Lamentations 2

¹How the Lord has covered with His nose the daughter of Zion! He has cast from the heavens to the earth the beauty of Israel, and He did not remember the stool for His feet on the day of His anger!

²The Lord has swallowed up and He has not pitied all the dwelling places of Jacob; He has thrown down in His wrath the fortifications of the daughter of Judah; He has made them touch to the ground; He has profaned the kingdom and its princes.

³He has cut off in the burning of His anger every horn of Israel; He has turned back His right hand from before the enemy, and He has blazed against Jacob like a fire of flame, devouring all around!

⁴He has bent His bow like an enemy, standing with His right hand like an adversary, and He has slain all those desirable to His eye; on the tent of the daughter of Zion, He has poured out His fury like fire.

⁵The Lord has been like an enemy! He has swallowed up Israel, has swallowed up all her palaces; He has destroyed her strongholds, and He has multiplied in the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation.

⁶He has treated violently His booth as a garden; He has destroyed His appointed place; YHWH has caused to be forgotten in Zion the appointed feast and Sabbath, and He has spurned in the rage of His anger king and priest!

⁷The Lord has rejected His altar; He has disowned His sanctuary; He has shut up in the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces; a voice they have given forth in the house of YHWH as on the day of the appointed feast.

⁸YHWH has purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion; He has stretched out a line; He has not turned back His hand from destroying; the rampart and wall He has caused to lament, and together they have languished.

⁹Her gates have sunk into the ground; He has destroyed and broken her bars; her king and her princes are among the nations; the law is no more, and her prophets cannot find vision from YHWH.

¹⁰They sit on the ground and are silent—the elders of the daughter of Zion; they have thrown up dust on their heads, they have girded themselves with sackcloth; they have bowed their heads to the ground, the virgins of Jerusalem.

¹¹My eyes end in tears, my bowels are troubled; my liver is poured to the ground over the destruction of the daughter of my people, at the fainting of the infants and sucklings in the streets of the city!

¹²To their mothers they say, “Where is the grain and wine?” In their becoming feeble like a wounded one in the streets of the city, in the pouring out their soul into the bosom of their mothers.

¹³What can I say about you; to what shall I liken you, O daughter of Jerusalem? What shall I compare to you that I might comfort you, O virgin daughter of Zion? For your brokenness is as great as the sea—who can bring healing to you?

¹⁴Your prophets have seen for you emptiness and foolish things, and they have not uncovered about your iniquity, to turn back your captivity, and they have seen for you burdens of emptiness and enticements.

¹⁵They clap the hands at you all those passing by on the way; they hiss and shake their heads over the daughter of Jerusalem: “Is this the city that they called the fullness of beauty, the joy of all the earth?”

¹⁶They have opened their mouth against you—all your enemies; they hiss and gnash the teeth; they say: “We have swallowed her up! Surely this is the day we have awaited—we have found it, we have seen!”

¹⁷YHWH has done what He planned, and has fulfilled His word, which He commanded from days before; He has overthrown, and He has not spared; the enemy He has made glad over you, and He has raised high the horn of your adversaries.

¹⁸Their heart has cried out to the Lord! O wall of the daughter of Zion, let your tears run down like a torrent day and night; do not give ceasing to yourself, do not give rest to the daughter of your eye!

¹⁹Arise, cry out in the night, at the beginning of the watches! Pour out your heart like waters before the face of the Lord! Lift up toward Him your hands over the soul of your infants, those weakened by hunger in the head of every street!

²⁰See, O YHWH, and consider! To whom have You dealt this way? Shall women eat their own fruit, the infants of the tender care? Shall he be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord—priest and prophet?

²¹They lie on the ground in the streets young and old; my maidens and my young men have fallen by the sword; You have slain them in the day of Your anger! You have slaughtered and not spared!

²²You have called, as on the day of an appointed feast, my terrors from around; he did not escape on the day of the anger of YHWH—escapee or survivor! Those whom I have held and brought up, my enemy has consumed them.