¹How the city sits alone
That was full of people!
She who was once great among the nations
Has become like a widow;
She who was a princess among the provinces
Has become tributary.

Bitterly she weeps in the night,
And her tears are on her cheeks.
There is no one to comfort her
Among all her lovers;
All her friends have dealt treacherously with her;
They have become her enemies.

Judah has gone into exile, away from affliction
And away from great servitude;
She dwells among the nations
But finds no rest;
All her pursuers have overtaken her
In the midst of distress.

The ways of Zion mourn,
For no one comes to the appointed feast;
All her gates are desolate;
Her priests groan;
Her virgins are afflicted,
And she is in bitterness.

Her adversaries have become the head;
Her enemies prosper;
For Jehovah has afflicted her
Because of the multitude of her transgressions;
Her little ones have gone into captivity
Before the adversary.

And all her majesty has departed
From the daughter of Zion;
Her princes have become like deer
That find no pasture,
And they have fled without strength
Before the pursuer.

In the days of her affliction and her  ¹wanderings,
Jerusalem remembers
All her precious things
Which were in the days of old,
When her people fell into the hand of the adversary,
And there was no one to help her.
The adversaries saw her;
They mocked at her downfall.

Jerusalem has sinned grievously;
Therefore she has become an impurity.
All who honored her despise her,
Because they have seen her nakedness;
And she groans
And turns backwards.

Her uncleanness is in her skirts;
She did not remember her latter end;
Therefore she has come down astonishingly;
There is no one to comfort her.
O Jehovah, see my affliction,
For the enemy has magnified himself.

The adversary has spread out his hand
Over all her precious things,
For she has seen the nations
Enter her sanctuary,
Concerning whom You commanded that they should not enter
Into Your assembly.

All her people groan;
They have given their precious things for food
To restore their soul.
See, O Jehovah, and look,
For I have become despised.

Is it nothing to you, all who pass by the way?
Look and see
If there is any pain like my pain
Which is dealt to me,
Whom Jehovah has afflicted
In the day of His burning anger.

He has sent fire from on high
Into my bones, and it prevails against them;
He has spread out a net for my feet;
He has turned me back;
He has made me a desolation
And faint all the day.

The yoke of my transgressions is bound by His hand;
They are knit together;
They have come up upon my neck;
He has made my strength fail;
The Lord has delivered me into hands
From which I am not able to rise up.

The Lord has made light of all my mighty men
In my midst;
He has called an assembly against me
To crush my young men.
The Lord has trodden, as in a winepress,
The virgin daughter of Judah.

For these things I weep;
My eye, my eye runs down with water,
For the comforter who should revive my soul
Is far from me;
My children have become desolate,
Because the enemy has prevailed.

Zion stretches out her hands,
Yet there is no one to comfort her.
Jehovah has commanded concerning Jacob
That those around him should be his adversaries;
Jerusalem has become an impurity
Among them.

Jehovah is righteous,
For I have rebelled against His commandment.
Hear now, all the peoples,
And see my pain;
My virgins and my young men
Have gone into captivity.

I have called to my lovers;
They have deceived me;
My priests and my elders
Have perished in the city,
While they sought food for themselves
To restore their souls.

See, O Jehovah, for I am in distress,
My bowels are in ferment;
My heart is overturned within me,
For I have been very rebellious.
In the street the sword bereaves;
In the house it is like death.

They have heard that I groan;
There is no one to comfort me;
All my enemies have heard of my trouble;
They are glad that You have done it.
You will bring the day that You have proclaimed,
And they will be like me.

Let all their wickedness come before You,
And deal with them
As You have dealt with me
For all my transgressions;
For my sighs are many,
And my heart is faint.

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

The Lord has swallowed up all the habitations of Jacob;
He has not spared;
He has torn down in His overflowing wrath
The strongholds of the daughter of Judah.
He has brought them down to the ground;
He has profaned the kingdom and its princes.

He has cut off in fierce anger
All the horn of Israel.
He has withdrawn His right hand
From before the enemy.
He has burned among Jacob like a flame of fire;
It consumes all around.

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

The Lord has become like an enemy;
He has swallowed up Israel;
He has swallowed up all her palaces;
He has destroyed her strongholds
And multiplied in the daughter of Judah
Mourning and lamentation.

And He has violently taken away His  ¹pavilion like a garden;
He has destroyed the place of His assembly;
Jehovah has caused the appointed feast and the Sabbath
To be forgotten in Zion;
He has despised, in the indignation of His anger,
The king and the priest.

The Lord has cast off His altar;
He has abhorred His sanctuary;
He has delivered up into the hand of the enemy
The walls of her palaces.
They have made a noise in the house of Jehovah
As though it were the day of an appointed feast.

Jehovah has thought to destroy
The walls of the daughter of Zion;
He has stretched out the line
And has not withdrawn His hand from destroying;
And He has made the rampart and the wall to mourn;
They languish together.

Her gates have sunk into the ground;
He has destroyed and broken her bars;
Her king and her princes are among nations
Where there is no law;
Her prophets also do not find
A vision from Jehovah.

The elders of the daughter of Zion
Sit on the ground; they are silent.
They have cast dust upon their head;
They have girded themselves with sackcloth.
The virgins of Jerusalem
Hang down their head to the ground.

My eyes are consumed with tears;
My bowels are in ferment;
My liver is poured out on the earth,
Because of the brokenness of the daughter of my people,
Because the little ones and the nursing children
Faint in the streets of the city.

They say to their mothers,
Where is the grain and the wine?
When they faint like one wounded
In the streets of the city,
When they pour out their soul
Into their mothers' bosom.

