Lamentations 1

²⁶And the gates of Zion will lament and mourn; destitute, she will sit on the ground.

²⁰And mighty kings have ruled over Jerusalem and exercised authority over the whole region west of the Euphrates; and tribute, duty, and toll were paid to them.

²¹And Solomon reigned over all the kingdoms from the Euphrates to the land of the Philistines, as far as the border of Egypt. These kingdoms offered tribute and served Solomon all the days of his life.

¹⁶saying: “Woe, woe to the great city, clothed in fine linen and purple and scarlet, adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls!

¹⁷For in a single hour such fabulous wealth has been destroyed!” Every shipmaster, passenger, and sailor, and all who make their living from the sea, will stand at a distance

⁴Do not be afraid, for you will not be put to shame; do not be intimidated, for you will not be humiliated. For you will forget the shame of your youth and will remember no more the reproach of your widowhood.

²O city of commotion, O town of revelry? Your slain did not die by the sword, nor were they killed in battle.

⁶I am weary from groaning; all night I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears.

⁵Do not rely on a friend; do not trust in a companion. Seal the doors of your mouth from her who lies in your arms.

¹⁴All your lovers have forgotten you; they no longer seek you, for I have struck you as an enemy would, with the discipline of someone cruel, because of your great iniquity and your numerous sins.

²²Therefore, Oholibah, this is what the Lord God says: ‘I will incite your lovers against you, those from whom you turned away in disgust. And I will bring them against you from every side—

²³the Babylonians and all the Chaldeans, the men of Pekod, Shoa, and Koa, and all the Assyrians with them—all desirable young men, governors and commanders, officers and men of renown, mounted on horses.

²⁰Go up to Lebanon and cry out; raise your voice in Bashan; cry out from Abarim, for all your lovers have been crushed.

²¹I warned you when you were secure. You said, ‘I will not listen.’ This has been your way from youth, that you have not obeyed My voice.

¹Oh, that my head were a spring of water, and my eyes a fountain of tears! I would weep day and night over the slain daughter of my people.

⁹Her gates have sunk into the ground; He has destroyed and shattered their bars. Her king and her princes are exiled among the nations, the law is no more, and even her prophets find no vision from the Lord.

¹⁸They stalked our every step, so that we could not walk in our streets. Our end drew near, our time ran out, for our end had come!

¹⁹Those who chased us were swifter than the eagles in the sky; they pursued us over the mountains and ambushed us in the wilderness.

²¹There at Riblah in the land of Hamath, the king of Babylon struck them down and put them to death. So Judah was taken into exile, away from its own land.

¹¹Then Nebuzaradan captain of the guard carried into exile the people who remained in the city, along with the deserters who had defected to the king of Babylon and the rest of the population.

²⁰Those who escaped the sword were carried by Nebuchadnezzar into exile in Babylon, and they became servants to him and his sons until the kingdom of Persia came to power.

²¹So the land enjoyed its Sabbath rest all the days of the desolation, until seventy years were completed, in fulfillment of the word of the Lord spoken through Jeremiah.

²⁷There at Riblah in the land of Hamath, the king of Babylon struck them down and put them to death. So Judah was taken into exile, away from its own land.

²⁸These are the people Nebuchadnezzar carried away: in the seventh year, 3,023 Jews;

⁸Wail like a virgin dressed in sackcloth, grieving for the husband of her youth.

⁹Grain and drink offerings have been cut off from the house of the Lord; the priests are in mourning, those who minister before the Lord.

¹¹“And I will make Jerusalem a heap of rubble, a haunt for jackals; and I will make the cities of Judah a desolation, without inhabitant.”

⁶He has laid waste His tabernacle like a garden booth; He has destroyed His place of meeting. The Lord has made Zion forget her appointed feasts and Sabbaths. In His fierce anger He has despised both king and priest.

⁷The Lord has rejected His altar; He has abandoned His sanctuary; He has delivered the walls of her palaces into the hand of the enemy. They have raised a shout in the house of the Lord as on the day of an appointed feast.

²“Judah mourns and her gates languish. Her people wail for the land, and a cry goes up from Jerusalem.

⁴The earth mourns and withers; the world languishes and fades; the exalted of the earth waste away.

⁵The earth is defiled by its people; they have transgressed the laws; they have overstepped the decrees and broken the everlasting covenant.

