1

1 Scroll 17 Lamentations.
(A)How does the city sit solitary, that was full of people!
How is she become as a widow! She that was great among the nations,
and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary.

2 (B) She weeps bitterly in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks:
she has none to comfort her among all her lovers:
all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they are become her enemies.

3 (G)Gone into captivity is Judah because of affliction, and because of great servitude:
she dwells among the heathen, she finds no rest:
all her persecutors overtook her between the straits.

4 (D)The ways of Zion do mourn, because none come to the solemn Festivals:
all her gates are desolate: her priests sigh,
her virgins are afflicted, and she is in bitterness.

5 (E)Her adversaries have become as chief, her enemies prosper;
for the LORD has afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions:
her children are gone into captivity before the enemy.

6 (V)And departed has all her beauty of the Daughter of Zion:
her princes are become like harts that find no pasture,
and they are gone without strength before the pursuer.

7 (Z)Remembered Jerusalem in the days of her affliction and of her miseries all her pleasant things,
that she had in the days of old, when her people fell into the hand of the enemy, and none helped her:
(the adversaries saw her, and mocked at her Sabbaths).

8 (H)Grievously sinned has Jerusalem; therefore she is removed:
all that honoured her despise her, because they have seen her nakedness:
yes, she sighs and turns backward.

9 (Th)Her uncleanness is in her skirts; she remembers not her last end;
therefore she has been wonderfully abased: she had no comforter.
LORD, behold my affliction: for the enemy has magnified himself.

10 (J) His hand has spread by the adversary out upon all her pleasant things:
for she has seen that the heathen entered into her Sanctuary,
whom Thou did command that they should not enter into Thy Congregation.

11 (K)All her people sigh, they seek bread;
they have given their pleasant things for food to relieve the soul:
see, LORD, and consider; for I have been become vile.

12 (L)Nothing to you, all ye that pass by?
Behold, and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow, which has fallen upon me,
with which the LORD has afflicted me in the day of His fierce anger.

13 (M)From above 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 (N)Bound is the yoke of my transgressions by his hand:
they are wreathed, and come up upon my neck: He has made my strength to fall,
the Lord has delivered me into their hands, from whom I am not able to rise.

15 (X)Trampled by The Lord are all my mighty men in the middle of me:
He has called an assembly against me to crush my young men:
as in a winepress has the Lord trodden the virgin, the daughter of Judah.

16 (O) For these things I weep; my eye, my eye runs down with water,
because the comforter that should relieve my soul is far from me:
my children are desolate, because the enemy prevailed.

17 (P)Zion spreads forth her hands, and there is none to comfort her:
the LORD has commanded concerning Jacob, that his adversaries should be around him:
Jerusalem is as a menstruous woman among them.

18 (C) Righteous is He, the LORD, for I have rebelled against His Commandment:
hear, I pray you, all peoples, and behold my sorrow:
my virgins and my young men are gone into captivity.

19 (Q)I called for my lovers, but they deceived me:
my priests and my elders resigned in the city their breath,
while they sought their food to relieve their souls.

20 (R)Behold, LORD; for I am in distress: my bowels are troubled;
my heart is turned within me; for I have grievously rebelled:
abroad the sword bereaves, at home there is as death.

21 (S)They have heard that I sigh: there is none to comfort me:
all my enemies have heard of my trouble; they are glad that Thou have done it:
Thou will bring the day that Thou have called, and they shall be like me.

22 (T)Come before Thee all their wickedness;
and do to them, as Thou have done to me for all my transgressions:
for my sighs are many, and my heart is faint.

2

1 (A) How has the Lord covered the Daughter of Zion with a cloud in His anger,
and cast down from Heaven to the Earth the beauty of Israel,
and remembered not His stool of His feet in the day of His anger!

2 (B)The Lord has swallowed up all the habitations of Jacob, and has not pitied:
He has thrown down in His wrath the strong holds of the daughter of Judah;
He has brought them down to the ground: He has polluted the kingdom and its princes.

3 (G) He has cut off in his fierce anger all the horn of Israel:
He has drawn back His right hand from before the enemy,
and He burned against Jacob like a flaming fire, which devours on every side.

