¹ How hath the Lord covered
The daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger,
And cast down from heaven unto the earth
The beauty of Israel,
And remembered not his footstool
In the day of his anger!
² The Lord hath swallowed up
All the habitations of Jacob, and hath not pitied:
He hath thrown down in his wrath
The strong holds of the daughter of Judah;
He hath brought them down to the ground:
He hath polluted the kingdom and the princes thereof.
³ He hath cut off in his fierce anger
All the horn of Israel:
He hath drawn back his right hand
From before the enemy,
And he burned against Jacob like a flaming fire,
Which devoureth round about.
⁴ He hath bent his bow like an enemy:
He stood with his right hand as an adversary,
And slew all that were pleasant to the eye
In the tabernacle of the daughter of Zion:
He poured out his fury like fire.
⁵ The Lord was as an enemy:
He hath swallowed up Israel,
He hath swallowed up all her palaces:
He hath destroyed his strong holds,
And hath increased in the daughter of Judah
Mourning and lamentation.
⁶ And he hath violently taken away his tabernacle, as if it were of a garden:
He hath destroyed his places of the assembly:
The LORD hath caused the solemn feasts
And sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion,
And hath despised in the indignation of his anger
The king and the priest.
⁷ The Lord hath cast off his altar,
He hath abhorred his sanctuary,
He hath given up into the hand of the enemy
The walls of her palaces;
They have made a noise in the house of the LORD,
As in the day of a solemn feast.
⁸ The LORD hath purposed to destroy
The wall of the daughter of Zion:
He hath stretched out a line,
He hath not withdrawn his hand from destroying:
Therefore he made the rampart and the wall to lament;
They languished together.
⁹ Her gates are sunk into the ground;
He hath destroyed and broken her bars:
Her king and her princes are among the Gentiles:
The law is no more;
Her prophets also find
No vision from the LORD.
¹⁰ The elders of the daughter of Zion
Sit upon the ground, and keep silence:
They have cast up dust upon their heads;
They have girded themselves with sackcloth:
The virgins of Jerusalem
Hang down their heads to the ground.
¹¹ Mine eyes do fail with tears,
My bowels are troubled,
My liver is poured upon the earth,
For the destruction of the daughter of my people;
Because the children and the sucklings swoon
In the streets of the city.
¹² They say to their mothers,
Where is corn and wine?
When they swooned as the wounded
In the streets of the city,
When their soul was poured out
Into their mothers’ bosom.
¹³ What thing shall I take to witness for thee? what thing shall I liken to thee,
O daughter of Jerusalem?
What shall I equal to thee, that I may comfort thee,
O virgin daughter of Zion?
For thy breach is great like the sea:
Who can heal thee?
¹⁴ Thy prophets have seen vain
And foolish things for thee:
And they have not discovered thine iniquity,
To turn away thy captivity;
But have seen for thee false burdens
And causes of banishment.
¹⁵ All that pass by clap
Their hands at thee;
They hiss and wag their head
At the daughter of Jerusalem, saying,
Is this the city that men call
The perfection of beauty,
The joy of the whole earth?
¹⁶ All thine enemies
Have opened their mouth against thee:
They hiss and gnash the teeth:
They say, We have swallowed her up:
Certainly this is the day that we looked for;
We have found, we have seen it.
¹⁷ The LORD hath done that which he had devised;
He hath fulfilled his word
That he had commanded in the days of old:
He hath thrown down, and hath not pitied:
And he hath caused thine enemy to rejoice over thee,
He hath set up the horn of thine adversaries.
¹⁸ Their heart cried unto the Lord,
O wall of the daughter of Zion,
Let tears run down like a river
Day and night:
Give thyself no rest;
Let not the apple of thine eye cease.
¹⁹ Arise, cry out in the night:
In the beginning of the watches
Pour out thine heart like water
Before the face of the Lord:
Lift up thy hands toward him for the life
Of thy young children,
That faint for hunger
In the top of every street.
²⁰ Behold, O LORD,
And consider to whom thou hast done this.
Shall the women eat their fruit,
And children of a span long?
Shall the priest and the prophet be slain
In the sanctuary of the Lord?
²¹ The young and the old lie
On the ground in the streets:
My virgins and my young men
Are fallen by the sword;
Thou hast slain them in the day of thine anger;
Thou hast killed, and not pitied.
²² Thou hast called as in a solemn day
My terrors round about,
So that in the day of the LORD’s anger
None escaped nor remained:
Those that I have swaddled and brought up hath
Mine enemy consumed.