²²Listen! The sound of a report is coming—a great commotion from the land to the north. It will make the cities of Judah a desolation, a haunt for jackals.

⁷For we are consumed by Your anger and terrified by Your wrath.

⁸You have set our iniquities before You, our secret sins in the light of Your presence.

⁹Then Nebuzaradan captain of the guard carried away to Babylon the remnant of the people who had remained in the city, along with the deserters who had defected to him.

⁹He replied, “The iniquity of the house of Israel and Judah is exceedingly great. The land is full of bloodshed, and the city is full of perversity. For they say, ‘The Lord has forsaken the land; the Lord does not see.’

¹⁵But Jeshurun grew fat and kicked—becoming fat, bloated, and gorged. He abandoned the God who made him and scorned the Rock of his salvation.

¹⁶They provoked His jealousy with foreign gods; they enraged Him with abominations.

¹⁴All your lovers have forgotten you; they no longer seek you, for I have struck you as an enemy would, with the discipline of someone cruel, because of your great iniquity and your numerous sins.

¹⁵Why do you cry out over your wound? Your pain has no cure! Because of your great iniquity and your numerous sins I have done these things to you.

¹⁷“Son of man,” He said to me, “do you see this? Is it not enough for the house of Judah to commit the abominations they are practicing here, that they must also fill the land with violence and continually provoke Me to anger? Look, they are even putting the branch to their nose!

¹⁸Therefore I will respond with wrath. I will not look on them with pity, nor will I spare them. Although they shout loudly in My ears, I will not listen to them.”

²⁵And you, son of man, know that on the day I take away their stronghold, their pride and joy—the desire of their eyes which uplifted their souls—and their sons and daughters as well,

²¹Tell the house of Israel that this is what the Lord God says: ‘I am about to desecrate My sanctuary, the pride of your power, the desire of your eyes, and the delight of your soul. And the sons and daughters you left behind will fall by the sword.’

⁹But You have rejected and humbled us; You no longer go forth with our armies.

¹⁰You have made us retreat from the foe, and those who hate us have plundered us.

³⁰How could one man pursue a thousand, or two put ten thousand to flight, unless their Rock had sold them, unless the Lord had given them up?

²From Zion, perfect in beauty, God shines forth.

²⁰His beautiful ornaments they transformed into pride and used them to fashion their vile images and detestable idols. Therefore I will make these into something unclean for them.

²¹And I will hand these things over as plunder to foreigners and loot to the wicked of the earth, who will defile them.

⁴We have become a reproach to our neighbors, a scorn and derision to those around us.

³⁴Or has any god tried to take as his own a nation out of another nation—by trials, signs, wonders, and war, by a strong hand and an outstretched arm, and by great terrors—as the Lord your God did for you in Egypt, before your eyes?

³⁵You were shown these things so that you would know that the Lord is God; there is no other besides Him.

⁴These things come to mind as I pour out my soul: how I walked with the multitude, leading the festive procession to the house of God with shouts of joy and praise.

⁵I considered the days of old, the years long in the past.

⁶At night I remembered my song; in my heart I mused, and my spirit pondered:

¹⁵All who pass by clap their hands at you in scorn. They hiss and shake their heads at the Daughter of Jerusalem: “Is this the city that was called the perfection of beauty, the joy of all the earth?”

¹⁶All your enemies open their mouths against you. They hiss and gnash their teeth, saying, “We have swallowed her up. This is the day for which we have waited. We have lived to see it!”

¹¹But now many nations have assembled against you, saying, “Let her be defiled, and let us feast our eyes on Zion.”

²⁰See, O Lord, how distressed I am! I am churning within; my heart is pounding within me, for I have been most rebellious. Outside, the sword bereaves; inside, there is death.

²¹People have heard my groaning, but there is no one to comfort me. All my enemies have heard of my trouble; they are glad that You have caused it. May You bring the day You have announced, so that they may become like me.

²But your iniquities have built barriers between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He does not hear.

³For your hands are stained with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, and your tongue mutters injustice.

¹¹All her people groan as they search for bread. They have traded their treasures for food to keep themselves alive. Look, O Lord, and consider, for I have become despised.

²⁶So I will pull your skirts up over your face, that your shame may be seen.

