Lamentations 2

1. How the LORD has covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in His anger! He cast down the beauty of Israel from the heavens to the earth and remembered not His footstool in the day of His anger.

2. The LORD unsparingly swallowed up all the habitations of Jacob. In His wrath He has thrown down the strongholds of the daughter of Judah; He has brought them down to the ground. He has defiled the kingdom and its rulers.

3. He has cut off all the horn of Israel in His fierce anger; He has drawn back His right hand from before the enemy, and He burned against Jacob like a flaming fire which devours all around.

4. He has bent His bow like an enemy, standing with His right hand like an adversary, and has slain all the pride of our eyes. In the tabernacle of the daughter of Zion, He poured out His fury like fire.

5. The LORD has become like an enemy; He has swallowed up Israel; He has destroyed all her palaces, and he has laid in ruins its stronghold. And He has multiplied mourning and lamentation in the daughter of Judah.

6. And He has violently taken away his tabernacle as if it were of a garden. He has destroyed His place of assembly. The LORD has caused the solemn feasts and Sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion, and He has despised the king and the priest in His fierce indignation.

7. The LORD has cast off His altar; He has abhorred His sanctuary; He has given up the walls of her palaces into the enemy’s hand. They made a noise in the house of the LORD, as a day of solemn feast.

8. The LORD purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion; He has stretched out a line; He has not withdrawn His hand from destroying, and He made the rampart and wall lament; they languish together.

9. Her gates have sunk into the ground; He has destroyed and broken her bars. Her kings and her rulers are among the nations. The law is no more; and her prophets also find no vision from the LORD.

10. The elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground and are silent; they throw dust upon their heads; they gird on sackclothes. The virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground.

11. My eyes fail with tears; my inward parts burn; my liver is poured on the ground for the destruction of the daughter of my people, because the children and the babies faint in the streets of the city.

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

13. What can I say to you? What thing shall I compare to you, O daughter of Jerusalem? What shall I liken you to, so that I may comfort you, O virgin daughter of Zion? For your breach is great like the sea! Who can heal you?

14. Your prophets have seen false and foolish things for you, and they have not uncovered your iniquity, to turn away your captivity; but they have seen false oracles and delusions for you.

15. All who pass by clap their hands at you; they hiss and wag their heads at the daughter of Jerusalem, saying, “Is this the city which they called the perfection of beauty, the joy of the whole earth?”

16. All your enemies have opened their mouth wide against you; they hiss and gnash their teeth; they say, “We have swallowed her up. Certainly this is the day that we have longed for; now we have found it, we have seen it.”

17. The LORD has done what He has purposed; He has fulfilled His word which He commanded from the days of old. He has thrown down unsparingly. And He caused your enemy to rejoice over you; He has exalted the horn of your adversaries.

18. Their heart cried to the LORD. “O wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears run down like a torrent day and night; give yourself no rest. Let not the apple of your eye cease.

19. Arise, 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 toward Him for the life of your children who are faint for hunger in the head of every street.”

20. “Behold, O LORD, and consider to whom You have done this. Shall the women eat their fruit, children of tender care? Shall the priest and the prophet be killed in the holy place of the LORD?

21. Young and old lie on the ground in the streets; my virgins and my young men have fallen by the sword. You have slain them in the day of Your anger; You have slaughtered them without mercy.

22. You have called as in a feast day the terrors all around me, and there was not one who escaped or survived in the day of the LORD’S anger. Those whom I have swaddled and brought up, my enemy has destroyed them.”