Lamentations of Jeremiah 2

1How has the Lord darkened in his wrath

The daughter of Zion!

He has cast down the glory of Israel

From heaven to earth,

And has not remembered his footstool.

2In the day of his wrath

The Lord has overwhelmed her as in the sea,

And not spared:

He has brought down in his fury

All the beautiful things of Jacob;

He has brought down to the ground

The strongholds of the daughter of Judah:

He has profaned her king and her princes.

3He has broken in his fierce anger

All the horn of Israel:

He has turned back his right hand

From the face of the enemy,

And has kindled a flame in Jacob as fire,

And it has devoured all things round about.

4He has bent his bow as an opposing enemy:

He has strengthened his right hand as an adversary,

And has destroyed all the desirable things of my eyes

In the tabernacle of the daughter of Zion:

He has poured forth his anger as fire.

5The Lord is become as an enemy:

He has overwhelmed Israel as in the sea,

He has overwhelmed her palaces:

He has destroyed his strongholds,

And has multiplied the afflicted and humbled ones

To the daughter of Judah.

6And he has scattered his tabernacle as a vine,

He has marred his feast:

The Lord has forgotten the feast

And the Sabbath which he appointed in Zion,

And in the fury of his wrath

Has vexed the king, and priest, and prince.

7The Lord has rejected his altar,

He has cast off his sanctuary,

He has broken by the hand of the enemy

The wall of her palaces;

They have uttered their voice in the house of the Lord

As on a feast day.

8And he has turned to destroy

The wall of the daughter of Zion:

He has stretched out the measuring line,

He has not turned back his hand from afflicting her:

Therefore the bulwark mourned,

And the wall was weakened with it.

9Her gates are sunk into the ground:

He has destroyed and broken to pieces her bars,

And her king and her prince among the Gentiles:

There is no law,

Nay, her prophets have seen no vision from the Lord.

10The elders of the daughter of Zion

Have sat upon the ground,

They have kept silence:

They have cast up dust upon their heads;

They have girded themselves with sackcloth:

They have brought down to the ground

The chief virgins in Jerusalem.

11Mine eyes have failed with tears,

My heart is troubled,

My glory is cast down to the ground,

For the destruction of the daughter of my people;

While the infant and suckling swoon

In the streets of the city.

12They said to their mothers,

Where is corn and wine?

While they fainted like wounded men

In the streets of the city,

While their souls were poured out

Into their mother’s bosom.

13What shall I testify to thee,

Or what shall I compare to thee,

O daughter of Jerusalem?

Who shall save and comfort thee,

O virgin daughter of Zion?

For the cup of thy destruction is enlarged:

Who shall heal thee?

14Thy prophets have seen for thee

Vanities and folly:

And they have not discovered thine iniquity,

To turn back thy captivity;

But they have seen for thee vain burdens,

And worthless visions.

15All that go by the way

Have clapped their hands at thee;

They have hissed and shaken their head

At the daughter of Jerusalem.

Is this the city, they say,

The crown of joy of all the earth?

16All thine enemies have opened their mouth against thee:

They have hissed and gnashed their teeth,

And said, We have swallowed her up:

Moreover this is the day which we looked for;

We have found it, we have seen it.

17The Lord has done that which he purposed;

He has accomplished his word,

Even the things which he commanded from the ancient days:

He has thrown down, and has not spared:

And he has caused the enemy to rejoice over thee,

He has exalted the horn of him that afflicted thee.

18Their heart cried to the Lord,

Ye walls of Zion,

Pour down tears like torrents day and night:

Give thyself no rest;

Let not the apple of thine eyes cease.

19Arise, rejoice in the night

At the beginning of thy watch:

Pour out thy heart as water

Before the face of the Lord:

Lift up thy hands to him

For the life of thine infants,

Who faint for hunger

At the top of all the streets.

20Behold, O Lord,

And see for whom thou hast gathered thus.

Shall the women eat the fruit of their womb?

The cook has made a gathering:

Shall the infants sucking at the breasts be slain?

Wilt thou slay the priest and prophet

In the sanctuary of the Lord?

21The child and old man

Have lain down in the street:

My virgins and my young men

Are gone into captivity:

Thou hast slain them

With the sword and with famine;

In the day of thy wrath thou hast mangled them,

Thou hast not spared.

22He has called my sojourners round about

To a solemn day,

And there was not in the day of the wrath of the Lord

Anyone that escaped or was left;

Whereas I have strengthened and multiplied all mine enemies.