What shall I testify to you? What shall I liken you to,
O daughter of Jerusalem?
What shall I compare you to, that I may comfort you,
O virgin daughter of Zion?
For your breach is great like a sea.
Who will heal you?

You're prophets have seen for you
Vanity and folly,
And they have not uncovered your iniquity
To turn again your captivity;
But they have seen for you burdens
Of vanity and of causes of banishment.

All those who pass on the way
Clap their hands at you;
They hiss and wag their head
At the daughter of Jerusalem, saying,
Is this the city which they called,
The perfection of beauty,
The joy of the whole earth?

All your enemies
Have opened their mouth against you;
They hiss and gnash the teeth;
They say, We have swallowed her up.
This is certainly the day that we have looked for;
We have found it; we have seen it.

Jehovah has done what He purposed;
He has fulfilled His word,
Which He commanded from the days of old;
He has torn down and has not spared,
And He has caused the enemy to rejoice over you;
He has exalted the horn of your adversaries.

Their heart cried out to the Lord:
O wall of the daughter of Zion,
Let tears run down like a stream
Day and night;
Give yourself no respite;
Let not the pupil of your eye cease.

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 little ones,
Who faint because of famine
At the head of every street.

See, O Jehovah, and look,
With whom You have dealt thus?
Shall the women eat their fruit,
The little ones nursed by them?
Shall the priest and the prophet be slain
In the sanctuary of the Lord?

The youth and the old man
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; You have not spared.

You have called for, as though in the day of an appointed feast,
My terrors on every side,
And in the day of Jehovah's anger
There was none who escaped or remained;
Those whom I have nursed and brought up
My enemy has consumed.

 ¹I am the man who has seen affliction
By the rod of His wrath.

He has driven me and brought me
Into darkness and not light.

Surely against me He has turned His hand
Again and again all the day.

He has wasted my flesh and my skin;
He has broken my bones.

He has built up a siege against me
And encircled me with gall and travail.

He has made me dwell in dark places,
Like those who have long been dead.

He has walled me about so that I cannot go forth;
He has made my bronze chain heavy.

Indeed, when I cry out and call for help,
He shuts out my prayer.

He has walled in my ways with hewn stone;
He has made my paths crooked.

He is to me like a bear lying in wait,
Like a lion in hidden places.

He has turned aside my ways and torn me to pieces;
He has made me desolate.

He bent His bow
And set me as a target for the arrow.

He has caused the arrows of His quiver
To enter my inward parts.

I have become a derision to all my people,
Their mocking song all the day.

He has filled me with bitterness;
He has made me drunk with wormwood.

He has also crushed my teeth with gravel;
He has covered me with ashes.

And You have removed my soul far from peace;
I have forgotten prosperity.

And I said, My strength has perished
As well as my hope in Jehovah.

Remember my affliction and my  ¹wandering,
The wormwood and the gall.

My soul remembers them well
And is bowed down within me.

This I recall to my heart;
Therefore I have hope.

It is Jehovah's lovingkindness that we are not  ¹consumed,
For His compassions do not fail;

They are new  ¹every morning;
Great is Your  ²faithfulness.

Jehovah is my  ¹portion, says my soul;
Therefore I hope in Him.

Jehovah is good to those who  ¹wait on Him,
To the soul that seeks Him.

It is good for one to hope, and to do so in silence,
For the salvation of Jehovah.

It is good for a man to bear
The yoke in his youth.

Let him sit alone and be silent,
Because He has laid it upon him.

Let him put his mouth in the dust —
Perhaps there is hope.

Let him give his cheek to him who strikes him;
Let him be filled with reproach.

For the Lord will not
Cast off forever.

But even if He causes grief, He will have compassion
According to the multitude of His lovingkindness;

For He does not afflict willingly
Or grieve the children of men.

The crushing under his foot
Of all the prisoners of the earth,

The turning aside of the justice due a man
Before the face of the Most High,

The wronging of a man in his cause —
Will not the Lord see all these?

Who is he who says, and it comes to pass,
What the Lord has not commanded?

Out of the mouth of the Most High
Do there not proceed evil things and something good?

Why does a living man complain,
A man for the punishment of his sins?

Let us examine our ways and try them,
And let us turn again to Jehovah.

Let us lift up our heart with our hands
Unto God in the heavens.

We have transgressed and rebelled;
You have not pardoned.

You have covered Yourself with anger and have pursued us;
You have slain; You have not spared.

You have covered Yourself with a cloud
That prayer might not pass through.

You have made us offscouring and refuse
In the midst of the peoples.

All our enemies have opened
Their mouths against us.

Fear and the pit are upon us,
Devastation and destruction.

My eye runs down with streams of water
For the destruction of the daughter of my people.

My eye pours forth and does not stop;
There is no cessation,

Until Jehovah looks down
And sees from the heavens.

My eye pains my soul
Because of all the daughters of my city.

They have hunted me down like a bird,
They who are my enemies without cause.

They have brought my life to its end in the pit
And have thrown a stone upon me.

Water streamed over my head;
I said, I have been cut off.

I  ¹called upon Your name, O Jehovah,
From the lowest pit.

You have heard my voice; do not hide
Your ear at my breathing, at my cry.

You drew near in the day that I called upon You;
You said, Do not fear.

Lord, You have pleaded my soul's case;
You have redeemed my life.

You have seen, O Jehovah, my oppression;
Judge my cause.

You have seen all their vengeance,
All their plans, against me.

You have heard their reproach, O Jehovah,
All their plans against me,

The lips of those who rise up against me
And their meditation against me all the day.

Look upon their sitting down and their rising up;
I am their mocking song.

You will render to them a recompense, O Jehovah,
According to the work of their hands.

You will give them hardness of heart;
Your curse be upon them.

You will pursue them in anger and will destroy them
From under the heavens of Jehovah.