Lamentations 2

1How the Lord in his anger has clouded over daughter Zion! He has cast from heaven to earth the beauty of Israel, and he did not remember his footstool in the day of his anger.

2The Lord has swallowed up, without pity, all the pastures of Jacob; in his wrath he has torn down the strongholds of daughter Judah; he has brought them down to the ground; he has defiled the kingdom and its princes.

3In burning anger he has cut down every horn of Israel; he has drawn back his right hand from before the enemy, and he has burned in Jacob like a flaming fire that devours all around.

4He bent his bow like an enemy; his right hand stood ready like a foe, and he killed all who were pleasing to the eye in the tent of daughter Zion; he poured out his wrath like fire.

5The Lord became like an enemy; he swallowed up Israel. He swallowed up all her palaces; he destroyed his strongholds, and he multiplied mourning and lamentation in Daughter Judah.

6He has laid waste his shelter like a garden; he has destroyed his appointed meeting place. Yahweh has caused appointed feast and Sabbath to be forgotten in Zion, and in the indignation of his anger he has spurned king and priest.

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

8Yahweh determined to destroy the wall of daughter Zion; he stretched out a measuring line; he did not hold back his hand from swallowing up, and he made rampart and wall mourn; together they languish.

9Her gates have sunk into the earth; he has destroyed and broken her bars. Her king and her princes are among the nations; there is no law. Even her prophets have found no vision from Yahweh.

10The elders of daughter Zion sit on the ground in silence; they have thrown dust on their heads and put on sackcloth; the virgins of Jerusalem have bowed their heads to the ground.

11My eyes are spent with tears; my inward parts churn; my liver is poured out to the earth because of the destruction of the daughter of my people, because infant and nursing child faint in the streets of the city.

12They say to their mothers, “Where are grain and wine?” as they faint like the wounded in the streets of the city, as their life is poured out into their mothers’ bosom.

13What can I testify for you? What can I compare you to, daughter Jerusalem? What can I liken to you, so that I may comfort you, virgin daughter Zion? For your fracture is as great as the sea; who can heal you?

14Your prophets saw for you falsehood and folly, and they did not uncover your iniquity to restore your fortunes; instead, they saw for you false oracles and delusions.

15All who pass along the road clap their hands at you; they hiss and shake their heads over daughter Jerusalem: “Is this the city that they 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. They say, “We have swallowed you up! Surely this is the day we hoped for; we have found it, we have seen it.”

17Yahweh has done what he planned; he has fulfilled his word, which he commanded from days of old. He has torn down and has not shown pity; he has made the enemy rejoice over you; he has exalted the horn of your foes.

18Their heart cried out to the Lord, O wall of daughter Zion: let tears run down like a stream day and night; give yourself no relief; let not the apple of your eye rest.

19Rise, cry out in the night, at the beginning of the watches; pour out your heart like water before the face of the Lord. Lift up your hands to him for the lives of your little children, who are faint with hunger at the head of every street.

20Look, O Yahweh, and see—to whom have you done this? Should women eat their offspring, the children they have cared for? Should priest and prophet be killed in the sanctuary of the Lord?

21Young and old lie on the ground in the streets; my virgins and my young men have fallen by the sword. You killed them in the day of your anger; you slaughtered without pity.

22You summoned my terrors from every side as on an appointed day, and on the day of Yahweh’s anger there was no survivor or remnant. Those whom I nurtured and raised, my enemy destroyed them.