²²And if you ask yourself, “Why has this happened to me?” It is because of the magnitude of your iniquity that your skirts have been stripped off and your body has been exposed.

⁴The roads to Zion mourn, because no one comes to her appointed feasts. All her gates are deserted; her priests groan, her maidens grieve, and she herself is bitter with anguish.

⁵Her foes have become her masters; her enemies are at ease. For the Lord has brought her grief because of her many transgressions. Her children have gone away as captives before the enemy.

²⁹If only they were wise, they would understand it; they would comprehend their fate.

⁷You said, ‘I will be queen forever.’ You did not take these things to heart or consider their outcome.

¹⁸Consider my affliction and trouble, and take away all my sins.

¹⁷Zion stretches out her hands, but there is no one to comfort her. The Lord has decreed against Jacob that his neighbors become his foes. Jerusalem has become an unclean thing among them.

¹Again I looked, and I considered all the oppression taking place under the sun. I saw the tears of the oppressed, and they had no comforter; the power lay in the hands of their oppressors, and there was no comforter.

⁸For Jerusalem has stumbled and Judah has fallen because they spoke and acted against the Lord, defying His glorious presence.

³No Ammonite or Moabite or any of their descendants may enter the assembly of the Lord, even to the tenth generation.

⁵¹“We are ashamed because we have heard reproach; disgrace has covered our faces, because foreigners have entered the holy places of the Lord’s house.”

⁴Your foes have roared within Your meeting place; they have unfurled their banners as signs,

⁵like men wielding axes in a thicket of trees

¹⁰Your holy cities have become a wilderness. Zion has become a wasteland and Jerusalem a desolation.

¹¹Our holy and beautiful temple, where our fathers praised You, has been burned with fire, and all that was dear to us lies in ruins.

⁷In the days of her affliction and wandering Jerusalem remembers all the treasures that were hers in days of old. When her people fell into enemy hands she received no help. Her enemies looked upon her, laughing at her downfall.

¹At that time the Book of Moses was read aloud in the hearing of the people, and in it they found the passage stating that no Ammonite or Moabite should ever enter the assembly of God,

⁶By the ninth day of the fourth month, the famine in the city was so severe that the people of the land had no food.

¹²They cry out to their mothers: “Where is the grain and wine?” as they faint like the wounded in the streets of the city, as their lives fade away in the arms of their mothers.

⁹“My lord the king, these men have acted wickedly in all that they have done to Jeremiah the prophet. They have dropped him into the cistern, where he will starve to death, for there is no more bread in the city.”

¹¹Now his men found an Egyptian in the field and brought him to David. They gave the man water to drink and food to eat—

¹²a piece of a fig cake and two clusters of raisins. So he ate and was revived, for he had not had any food or water for three days and three nights.

⁵²They will besiege all the cities throughout your land, until the high and fortified walls in which you trust have fallen. They will besiege all your cities throughout the land that the Lord your God has given you.

⁵³Then you will eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters whom the Lord your God has given you, in the siege and distress that your enemy will inflict on you.

⁴The nursing infant’s tongue clings in thirst to the roof of his mouth. Little children beg for bread, but no one gives them any.

⁵Those who once ate delicacies are destitute in the streets; those brought up in crimson huddle in ash heaps.

²⁸But Jesus turned to them and said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.

²⁹Look, the days are coming when people will say, ‘Blessed are the barren women, the wombs that never bore, and breasts that never nursed!’

¹²You have carried out the words spoken against us and against our rulers by bringing upon us a great disaster. For under all of heaven, nothing has ever been done like what has been done to Jerusalem.

¹⁶They have made their land a desolation, a perpetual object of scorn; all who pass by will be appalled and shake their heads.

²⁴The fierce anger of the Lord will not turn back until He has fully accomplished the purposes of His heart. In the days to come you will understand this.

⁶The punishment of the daughter of my people is greater than that of Sodom, which was overthrown in an instant without a hand turned to help her.

⁷Her dignitaries were brighter than snow, whiter than milk; their bodies were more ruddy than rubies, their appearance like sapphires.

¹³What can I say for you? To what can I compare you, O Daughter of Jerusalem? To what can I liken you, that I may console you, O Virgin Daughter of Zion? For your wound is as deep as the sea. Who can ever heal you?

