1 The Sorrows of Jerusalem How lonely sits the city that was full of people! How she has become like a widow, who was once great among the nations! She who was a princess among the provinces has become a slave!
2 She weeps sorely in the night, her tears are on her cheeks; among all her lovers she has none to comfort her. All her friends have dealt treacherously with her; they have become her enemies.
3 Judah has gone into captivity, under affliction and great servitude; she dwells among the nations, she finds no rest; all her persecutors overtook her in the midst of distress.
4 The roads to Zion mourn because no one comes to the solemn feasts. All her gates are desolate; her priests sigh, her virgins are afflicted, and she herself suffers bitterly.
5 Her adversaries have become her masters, her enemies prosper; for the Lord has afflicted her because of the multitude of her transgressions. Her children have gone into captivity before the enemy.
6 From the daughter of Zion all her beauty has departed. Her princes have become like deer that find no pasture; they fled without strength before the pursuer.
7 In the days of her affliction and misery Jerusalem remembers all her pleasant things that she had in the days of old. When her people fell into the hand of the enemy, there was no one to help her. The adversaries saw her and mocked at her desolation.
8 Jerusalem has sinned grievously; therefore she has become vile. All who honored her despise her, for they have seen her nakedness; she herself sighs and turns away.
9 Her uncleanness is in her skirts; she took no thought of her future; therefore her fall is astounding; she has no comforter. “O Lord, look upon my affliction, for the enemy has triumphed!”
10 The adversary has spread his hand over all her precious things; for she has seen the nations enter her sanctuary, those whom You commanded not to enter Your congregation.
11 All her people groan, as they search for bread; they trade their treasures for food to restore their strength. Look, O Lord, and consider, for I am despised.
12 Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow, which was brought upon me, which the Lord has inflicted on the day of His fierce anger.
13 From on high He has sent fire into my bones, and it prevailed against them; He has spread a net for my feet; He turned me back; He has made me desolate and faint all the day long.
14 The yoke of my transgressions was bound; by His hand they were fastened together; they were set upon my neck. He made my strength fail; the Lord delivered me into the hands of those whom I am not able to withstand.
15 The Lord has trampled underfoot all my mighty men in my midst; He has called an assembly against me to crush my young men; The Lord has trodden the virgin daughter of Judah as in a winepress.
16 For these things I weep; my eyes flow with tears; for the comforter, who should relieve my soul, is far from me. My children are desolate for the enemy has prevailed.
17 Zion spreads out her hands, but there is no one to comfort her; the Lord has commanded against Jacob that his neighbors should be his adversaries; Jerusalem has become a filthy thing among them.
18 The Lord is in the right, for I have rebelled against His commandment. Hear now, all peoples, and see 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 perished in the city, while they sought food to restore their strength.
20 Look, O Lord, for I am in distress; my soul is greatly troubled; my heart is overturned within me, for I have grievously rebelled. In the street the sword bereaves, at home it is like death.
21 They have heard my groaning, yet there is no one to comfort me. All my enemies have heard of my trouble; they are glad that You have done it. Bring the day that You have announced, that they become like 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 groans are many, and my heart is faint.
1 The Anger of God Over Jerusalem How the Lord has covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in His anger! He has cast down from heaven to the earth the beauty of Israel; He has not remembered His footstool in the day of His anger.
2 The Lord has swallowed up without mercy all the habitations of Jacob; In His wrath He has thrown down 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 might of Israel; He has drawn back His right hand from before the enemy. He has burned against Jacob like a flaming fire, devouring all around.
4 He has bent His bow like an enemy, with his right hand set like an adversary; He has killed all who were pleasant to His eye; in the tabernacle of the daughter of Zion, He has poured out His fury 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 has increased mourning and lamentation in the daughter of Judah.
6 He has violently taken away His tabernacle as if it were a garden; He has destroyed His place of assembly; the Lord has caused the solemn feasts and Sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion. In his fierce indignation He has despised the king and the priest.
7 The Lord has scorned His altar, He has disowned His sanctuary; He has given up the walls of her palaces into the hand of the enemy. They have made a noise in the house of the Lord as on the day of a solemn feast.
8 The Lord has purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion. He has stretched out a line; He has not withdrawn His hand from destroying; therefore He caused the rampart and the wall to lament; they languished 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; the Law is no more, and her prophets find no vision from the Lord.
10 The elders of the daughter of Zion sit on the ground in silence; they throw dust on their heads and gird themselves with sackcloth. The virgins of Jerusalem bow their heads to the ground.
11 My eyes fail with tears, my spirit is greatly troubled; my bile is poured on the ground because of the destruction of the daughter of my people, because the children and infants faint in the streets of the city.
