— select-a-version↑ 1.
1How lonely sits the city that was full of people!
How like a widow has she become,
she that was great among the nations!
She that was a princess among the cities has become a vassal.
2She weeps bitterly in the night,
tears 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.
3Judah has gone into exile
because of affliction and hard servitude;
she dwells now among the nations,
but finds no resting place;
her pursuers have all overtaken her
in the midst of her distress.
4The roads to Zion mourn,
for none come to the appointed feasts;
all her gates are desolate,
her priests groan;
her maidens have been dragged away,
and she herself suffers bitterly.
5Her foes have become the head,
her enemies prosper,
because Yahweh has made her suffer
for the multitude of her transgressions;
her children have gone away,
captives before the foe.
6From the daughter of Zion has departed all her majesty.
Her princes have become like harts that find no pasture;
they fled without strength before the pursuer.
7Jerusalem remembers in the days of her affliction and bitterness
all the precious things that were hers from days of old.
When her people fell into the hand of the foe,
and there was none to help her,
the foe gloated over her,
mocking at her downfall.
8Jerusalem sinned grievously,
therefore she became filthy;
all who honoured her despise her,
for they have seen her nakedness;
yea, she herself groans,
and turns her face away.
9Her uncleanness was in her skirts;
she took no thought of her doom;
therefore her fall is terrible,
she has no comforter.
" O Yahweh, behold my affliction,
for the enemy has triumphed!"
10The enemy has stretched out his hands over all her precious things;
yea, she has seen the nations invade her sanctuary,
those whom you forbad to enter your congregation.
11All her people groan as they search for bread;
they trade their treasures for food to revive their strength.
"Look, O Yahweh, and behold, 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 Yahweh inflicted
on the day of his fierce anger.
13"From on high he sent fire;
into my bones he made it descend;
he spread a net for my feet;
he turned me back;
he has left me stunned,
faint all the day long.
14"My transgressions were bound into a yoke;
by his hand they were fastened together;
they were set upon my neck;
he caused my strength to fail;
Yahweh gave me into the hands of those whom I cannot withstand.
15"Yahweh flouted all my mighty men in the midst of me;
he summoned an assembly against me to crush my young men;
Yahweh has trodden as in a wine press the virgin daughter of Judah.
16"For these things I weep;
my eyes flow with tears;
for a comforter is far from me,
one to revive my courage;
my children are desolate,
for the enemy has prevailed."
17Zion stretches out her hands,
but there is none to comfort her;
Yahweh has commanded against Jacob
that his neighbours should be his foes;
Jerusalem has become a filthy thing among them.
18"Yahweh is in the right,
for I have rebelled against his word;
but hear, all you peoples,
and behold my suffering;
my maidens and my young men
have gone into captivity.
19"I called to my lovers but they deceived me;
my priests and elders perished in the city,
while they sought food to revive their strength.
20"Behold, O Yahweh,
for I am in distress,
my soul is in tumult,
my heart is wrung within me,
because I have been very rebellious.
In the street the sword bereaves;
in the house it is like death.
21"Hear how I groan;
there is none to comfort me.
All my enemies have heard of my trouble;
they are glad that you have done it.
Bring the day you have announced,
and let them be as I am.
22"Let all their evil doing come before you;
and deal with them as you have dealt with me
because of all my transgressions;
for my groans are many and my heart is faint."
↑ 2.
1How Yahweh in his anger has set the daughter of Zion under a cloud!
He has cast down from heaven to earth the splendour of Israel;
he has not remembered his footstool in the day of his anger.
2The Yahweh has destroyed without mercy all the habitations of Jacob;
in his wrath he has broken down the strongholds of the daughter of Judah;
he has brought down to the ground in dishonour the kingdom and its rulers.
3He has cut down in fierce anger
all the might of Israel;
he has withdrawn from them his right hand
in the face of the enemy;
he has burned like a flaming fire in Jacob,
consuming all around.
4He has bent his bow like an enemy,
with his right hand set like a foe;
and he has slain all the pride of our eyes
in the tent of the daughter of Zion;
he has poured out his fury like fire.
5The Yahweh has become like an enemy,
he has destroyed Israel;
he has destroyed all its palaces,
laid in ruins its strongholds;
and he has multiplied in the daughter of Judah
mourning and lamentation.
6He has broken down his booth like that of a garden,
laid in ruins the place of his appointed feasts;
Yahweh has brought to an end in Zion appointed feast and sabbath,
and in his fierce indignation has spurned king and priest.