¹⁶I heard and trembled within; my lips quivered at the sound. Decay entered my bones; I trembled where I stood. Yet I must wait patiently for the day of distress to come upon the people who invade us.

³⁰My skin grows black and peels, and my bones burn with fever.

²⁰I will spread My net over him and catch him in My snare. I will bring him to Babylon and execute judgment upon him there for the treason he committed against Me.

⁶then understand that it is God who has wronged me and drawn His net around me.

¹⁴I am poured out like water, and all my bones are disjointed. My heart is like wax; it melts away within me.

⁶Who can withstand His indignation? Who can endure His burning anger? His wrath is poured out like fire; even rocks are shattered before Him.

⁶I was angry with My people; I profaned My heritage, and I placed them under your control. You showed them no mercy; even on the elderly you laid a most heavy yoke.

⁴⁸you will serve your enemies the Lord will send against you in famine, thirst, nakedness, and destitution. He will place an iron yoke on your neck until He has destroyed you.

⁷therefore I will indeed stretch out My hand against you and give you as plunder to the nations. I will cut you off from the peoples and exterminate you from the countries. I will destroy you, and you will know that I am the Lord.’

⁴therefore I will indeed give you as a possession to the people of the East. They will set up their camps and pitch their tents among you. They will eat your fruit and drink your milk.

¹⁴For this is what the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: ‘I have put a yoke of iron on the neck of all these nations to make them serve Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and they will serve him. I have even given him control of the beasts of the field.’”

²²The iniquities of a wicked man entrap him; the cords of his sin entangle him.

³“I have trodden the winepress alone, and no one from the nations was with Me. I trampled them in My anger and trod them down in My fury; their blood spattered My garments, and all My clothes were stained.

¹⁸Your covenant with death will be dissolved, and your agreement with Sheol will not stand. When the overwhelming scourge passes through, you will be trampled by it.

³Then you will trample the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day I am preparing,” says the Lord of Hosts.

²⁴They will fall by the edge of the sword and be led captive into all the nations. And Jerusalem will be trodden down by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.

¹⁹So the angel swung his sickle over the earth and gathered the grapes of the earth, and he threw them into the great winepress of God’s wrath.

²⁰And the winepress was trodden outside the city, and the blood that flowed from it rose as high as the bridles of the horses for a distance of 1,600 stadia.

²⁹How much more severely do you think one deserves to be punished who has trampled on the Son of God, profaned the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and insulted the Spirit of grace?

¹³⁶My eyes shed streams of tears because Your law is not obeyed.

²She weeps aloud in the night, with tears upon her cheeks. Among all her lovers there is no one to comfort her. All her friends have betrayed her; they have become her enemies.

¹⁷But if you do not listen, I will weep in secret because of your pride. My eyes will overflow with tears, because the Lord’s flock has been taken captive.

⁴⁸Streams of tears flow from my eyes over the destruction of the daughter of my people.

⁴⁹My eyes overflow unceasingly, without relief,

¹⁷You are to speak this word to them: ‘My eyes overflow with tears; day and night they do not cease, for the virgin daughter of my people has been shattered by a crushing blow, a severely grievous wound.

¹¹My eyes fail from weeping; I am churning within. My heart is poured out in grief over the destruction of the daughter of my people, because children and infants faint in the streets of the city.

³¹For I hear a cry like a woman in labor, a cry of anguish like one bearing her first child—the cry of the Daughter of Zion gasping for breath, stretching out her hands to say, “Woe is me, for my soul faints before the murderers!”

¹⁵When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide My eyes from you; even though you multiply your prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are covered with blood.

⁹Her uncleanness stains her skirts; she did not consider her end. Her downfall was astounding; there was no one to comfort her. Look, O Lord, on my affliction, for the enemy has triumphed!

¹So in the ninth year of Zedekiah’s reign, on the tenth day of the tenth month, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon marched against Jerusalem with his entire army. They encamped outside the city and built a siege wall all around it.

²And the Lord sent Chaldean, Aramean, Moabite, and Ammonite raiders against Jehoiakim in order to destroy Judah, according to the word that the Lord had spoken through His servants the prophets.

³Surely this happened to Judah at the Lord’s command, to remove them from His presence because of the sins of Manasseh and all that he had done,

⁴this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘I will turn against you the weapons of war in your hands, with which you are fighting the king of Babylon and the Chaldeans who besiege you outside the wall, and I will assemble their forces in the center of this city.