12 They say to their mothers, “Where is grain and wine?” when they faint like a wounded man in the streets of the city, as their life is poured out on their mothers’ bosom.
13 What can I say for you, to what shall I liken you, O daughter of Jerusalem? What shall I compare with you, that I may comfort you, O virgin daughter of Zion? For your devastation is great like the sea; who can heal you?
14 Your prophets have seen for you false and deceptive visions; they have not revealed your iniquity, to bring back your captives, but have seen for you oracles that are false and misleading.
15 All who pass by clap their hands at you; they hiss and shake their heads at the daughter of Jerusalem, saying, “Is this the city that men call the perfection of beauty, the joy of the whole earth?”
16 All your enemies have opened their mouth against you; they hiss and gnash their teeth. They say, “We have swallowed her up! Certainly this is the day that we longed for; we have found it; we have seen it.”
17 The Lord has done what He planned; He has fulfilled His word that He had 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 power of your adversaries.
18 Their heart cried to the Lord: O wall of the daughter of Zion, let your tears run down like a river day and night; give yourself no rest, your eyes no respite!
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 your hands to Him for the lives of your young children, who faint for hunger at the head of every street.
20 Look, O Lord, and consider! To whom have You done this? Should the women eat their offspring, the children who were born healthy? Should the priest and the prophet be killed in the sanctuary of the Lord?
21 The young and the old 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 invited as to a feast day the terrors all around; in the day of the Lord’s anger no one escaped or survived; those whom I held and raised my enemy destroyed.
1 The Prophet’s Anguish I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of His wrath.
2 He has driven and brought me into darkness without any light.
3 Surely against me has He turned His hand continually, the whole day long.
4 My flesh and my skin He has made waste away; He has broken my bones;
5 He has besieged and enveloped me with gall and travail.
6 He has set me in dark places, like the dead of long ago.
7 He has hedged me in so that I cannot get out; He has made my chain heavy.
8 Even when I cry for help, He shuts out my prayer.
9 He has blocked my ways with hewn stone; He has made my paths crooked.
10 He is to me a bear lying in wait, a lion in hiding.
11 He has turned aside my ways and torn me in pieces; He has made me desolate.
12 He has bent His bow and set me as a target for the arrow.
13 He has caused the arrows of His quiver to pierce my inward parts.
14 I have become the derision of all my people, their mocking song all the day.
15 He has filled me with bitterness, He has sated me with wormwood.
16 He has made my teeth grind on gravel, and covered me with ashes.
17 My soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten prosperity.
18 So I say, “My strength and my hope from the Lord have perished.”
19 Remember my affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall.
20 Surely my soul remembers and is humbled within me.
21 But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:
22 It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed; His compassions do not fail.
23 They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness.
24 “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in Him.”
25 The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him.
26 It is good that a man should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.
27 It is good for a man to bear the yoke in his youth.
28 Let him sit alone in silence when it is laid on him;
29 let him put his mouth in the dust— there may yet be hope.
30 Let him give his cheek to the one who strikes, and let him be filled with insults.
31 For the Lord will not cast off forever.
32 But though He causes grief, yet He will have compassion according to the abundance of His mercies.
33 For He does not afflict from His heart, nor grieve the sons of men.
34 To crush underfoot all the prisoners of the earth,
35 to turn aside the justice due a man in the presence of the Most High,
36 to subvert a man in his cause, the Lord does not approve.
37 Who is he who speaks and it comes to pass, unless the Lord has commanded it?
38 Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and bad proceed?
39 Why should a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sins?
40 Let us search and try our ways, and return to the Lord!
41 Let us lift up our hearts and hands to God in heaven:
42 We have transgressed and rebelled; You have not pardoned.
43 You have covered Yourself with anger and pursued us; You have killed and not pitied.
44 You have covered Yourself with a cloud, so that no prayer should pass through.
45 You have made us filthy refuse in the midst of the peoples.
46 All our enemies have opened their mouths against us.
47 Panic and snare have come upon us, desolation and destruction.
48 My eyes flow with rivers of tears for the destruction of the daughter of my people.
49 My eyes flow and do not cease, without respite,
50 until the Lord from heaven looks down and sees.