4 (D)He has bent His bow like an enemy: He stood with His right hand as an adversary,
and slew all that were pleasant to the eye in the Tabernacle of the Daughter of Zion:
He poured out like fire His fury.

5 (E)The Lord has become as an enemy: He has swallowed up Israel,
He has swallowed up all her palaces: He has destroyed his strong holds,
and has increased in the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation.

6 (V) And has violently taken away His Tabernacle, as a garden: He has destroyed His places of the assembly:
the LORD has caused the solemn Festivals and Sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion,
and in the indignation of His anger has despised the king and the priest.

7 (Z)The Lord has Rejected 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 the LORD, as in the day of a solemn Festival.

8 (H)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 made the rampart and the wall to lament; they languished together.

9 (Th) Her gates have sunk into the ground;
He has destroyed and broken her bars: her king and her princes are among the Gentiles:
the Law is no more: her prophets also find no vision from the LORD.

10 (J)They Sit upon the ground,
keep silence: and have cast up dust upon their heads! O Elders of the Daughter of Zion;
they girded themselves with sackcloth and hang down their heads to the ground! O Virgins of Jerusalem.

11 (K) Failing with tears do my eyes, my bowels are troubled, my liver is poured upon the Earth,
for the destruction of the daughter of my people;
because the children and the sucklings swoon in the streets of the city.

12 (L)To their mothers they say, Where is grain and wine?
When they swooned as the wounded in the streets of the city,
when their soul was poured out into their mothers' bosom.

13 (M)What can I testify for Thee? What thing shall I liken to Thee, Daughter of Jerusalem?
What shall I equal to Thee, that I may comfort Thee, virgin Daughter of Zion?
For Thy breach is great like the sea: who can heal Thee?

14 (N)Thy prophets have seen vain and foolish things for Thee:
and they have not revealed Thy iniquity, to turn away Thy captivity;
but have seen for Thee false burdens and causes of banishment.

15 (X) Clap their hands at Thee,
all that pass by; they hiss and wag their head at the Daughter of Jerusalem,
saying, Is this the city that men call the Perfection of beauty, the Joy of all the Earth?

16 [2:17](O) The LORD has done that which He had devised; 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 Thy enemy to rejoice over Thee,
He has set up the horn of Thy adversaries.

17 [2:16](P) All Thy enemies have opened their mouth against Thee:
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.

18 (C) Their heart cried to the Lord, wall of the Daughter of Zion,
let like a river tears run down, day and night:
give thyself no rest; let not the pupil of Thy eye cease.

19 (Q)Arise, cry out in the night: in the beginning of the watches;
pour out Thy heart like water before the Face of the LORD:
lift up Thy hands towards Him for the life of Thy young children, (that faint for hunger at the head of every street).

20 (R) Behold, LORD, and consider to whom Thou have done this.
Shall the women eat their fruit, children of a span long?
Shall the priest and the prophet be slain in the Sanctuary of the Lord?

21 (S)On the ground lie the young and the old in the streets:
my virgins and my young men have fallen by the sword;
Thou have slain them in the day of Thy anger; Thou have killed, and not pitied.

22 (T)Thou have called as in a solemn day my terrors around,
so that in the Day of the LORD's anger, none escaped nor remained:
those that I have swaddled and brought up, has my enemy consumed.

3

1 (A)I am the man that has seen affliction by the rod of His wrath.

2 (A)[At] Me has He led, and brought me into darkness, but not into light.

3 (A)Surely, against me is He turned; He turns His hand against me all the day.

4 (B)My skin wears out and my flesh; He has broken my bones.

5 (B)Against me has He built, and surrounded me with gall and labour.

6 (B)In dark places has He set me, as they that are dead of old.

7 (G)He has hedged me about, that I cannot get out: He has made my copper fetter heavy.

8 (G)Also when I cry and shout, He shuts out my prayer.

9 (G)He has enclosed my ways with hewn stone, He has made my paths crooked.

10 (D)As a bear lying in wait was He to me, and as a lion in secret places.

11 (D)My ways has He turned aside, and pulled me in pieces: He has made me desolate.

12 (D)He has bent his bow, and set me as a mark for the arrow.