⁵And I Myself will fight against you with an outstretched hand and a mighty arm, with anger, fury, and great wrath.

⁷⁵I know, O Lord, that Your judgments are righteous, and that in faithfulness You have afflicted me.

¹⁴If you fear the Lord and serve Him and obey His voice, and if you do not rebel against the command of the Lord, and if both you and the king who rules over you follow the Lord your God, then all will be well.

¹⁵But if you disobey the Lord and rebel against His command, then the hand of the Lord will be against you as it was against your fathers.

⁵The Lord within her is righteous; He does no wrong. He applies His justice morning by morning; He does not fail at dawn, yet the unjust know no shame.

¹²Is this nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look around and see! Is there any sorrow like mine, which was inflicted on me, which the Lord made me suffer on the day of His fierce anger?

¹Righteous are You, O Lord, when I plead before You. Yet about Your judgments I wish to contend with You: Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all the faithless live at ease?

¹¹because they rebelled against the words of God and despised the counsel of the Most High.

¹¹All her people groan as they search for bread. They have traded their treasures for food to keep themselves alive. Look, O Lord, and consider, for I have become despised.

²⁰Look, O Lord, and consider: Whom have You ever treated like this? Should women eat their offspring, the infants they have nurtured? Should priests and prophets be killed in the sanctuary of the Lord?

²She weeps aloud in the night, with tears upon her cheeks. Among all her lovers there is no one to comfort her. All her friends have betrayed her; they have become her enemies.

¹³He has removed my brothers from me; my acquaintances have abandoned me.

¹⁴My kinsmen have failed me, and my friends have forgotten me.

¹³Why should you and your people die by sword and famine and plague, as the Lord has decreed against any nation that does not serve the king of Babylon?

¹⁴Do not listen to the words of the prophets who say, ‘You must not serve the king of Babylon,’ for they are prophesying to you a lie.

⁷“This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says that you are to tell the king of Judah, who sent you to Me: Behold, Pharaoh’s army, which has marched out to help you, will go back to its own land of Egypt.

⁸Then the Chaldeans will return and fight against this city. They will capture it and burn it down.

¹¹My eyes fail from weeping; I am churning within. My heart is poured out in grief over the destruction of the daughter of my people, because children and infants faint in the streets of the city.

¹⁵The sword is outside; plague and famine are within. Those in the country will die by the sword, and those in the city will be devoured by famine and plague.

¹³He who conceals his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them will find mercy.

²⁵Outside, the sword will take their children, and inside, terror will strike the young man and the young woman, the infant and the gray-haired man.

¹¹Therefore my heart laments for Moab like a harp, my inmost being for Kir-heres.

²⁷I am churning within and cannot rest; days of affliction confront me.

⁸Jerusalem has sinned greatly; therefore she has become an object of scorn. All who honored her now despise her, for they have seen her nakedness; she herself groans and turns away.

¹¹“Because you rejoice, because you sing in triumph—you who plunder My inheritance—because you frolic like a heifer treading grain and neigh like stallions,

²²Let all their wickedness 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.

¹⁵All who pass by clap their hands at you in scorn. They hiss and shake their heads at the Daughter of Jerusalem: “Is this the city that was called the perfection of beauty, the joy of all the earth?”

¹⁶For these things I weep; my eyes flow with tears. For there is no one nearby to comfort me, no one to revive my soul. My children are destitute because the enemy has prevailed.

¹⁵But when I stumbled, they assembled in glee; they gathered together against me. Assailants I did not know slandered me without ceasing.

¹⁰And they cried out in a loud voice, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, until You judge those who dwell upon the earth and avenge our blood?”

¹⁸My sorrow is beyond healing; my heart is faint within me.

¹⁴May the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the Lord, and the sin of his mother never be blotted out.

¹⁵May their sins always remain before the Lord, that He may cut off their memory from the earth.

⁴Hear us, O God, for we are despised. Turn their scorn back upon their own heads, and let them be taken as plunder to a land of captivity.

⁵Do not cover up their iniquity or let their sin be blotted out from Your sight, for they have provoked the builders.

¹³So I ask you not to be discouraged because of my sufferings for you, which are your glory.

¹⁷Because of this, our hearts are faint; because of these, our eyes grow dim—