Lamentations 2:1-16 ▼

1 How the Lord has covered the daughter of Zion With a cloud in His anger! He has cast from heaven to earth The beauty of Israel, And has not remembered the footstool of His feet In the day of His anger.

2 The Lord has swallowed up; He has not spared All the habitations of Jacob. In His wrath He has pulled 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 In hot anger He has cut in pieces All the strength of Israel; He has turned back His right hand From before the enemy. And He has burned in Jacob like a flaming fire Devouring round about.

4 He has bent His bow like an enemy; He has set His right hand like an adversary And killed all that were desirable to the eye; In the tent of the daughter of Zion He has poured out His wrath like fire.

5 The Lord has become like an enemy. He has swallowed up Israel; He has swallowed up all its palaces; He has brought its strongholds to ruin And multiplied in the daughter of Judah Mourning and moaning.

6 And He has violently treated His tabernacle like a garden booth; He has brought His appointed meeting place to ruin. Yahweh has caused to be forgotten The appointed time and sabbath in Zion, And He has spurned king and priest In the indignation of His anger.

7 The Lord has rejected His altar; He has abandoned His sanctuary; He has delivered 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 an appointed time.

8 Yahweh determined to bring to ruin The wall of the daughter of Zion. He has stretched out a line; He has not turned His hand back from swallowing up, And He has caused rampart and wall to mourn; They have 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. Also, her prophets find No vision from Yahweh.

10 The elders of the daughter of Zion Sit on the ground; they are silent. They have thrown dust up on their heads; They have girded themselves with sackcloth. The virgins of Jerusalem Have bowed their heads down to the ground.

11 My eyes fail because of tears; My inmost being is greatly disturbed; My heart is poured out on the earth Because of the destruction of the daughter of my people, When infants and nursing babies faint In the open squares of the city.

12 They say to their mothers, “Where is grain and wine?” As they faint like a wounded man In the open squares of the city, As their life is poured out On their mothers’ bosom.

13 What shall I testify about you? To what shall I equate you, O daughter of Jerusalem? To what shall I liken you as I comfort you, O virgin daughter of Zion? For your destruction is as vast as the sea; Who can heal you?

14 Your prophets have beheld for you Worthless and ineffective visions; And they have not uncovered your iniquity So as to return you from captivity, But they have beheld for you worthless and misleading oracles.

15 All who pass along the way Clap their hands in derision at you; They hiss and shake their heads At the daughter of Jerusalem, “Is this the city of which they said, ‘The perfection of beauty, The joy of the whole earth’?”

16 All your enemies Have opened their mouths wide against you; They hiss and gnash their teeth. They say, “We have swallowed her up! Surely this is the day for which we have hoped; We have found it, we have seen it.”