The Holy Bible

Judgment on Jerusalem

He has cast down the splendour of Israel
from heaven to earth; He has not remembered His footstool
in the day of His anger.

2 The Lord has swallowed up without pity
all the dwellings of Jacob; He has thrown down in His wrath
the strongholds of the Daughter of Judah. He has brought down to the ground
the kingdom and its princes in dishonour.

3 He has cut off every horn of Israel
in His fierce anger. He has withdrawn His right hand
at the approach of the enemy. He has blazed against Jacob like a flaming fire
that devours everything around it.

4 He has bent His bow like an enemy;
His right hand is set. Like an adversary He has slain
all who were pleasing to the eye; He poured out His fury like fire
on the tent of the Daughter of Zion.

5 The Lord was like an enemy;
He has swallowed up Israel. He has swallowed up all her palaces,
and destroyed her strongholds. He has increased mourning and lamentation
within the Daughter of Judah.

6 He has violently removed His tabernacle,
as though it were a garden; He has destroyed His place of assembly. The Lord has made Zion forget
the appointed feasts and Sabbaths. In the indignation of His anger He has despised
both king and priest.

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

8 The Lord determined to destroy
the wall around the Daughter of Zion. He stretched out a measuring line,
He did not hold back His hand from destroying; He made the ramparts and walls to lament;
together they waste away.

9 Her gates have sunk into the ground;
He has broken and destroyed her bars. Her king and her princes are exiled 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 on the ground and keep silent. They have thrown dust on their heads
and put on sackcloth. The young women of Jerusalem
have bowed their heads to the ground.

11 My eyes fail from weeping,
I am churning within, my heart is poured out on the ground
because my people have been destroyed, because children and infants faint
in the streets of the city.

12 They cry out to their mothers,
“Where is bread and wine?” as they faint like the wounded
in the streets of the city, as their lives ebb away
in the arms of their mothers.

13 What can I say on your behalf?
To what can I compare you, O Daughter of Jerusalem? What can I liken you to,
that I may comfort you, O Virgin Daughter of Zion? For your ruin is as vast as the sea.
Who can heal you?

14 Your prophets have seen visions for you
that were false and deceptive; they did not expose your iniquity
to ward off your captivity. The oracles they saw for you
were false and misleading.

15 All who pass by
clap their hands at you; they mock and shake their heads
at the Daughter of Jerusalem: “Is this the city that was called
the perfection of beauty, the joy of the whole earth?”

16 All your enemies open their mouths
wide against you; they hiss and gnash their teeth,
and say, “We have swallowed her up! This is the day we have waited for;
at last we have lived to see it!”

17 The Lord has done what He planned;
He has fulfilled His word, which He decreed in days of old. He has demolished you without pity;
He has let the enemy gloat over you; He has exalted the horn of your adversaries.

18 The hearts of the people
cry out to the Lord, O wall of the Daughter of Zion,
let your tears flow down like a river day and night; give yourself no relief,
your eyes no rest.

19 Arise, cry out in the night,
from when the night watch begins. Pour out your heart like water
in the presence of the Lord. Lift up your hands towards Him
for the lives of your children, who faint from hunger
at the head of every street.