Lamentations 2:1-12 ▼

1 How the LORD covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger. He has cast down from heaven to the earth the splendor 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 humiliated the kingdom and its rulers.

3 He has cut off in fierce anger all the strength of Israel. He has drawn back his right hand before the enemy. He has blazed in Jacob like a flaming fire, which devours all around.

4 He has bent his bow like an enemy; his right hand he has positioned like an adversary. He 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 and has destroyed its strongholds. He has multiplied in the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation.

6 He has done violence to his temple, as if it were a vineyard; he has destroyed his place of assembly. The LORD has caused solemn assembly and Sabbath to be forgotten in Zion, and he has spurned in his fierce anger king and priest and prince.

7 The LORD has rejected his altar, he has disowned his sanctuary, and has given up into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces. They have made a shout in the house of the LORD, as in the day of a solemn assembly.

8 The LORD has determined 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 He has stretched out the line, he has not withdrawn his hand from destroying.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; they languish together.

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 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 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 are worn out from weeping, my stomach is churning. My heart is poured on the earth, because of the destruction of the daughter of my people, because the young children and the infants faint in the streets of the city.

12 They tell their mothers, |Where is grain and wine?| When they faint as the wounded in the streets of the city, as their lives fade away in their mothers' bosom.