7The Yahweh has scorned his altar,
disowned his sanctuary;
he has delivered into the hand of the enemy
the walls of her palaces;
a clamor was raised in the house of Yahweh
as on the day of an appointed feast.
8Yahweh determined to lay in ruins
the wall of the daughter of Zion;
he marked it off by the line;
he restrained not his hand from destroying;
he caused rampart and wall to lament,
they languish together.
9Her gates have sunk into the ground;
he has ruined and broken her bars;
her king and princes are among the nations;
the law is no more,
and her prophets obtain no vision from Yahweh.
10The elders of the daughter of Zion sit on the ground in silence;
they have cast dust on their heads and put on sackcloth;
the maidens of Jerusalem have bowed their heads to the ground.
11My eyes are spent with weeping;
my soul is in tumult;
my heart is poured out in grief
because of the destruction of the daughter of my people,
because infants and babes faint in the streets of the city.
12They cry to their mothers,
"Where is bread and wine?"
as they faint like wounded men
in the streets of the city,
as their life is poured out
on their mothers' bosom.
13What can I say for you,
to what compare you,
O daughter of Jerusalem?
What can I liken to you,
that I may comfort you,
O virgin daughter of Zion?
For vast as the sea is your ruin;
who can restore you?
14Your prophets have seen for you false and deceptive visions;
they have not exposed your iniquity to restore your fortunes,
but have seen for you oracles false and misleading.
15All who pass along the way clap their hands at you;
they hiss and wag their heads at the daughter of Jerusalem;
"Is this the city which was called the perfection of beauty,
the joy of all the earth?"
16All your enemies rail against you;
they hiss, they gnash their teeth,
they cry: "We have destroyed her!
Ah, this is the day we longed for;
now we have it; we see it!"
17Yahweh has done what he purposed,
has carried out his threat;
as he ordained long ago,
he has demolished without pity;
he has made the enemy rejoice over you,
and exalted the might of your foes.
18Cry aloud to Yahweh!
O daughter of Zion!
Let tears stream down
like a torrent day and night!
Give yourself no rest,
your eyes no respite!
19Arise, cry out in the night,
at the beginning of the watches!
Pour out your heart like water
before the presence of Yahweh!
Lift your hands to him
for the lives of your children,
who faint for hunger
at the head of every street.
20Look, O Yahweh, and see!
With whom have you dealt thus?
Should women eat their offspring,
the children of their tender care?
Should priest and prophet be slain
in the sanctuary of Yahweh?
21In the dust of the streets
lie the young and the old;
my maidens and my young men
have fallen by the sword;
in the day of your anger you have slain them,
slaughtering without mercy.
22You invited as to the day of an appointed feast my terrors on every side;
and on the day of the anger of Yahweh none escaped or survived;
those whom I dandled and reared my enemy destroyed.
7He has walled me about so that I cannot escape;
he has put heavy chains on me;
8though I call and cry for help,
he shuts out my prayer;
9he has blocked my ways with hewn stones,
he has made my paths crooked.
10He is to me like a bear lying in wait,
like a lion in hiding;
11he led me off my way and tore me to pieces;
he has made me desolate;
12he bent his bow and set me as a mark for his arrow.
13He drove into my heart the arrows of his quiver;
14I have become the laughingstock of all peoples,
the burden of their songs all day long.
15He has filled me with bitterness,
he has sated me with wormwood.
16He has made my teeth grind on gravel,
and made me cower in ashes;
17my soul is bereft of peace,
I have forgotten what happiness is;
18so I say, "Gone is my glory,
and my expectation from Yahweh."
19Remember my affliction and my bitterness,
the wormwood and the gall!
20My soul continually thinks of it
and is bowed down within me.
21But this I call to mind,
and therefore I have hope:
22The steadfast love of Yahweh never ceases,
his mercies never come to an end;
23they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
24"Yahweh is my portion," says my soul,
"therefore I will hope in him."
25Yahweh is good to those who wait for him,
to the soul that seeks him.
26It is good that one should wait quietly
for the salvation of Yahweh.
27It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.
28Let him sit alone in silence when he has laid it on him;
29let him put his mouth in the dust -
there may yet be hope;
30let him give his cheek to the smiter,
and be filled with insults.
31For Yahweh will not cast off for ever,
32but, though he cause grief,
he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love;
33for he does not willingly afflict or grieve the sons of men.
34To crush under foot all the prisoners of the earth,
35to turn aside the right of a man
in the presence of the Most High,
36to subvert a man in his cause,
Yahweh does not approve.