13 (E)To enter into my reins He has caused the arrows of his quiver.

14 (E)I have been derision to all my people; and their song all the day.

15 (E)He has filled me with bitterness, He has made me drunken with wormwood.

16 (V)And He has broken my teeth with gravel, He has covered me with ashes.

17 (V)And far off from peace Thou have removed my soul: I forgot prosperity.

18 (V)And I said, my strength and my hope has perished from the LORD.

19 (Z)Remembering my affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall.

20 (Z)Still in remembrance has my soul them, and is humbled in me.

21 (Z)This I recall to my heart, therefore have I hope.

22 (H)It is mercies of the LORD's that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.

23 (H)They are new every morning: great is Thy faithfulness.

24 (H)My portion is the LORD, said my soul; therefore will I hope in Him.

25 (Th)Good is the LORD to them that wait for Him, to the soul that seeks Him.

26 (Th)Good is that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the Salvation of the LORD.

27 (Th)Good is for a man that He should bear the yoke in his youth.

28 (J)He sits alone, and keeps silence, because He has borne it upon him.

29 (J)He puts his mouth in the dust; if there may be hope.

30 (J)He gives his cheek to him that smites him: He is filled full with reproach.

31 (K)For the Lord will not cast off forever.

32 (K)For though He causes grief, yet He will have compassion according to the multitude of His mercies.

33 (K)For He does not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men.

34 (L)To crush under His feet all the prisoners of the Earth.

35 (L)To turn aside the right of a man before the face of the Most High.

36 (L)To subvert a man in his cause, the Lord approves not.

37 (M)Who is He that said, and it comes to pass, when the Lord commands it not?

38 (M)Out of the mouth of the Most High proceeds not evil and good?

39 (M)Why does a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sins?

40 (N)Let us search and try our ways, and turn back to the LORD.

41 (N)Let us lift up our heart with our hands to God in the Heavens.

42 (N)We have transgressed and have rebelled: Thou have not pardoned.

43 (X)Thou have covered with anger, and persecuted us: Thou have slain, Thou have not pitied.

44 (X)Thou have covered Thyself with a cloud, that our prayer should not pass through.

45 (X)As off scouring have Thou made us and refuse in the middle of the people.

46 [3:49](O)My eye trickles down, and ceases not, without any intermission.

47 [3:50](O)Until the LORD shall look down, and behold from Heaven.

48 [3:51](O)My eye affects my soul because of all the daughters of my city.

49 [3:46](P) All our enemies have opened their mouths against us.

50 [3:47](P)Fear and pitfall is come upon us, desolation and destruction.

51 [3:48](P)With rivers of water runs my eye down for the destruction of the daughter of my people.

52 (C)My enemies hunted me fiercely, like a bird without cause.

53 (C)They have cut off my life in the dungeon, and cast a stone upon me.

54 (C)Waters flowed over my head; then I said, I am cut off.

55 (Q)I called upon Thy Name, LORD, out of the low dungeon.

56 (Q)My voice have Thou heard: hide not Thy ear at my breathing, at my cry.

57 (Q)Thou drew near in the day that I called upon Thee: Thou said, Fear not.

58 (R)Thou have pleaded Lord, the causes of my soul; Thou have redeemed my life.

59 (R)Thou have seen my wrong; LORD: judge Thou my cause.

60 (R)Thou have seen all their vengeance and all their imaginations against me.

61 (S)Thou have heard their reproach, LORD, and all their imaginations against me.

62 (S)The lips of those that rose up against me, and their device against me all the day.

63 (S)Behold their sitting down, and their rising up; I am their music.

64 (T)Render to them a recompense, LORD, according to the work of their hands.

65 (T)Give them sorrow of heart, Thy curse to them.

66 (T)Persecute and destroy them in anger from under the Heavens of the LORD.

4

1 (A)How is the gold become dim! How is the most fine gold changed!
The stones of the Sanctuary are poured out at the head of every street.

2 (B)The precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold,
how are they esteemed as Earthen pitchers, the work of the hands of the potter!

3 (G)Even the monsters draw out the breast, they nurse their young ones:
the daughter of my people is become cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness.