51 My eyes bring suffering to my soul at the fate of all the daughters of my city.
52 My enemies chased me like a bird, without cause.
53 They cut off my life in the pit and cast stones on me.
54 Waters flowed over my head; I said, “I am cut off!”
55 I called on Your name, O Lord, from the lowest pit.
56 You have heard my plea: “Do not close Your ear to my cry for help!”
57 You drew near on the day I called on You, and You said, “Do not fear!”
58 O Lord, You have pleaded the case for my soul; You have redeemed my life.
59 O Lord, You have seen the wrong done to me; judge my case.
60 You have seen all their vengeance, all their schemes against me.
61 You have heard their reproach, O Lord, all their schemes against me,
62 the lips of my enemies and their devices against me all the day.
63 Look at their sitting down and their rising up; I am their mocking song.
64 Render to them a recompense, O Lord, according to the work of their hands.
65 Give them hardness of heart; may Your curse be upon them!
66 In Your anger pursue and destroy them from under Your heavens, O Lord!
1 The Punishment of Zion How the gold has become dim! How the most fine gold has changed! The stones of the sanctuary lie scattered at the head of every street.
2 The precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold, how they are esteemed as earthen pots, the work of a potter’s hands!
3 Even the jackals offer the breast; they nurse their young, yet the daughter of my people has become cruel, like ostriches in the wilderness.
4 The tongue of the infant cleaves to the roof of his mouth for thirst; the children beg for bread, but no one divides it for them.
5 Those who once ate delicacies are desolate in the streets; those who were brought up in scarlet embrace ash heaps.
6 For the iniquity of the daughter of my people is greater than the sin of Sodom, which was overthrown in a moment, and no hands were wrung for her.
7 Her princes were purer than snow, whiter than milk; their bodies were more ruddy than rubies, their appearance like sapphire.
8 Their form is blacker than coal; they are not recognized in the streets; their skin cleaves to their bones, it has become as dry as wood.
9 Those killed by the sword are better off than those who die of hunger, for they pine away, stricken for want of the fruits of the field.
10 The hands of compassionate women have boiled their own children; they became their food in the destruction of the daughter of my people.
11 The Lord has fulfilled His fury, He has poured out His fierce anger. He kindled a fire in Zion, and it has devoured its foundations.
12 The kings of the earth, and all the inhabitants of the world, would not have believed that the adversary and the enemy could enter the gates of Jerusalem.
13 This was for the sins of her prophets and the iniquities of her priests, who poured out in her midst the blood of the righteous.
14 They wandered, blind, in the streets; they have defiled themselves with blood, so that no one could touch their garments.
15 They cried out to them, “Depart! Unclean! Depart, depart, do not touch us!” Therefore they fled and wandered; men among the nations said, “They shall live with us no longer.”
16 The presence of the Lord scattered them; He will regard them no more; they do not respect the priests, nor show favor to the elders.
17 Our eyes failed us, watching vainly for help; in our watchtowers we watched for a nation that could not save us.
18 They tracked our steps so that we could not walk in our streets. Our end drew near; our days were numbered, for our end had come.
19 Our pursuers were swifter than the eagles of the skies. They pursued us on the mountains; they lay in wait for us in the wilderness.
20 The breath of our life, the anointed king of the Lord, was captured in their traps, of whom we said, “Under his shadow we shall live among the nations.”
21 Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom, you who dwell in the land of Uz! The cup shall also pass to you; you shall become drunk and strip yourself bare.
22 The punishment of your iniquity, O daughter of Zion, is accomplished; He shall exile you no longer. He shall punish your iniquity, O daughter of Edom; He will expose your sins!
1 A Prayer for Restoration Remember, O Lord, what has come upon us; look, and see our reproach!
2 Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, our homes to foreigners.
3 We have become orphans and fatherless; our mothers are like widows.
4 We must pay for the water we drink; our wood is sold to us.
5 Our pursuers are at our necks; we labor and have no rest.
6 We have given our hand to Egypt and to Assyria, to be satisfied with bread.
7 Our fathers sinned and are no more, but we 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 peril of our lives, because of the sword in the wilderness.
10 Our skin is hot as an oven, because of the terrible famine.
11 They ravished the women in Zion, the virgins in the cities of Judah.
12 Princes were hung up by their hands, the faces of elders were not honored.
13 Young men ground at the millstones; boys staggered under loads of wood.
14 The elders have left the city gate, the young men stopped their music.
15 The joy of our hearts has ceased; our dancing has turned into mourning.
16 The crown has fallen from our head; woe to us, for we have sinned!
17 For this our heart is faint; for these things our eyes grow dim;
18 because of Mount Zion, which is desolate, with foxes walking upon it.
19 You, O Lord, remain forever; Your throne endures from generation to generation.
20 Why do You forget us forever, and forsake us for so long a time?
21 Restore us to Yourself, O Lord, that we may return! Renew our days as of old,
22 unless You have utterly rejected us, and are very angry with us.