37Who has commanded and it came to pass,
unless Yahweh has ordained it?
38Is it not from the mouth of the Most High
that good and evil come?
39Why should a living man complain,
a man, about the punishment of his sins?
40Let us test and examine our ways,
and return to Yahweh!
41Let us lift up our hearts and hands to God in heaven:
42"We have transgressed and rebelled,
and you have not forgiven.
43"You have wrapped yourself with anger and pursued us,
slaying without pity;
44you have wrapped yourself with a cloud
so that no prayer can pass through.
45You have made us offscouring
and refuse among the peoples.
46"All our enemies rail against us;
47panic and pitfall have come upon us,
devastation and destruction;
48my eyes flow with rivers of tears
because of the destruction of the daughter of my people.
49"My eyes will flow without ceasing,
without respite,
50until Yahweh from heaven looks down and sees;
51my eyes cause me grief at the fate of all the maidens of my city.
52"I have been hunted like a bird by those who were my enemies without cause;
53they flung me alive into the pit and cast stones on me;
54water closed over my head;
I said, 'I am lost.'
55"I called on your name, O Yahweh,
from the depths of the pit;
56you heard my plea,
'Do not close your ear to my cry for help!
57You came near when I called on you;
you said, 'Do not fear!
58"You have taken up my cause, O Yahweh,
you have redeemed my life.
59You have seen the wrong done to me, O Yahweh;
judge my cause.
60You have seen all their vengeance,
all their devices against me.
61"You have heard their taunts, O Yahweh,
all their devices against me.
62The lips and thoughts of my assailants
are against me all the day long.
63Behold their sitting and their rising;
I am the burden of their songs.
64"You will requite them, O Yahweh,
according to the work of their hands.
65You will give them dullness of heart;
your curse will be on them.
66You will persue them in anger and destroy them
from under your heavens, O Yahweh."
↑ 4.
1How the gold has grown dim,
how the pure gold is changed!
The holy stones lie scattered
at the head of every street.
2The precious sons of Zion,
worth their weight in fine gold,
how they are reckoned as earthen pots,
the work of a potter's hands!
3Even the jackals give the breast and suckle their young,
but the daughter of my people has become cruel,
like the ostriches in the wilderness.
4The tongue of the nursling cleaves
to the roof of its mouth for thirst;
the children beg for food,
but no one gives to them.
5Those who feasted on dainties perish in the streets;
those who were brought up in purple lie on ash heaps.
6For the chastisement of the daughter of my people
has been greater than the punishment of Sodom,
which was overthrown in a moment,
no hand being laid on it.
7Her princes were purer than snow, whiter than milk;
their bodies were more ruddy than coral,
the beauty of their form was like sapphire.
8Now their visage is blacker than soot,
they are not recognized in the streets;
their skin has shriveled upon their bones,
it has become as dry as wood.
9Happier were the victims of the sword than the victims of hunger,
who pined away, stricken by want of the fruits of the field.
10The hands of compassionate women have boiled their own children;
they became their food in the destruction of the daughter of my people.
11Yahweh gave full vent to his wrath,
he poured out his hot anger;
and he kindled a fire in Zion,
which consumed its foundations.
12The kings of the earth did not believe,
or any of the inhabitants of the world,
that foe or enemy could enter
the gates of Jerusalem.
13This was for the sins of her prophets and the iniquities of her priests,
who shed in the midst of her the blood of the righteous.
14They wandered, blind, through the streets,
so defiled with blood that none could touch their garments.
15"Away! Unclean!" men cried at them;
"Away! Away! Touch not!"
So they became fugitives and wanderers;
men said among the nations,
"They shall stay with us no longer."
16Yahweh himself has scattered them,
he will regard them no more;
no honour was shown to the priests,
no favour to the elders.
17Our eyes failed, ever watching vainly for help;
in our watching we watched for a nation which could not save.
18Men dogged our steps
so that we could not walk in our streets;
our end drew near;
our days were numbered;
for our end had come.
19Our pursuers were swifter than the vultures in the heavens;
they chased us on the mountains,
they lay in wait for us in the wilderness.
20The breath of our nostrils, Yahweh's anointed,
was taken in their pits,
he of whom we said, "Under his shadow
we shall live among the nations."
21Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom,
dweller in the land of Uz;
but to you also the cup shall pass;
you shall become drunk and strip yourself bare.
22The punishment of your iniquity, O daughter of Zion, is accomplished,
he will keep you in exile no longer;
but your iniquity, O daughter of Edom, he will punish,
he will uncover your sins.