4 (D) The tongue cleaves of the sucking child to his mouth[palate] for thirst:
the young children ask bread, and no man breaks[gives] it to them.

5 (E)They that fed delicately are desolate in the streets:
they that were brought up in crimson embrace dunghills.

6 (V)And Greater is the iniquity of the daughter of my people than the punishment of the sin of Sodom,
that was overthrown as in a moment, and no hands stayed on her.

7 (Z)Purer than snow were her Nazarites, they were whiter than milk,
they were redder in body than rubies, their polishing was of sapphire.

8 (H)Darker than a coal is their appearance; they are not known in the streets:
their skin cleaves to their bones; it is withered, it is become like a stick.

9 (Th)Better are they be slain with the sword then they be slain with hunger:
for these flows away, stricken through for lack of the fruits of the field.

10 (J)The hands of the pitiful women have boiled their own children:
they were their food in the destruction of the daughter of my people.

11 (K)The LORD has accomplished his fury; He has poured out his fierce anger,
and has kindled a fire in Zion, and it has devoured her foundations.

12 (L)They would not have believed (The kings of the Earth, and all the inhabitants of the World),
that the adversary and the enemy would have entered into the gates of Jerusalem.

13 (M)For the sins of her prophets, and the iniquities of her priests,
that have shed, in the middle of her, the blood of the just.

14 (N)They have wandered as blind men in the streets, they have polluted themselves with blood,
so that men could not touch their garments.

15 (X)Depart ye, they cried to them, it is unclean; depart, depart, touch not:
when they fled away and wandered, they said among the heathen, They shall no more sojourn there.

16 [4:17](O) While we are, our eyes fail, for our help is vain:
in our watching we have watched for a nation that could not save us.

17 [4:16](P)The presence of the LORD has divided them; He will no more regard them:
they respected the persons[favouritism] not of the priests, they favoured not the elders.

18 (C)They hunted our steps, that we cannot go in our streets: our end is near,
our days are fulfilled; for our end is come.

19 (Q)Swifter were our persecutors than the eagles of Heaven: they pursued us upon the mountains,
they laid in wait for us in the wilderness.

20 (R)The breath of our nostrils, the anointed of the LORD, was taken in their pits,
of whom we said, Under His shadow we shall live among the heathen.

21 (S)Rejoice and be glad, daughter of Edom, that dwell in the land of Uz; the cup also shall pass through to Thee:
Thou shall be drunken, and shall make thyself naked.

22 (T)Finished is the punishment of Thy iniquity, Daughter of Zion; He will no more carry Thee away into captivity:
He will visit Thy iniquity, daughter of Edom; He will disclose Thy sins.

5

1 Remember, LORD, what is come upon us:
consider, and behold our reproach.

2 Our inheritance is turned to strangers,
our houses to aliens.

3 We are orphans and fatherless,
our mothers are as widows.

4 We have drank our water for money;
our wood is sold to us.

5 Our necks are under persecution:
we labour, and have no rest.

6 We have given the hand to the Egyptians,
and to the Assyrians, to be satisfied with bread.

7 Our fathers have sinned, and are not;
and we have borne their iniquities.

8 Servants have ruled over us:
there is none that does deliver us out of their hand.

9 We procured our bread with the peril of our lives,
because of the sword of the wilderness.

10 Our skin was black like an oven,
because of the scorching famine.

11 They raped the women in Zion,
the maids in the cities of Judah.

12 Princes were hanged by their hand:
the faces of elders were not honoured.

13 They took the young men to grind,
and the children fell under the wood.

14 The elders have ceased from the gate,
the young men from their music.

15 The joy of our heart has ceased;
our dance is turned into mourning.

16 The crown is fallen from our head:
woe to us, that we have sinned!

17 For this our heart is faint;
for these things our eyes are dim.

18 Because of the Mount Zion, which is desolate,
the foxes walk upon it.

19 Thou, LORD, remain forever;
Thy throne from generation to generation.

20 Why do Thou forget us forever,
and forsake us so long time?

21 Turn Thou us to Thee, LORD, and we shall be turned;
renew our days as of old.

22 But Thou have utterly rejected us;
Thou are very wroth against us.