold my sorrow:
My virgins and my young men have gone into captivity.
19 I called for my lovers, but they deceived me:
My priests and my elders gave up the spirit in the city,
While they sought for themselves food to refresh their souls.
20 Behold, O Yahweh; for I am in distress; my heart is troubled;
My heart is turned within me; for I have grievously rebelled:
Abroad the sword robs, at home there is as death.
21 They have heard that I sigh; 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 shall be like to me.
22 Let all their wickedness come before you;
And do to them, as you have done to me for all my transgressions:
For my sighs are many, and my heart is faint.
Lamentations 2
How has Yahweh 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 has not remembered his footstool in the day of his anger.
2 Yahweh 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 the princes of it.
3 He has cut off in fierce anger all the horn of Israel;
He has drawn back his right hand from before the enemy:
And 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,
And 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 Yahweh has become as an enemy, he has swallowed up Israel;
He has swallowed up all her palaces, he has destroyed his strongholds;
And he has multiplied in the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation.
6 And 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,
And has despised in the indignation of his anger the king and the priest.
7 Yahweh 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 the house of Yahweh, 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.
And he has made the rampart and wall to lament; 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 the nations where the law is not;
Yes, her prophets find no vision from Yahweh.
10 The elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground, they keep silence;
They have cast up dust upon their heads; they have girded 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 upon the earth, because of the destruction of the daughter
of my people,
Because the young children and the sucklings swoon in the streets of the city.
12 They say to 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, O daughter of Jerusalem?
What shall I compare to you, that I may comfort you, O virgin daughter of Zion?
For your breach is great like the sea: who can heal you?
14 Your prophets have seen for you false and foolish visions;
And they have not uncovered your iniquity, to bring back your captivity,
But have seen for you false oracles 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, we have seen 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:
And he has caused the enemy to rejoice over you; he has exalted the horn
of your adversaries.
18 Their heart cried to Yahweh:
O wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears run down like a river day and night;
Give yourself no respite; let not 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 Yahweh:
Lift up your hands toward him for the life of your young children,
that faint for hunger at the head of every street.
20 See, O Yahweh, and behold to whom you have done this!
Shall the women eat their fruit, the children that are dandled in the hands?
Shall the priest and the prophet be killed in the sanctuary of Yahweh?
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;
And there was none that escaped or remained in the day of Yahweh’s anger:
Those that I have dandled and brought up has my enemy consumed.
Lamentations 3
I am the man that has seen affliction by the rod of his wrath.
2 He has led me and caused me to walk in darkness, and not in light.
3 Surely against me he turns his hand again and again all the day.
4 My flesh and my skin has he made old; he has broken my bones.
5 He has built against me, and compassed me with gall and travail.
6 He has made me to dwell in dark places, as those that have been long dead.
7 He has walled me about, that I cannot go forth; he has made my chain heavy.
8 Also, when I cry, and call for help, he shuts out my prayer.
9 He has walled up my ways with hewn stone; he has made my paths crooked.
10 He is to me as a bear lying in wait, as a lion in secret places.
11 He has turned aside my ways, and pulled me in pieces; he has made me desolate.
12 He has bent his bow, and set me as a mark for the arrow.
13 He has caused the shafts of his quiver to enter into my reins.
14 I have become a derision to all my people, and their song all the day.
15 He has filled me with bitterness, he has seated me with wormwood.
16 He has also broken my teeth with gravel stones; he has covered me with ashes.
17 And you have removed my soul far off from peace; I forgot prosperity.
18 And I said, My strength has perished, and my expectation from Yahweh.
19 Remember my affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall.
20 My soul has them still in remembrance, and is bowed down within me.
21 This I recall to my mind; therefore have I hope.
22 It is of Yahweh’s lovingkindnesses that we are not consumed,
because his compassions fail not.
23 They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
24 Yahweh is my portion, says my soul; therefore will I hope in him.
25 Yahweh is good to them that wait for him to the soul that seeks him.
26 It is good that a man should hope and quietly wait for the salvation of Yahweh.
27 It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.
28 Let him sit alone and keep silence, because he has laid it upon him.
29 Let him put his mouth in the dust, if so be there may be hope.
30 Let him give his cheek to him that strikes him; let him be filled full with reproach.
31 For Yahweh will not cast off forever.
32 For though he causes grief,
yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his lovingkindnesses.
33 For he does not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men.
34 To crush under foot all the prisoners of the earth,
35 To turn aside the right of a man before the face of the Most High,
36 To subvert a man in his cause, Yahweh does not approve.
37 Who is he -that says, and it comes to pass, when Yahweh commands it not?
38 Out of the mouth of the Most High comes there not evil and good?
39 Why does a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sins?
40 Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to Yahweh.
41 Let us lift up our heart with our hands to El in the heavens.
42 We have transgressed and have rebelled; you have not pardoned.
43 You have covered with anger and pursued us; you have slain, you have not pitied.
44 You have covered yourself with a cloud, so that no prayer can pass through.
45 You have made us an offscouring and refuse in the middle of the peoples.
46 All our enemies have opened their mouth wide against us.
47 Fear and the pit have come 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 down, and ceases not, without any intermission,
50 Till Yahweh looks down, and beholds from heaven.
51 My eye affects my soul, because of all the daughters of my city.
52 They have chased me severely like a bird, they that are my enemies without cause.
53 They have cut off my life in the dungeon, and have cast a stone upon me.
54 Waters flowed over my head; I said, I am cut off.
55 I called upon your name, O Yahweh, out of the lowest dungeon.
56 You heard my voice; hide not your ear at my breathing, at my cry.
57 You drew near in the day that I called upon you; you said, Fear not.
58 Yahweh, you have pleaded the causes of my soul; you have redeemed my life.
59 O Yahweh, you have seen my wrong; judge my cause.
60 You have seen all their vengeance and all their devices against me.
61 You have heard their reproach, O Yahweh, and all their devices against me,
62 The lips of those that rose up against me, and their device against me all the day.
63 Behold their sitting down, and their rising up; I am their song.
64 You will render to them a recompense,
O Yahweh, according to the work of their hands.
65 You will give them hardness of heart, your curse to them.
66 You will pursue them in anger, and destroy them from under the heavens of Yahweh.
