The Book of Lamentations

Chapter 1
1 How solitary sits the city once of many people! She has become like a widow who was great among nations; The chief princess among the provinces, she has become a payer of tribute.
2 She is lamenting, yea lamenting in the night, her tears on her cheeks; There is no one to comfort her of all her lovers; All her associates have dealt treacherously with her; they have become her enemies.
3 Deported is Judah after humiliation and much servitude; She dwells among the nations but finds no rest; All her pursuers have overtaken her in the narrow places.
4 The roads to Zion are mournful without anyone coming to the appointed festivals; All her gateways are desolate; her priests are sighing; Her virgins are afflicted, and to herself it has brought bitterness.
5 Her foes have become the head; her enemies are at ease; For Yahweh Himself has afflicted her because of her many transgressions; Her infants have gone into captivity before the foe.
6 Gone forth from the daughter of Zion is all her effulgence; Her chiefs have become like stags that find no pasture; They go without vigor before the pursuer.
7 Jerusalem remembers in the days of her humiliation and her homelessness, all her coveted things that were from days of long ago, When her people fell into the hand of the foe, and there was no help for her. The foes saw her; they made sport of her dissolution.
8 A sin has Jerusalem sinned; therefore she has become an isolated woman; All who glorified her count her abject, for they have seen her nakedness; Indeed she herself sighs and turns away back.
9 Her uncleanness is in her skirts, she was not mindful of her future; So she has come down most marvelously; there was no one to comfort her. See, O Yahweh, my humiliation, for the enemy magnified himself.
10 The foe has spread out his hand over all her coveted things; Indeed she has seen the nations enter her sanctuary, Concerning whom You had instructed that they should not enter Your assembly.
11 All her people are sighing, seeking bread; They have given their coveted things for food to restore the soul; See, O Yahweh, and look on me, for I have become abject.
12 Is it nothing to you, all who pass along the way? Look about and see if there is any pain like my pain which is brought on me, With which Yahweh afflicts in the day of His hot anger.
13 From on high He sends fire; into my bones He makes it descend; He spreads a net for my feet; He turns me back ; He makes me desolate, languishing all the day.
14 The yoke of my transgressions is bound on; In His hand they intertwine themselves; They ascend upon my neck; it has caused my vigor to falter. Yahweh has given me over into the hands of those I cannot rise against.
15 Yahweh has cast aside all my sturdy ones in my midst; He has called an appointed assembly against me to break apart my choice young men; Yahweh has trod the winetrough of the virgin daughter of Judah.
16 Over these I am lamenting; my eye, my eye runs down with water; For far from me is any comforter, any restorer of my soul; My sons are desolate, for the enemy has mastery.
17 Zion spreads out her hands; there is no one to comfort her; Yahweh has commissioned His foes round about him against Jacob; Jerusalem has become an isolated woman among them.
18 Yahweh, He is righteous, for I have rebelled against His bidding; Hearken now all you peoples, and see my pain; My virgins and my choice young men, they have gone into captivity.
19 I called to my lovers; they deceived me; My priests and my elders deceased in the city While they sought food for themselves that they might restore their soul.
20 See O Yahweh, that distress is mine; my bowels, they are in turmoil; My heart is overturned within me, for I have rebelled, yea rebelled; Outside the sword bereaves; in the house it is like death.
21 They hear that I am sighing; there is no one to comfort me; All my enemies hear of my evil lot; they are elated that You Yourself have done it. May You bring the day You proclaimed so they shall become like me!
22 May all their evil come before You, And bring on them just what You brought on me because of all my transgressions; For my sighings are many, and my heart is sick.

Chapter 2
1 How in His anger Yahweh has covered the daughter of Zion with a thick cloud! He flung from the heavens to earth the beauty of Israel; He did not remember His footstool in the day of His anger.
2 Yahweh has swallowed up and has not spared all the oases of Jacob; He has demolished, in His rage, the fortresses of the daughter of Judah; He made them touch the earth; He has profaned the kingdom and its chiefs.
3 He hacked down all the horn of Israel in the heat of anger; He has turned back His right hand in the presence of the enemy; And He is consuming in Jacob like a blazing fire that devours all around.
4 He has positioned His bow like an enemy, setting His right hand like a foe; And He is killing all that is coveted by the eye in the tent of the daughter of Zion; He has poured out His fury like fire.
5 Yahweh has become like an enemy; He has swallowed up Israel; He has swallowed up all her citadels; He has ruined its fortresses; And He is multiplying, in the daughter of Judah, complaint and complaining.
6 He is casting down His booth as in a garden; He has ruined His appointed festival; Yahweh has made appointed festival and sabbath forgotten in Zion, And in the indignation of His anger He is spurning king and priest.
7 Yahweh has cast off His altar; He has disowned His sanctuary; He has surrendered the walls of her citadels into the hand of the enemy. They have raised their voice in the house of Yahweh as on the day of an appointed festival.
8 Yahweh has designed to ruin the wall of the daughter of Zion; He has stretched out the measuring tape; He has not turned back His hand from swallowing up; So He makes the rampart and wall mourn; together they are enfeebled.
9 Her gates have sunk into the earth; He destroyed and broke her bars; Her king and her chiefs are among the nations; there is no law. Also her prophets find no vision from Yahweh.
10 They sit on the earth; the elders of the daughter of Zion are still; They cast up dust on their head; they gird themselves in sackcloth; The virgins of Jerusalem bow down their head to the earth.
11 My eyes are exhausted with tears; my bowels are in turmoil; My liver is poured out on the earth over the brokenness of the daughter of my people, While the infant and suckling droop in the town squares;
12 They are saying to their mothers, Where is grain and wine? While they droop like the mortally wounded in the city squares, While their soul is poured out on their mothers’ bosom.
13 What shall I testify to you? What shall I liken to you, daughter of Jerusalem? What shall I equate to you, that I may comfort you, virgin daughter of Zion? For your brokenness is great as the sea; who shall heal you?
14 Your prophets envision for you futility and trumpery, And they do not expose your depravity to reverse your captivity, But they are envisioning for you loads of futility and false inducements.
15 They slap their palms at you, all who pass your way; They hiss and jerk their head to and fro at the daughter of Jerusalem: Is this the city which they call the consummation of loveliness, the elation of the entire earth?
16 They open their mouth wide at you, all your enemies; They hiss and gnash their teeth; they say, We have swallowed them up! Yea, this is the day that we expected; we have come upon it and have seen it!
17 Yahweh has done what He had planned; He has carried through His saying, What He determined from days long ago; He has demolished and has not spared; And He is making the enemy rejoice over you; He exalts the horn of your foes.
18 Their heart cries out to Yahweh, the Wall of the daughter of Zion; Let tears descend like a torrent by day and night; Do not give yourself intermission; do not let your eye be still.
19 Arise, make appeal in the night at the beginning of the vigils; Pour out your heart like water before the presence of Yahweh; Lift your palms to Him for the soul of your infants who droop in famine at the head of every street.
20 See, O Yahweh, and look at those with whom You have dealt severely thus; Should women be eating their own fruit, their infants cradled in arms? Should priest and prophet be killed in the sanctuary of Yahweh?
21 They lie on the earth of the streets, youth and elder; My virgins and my choice young men, they have fallen by the sword; You have killed in the day of Your anger; You have slaughtered and have not spared;
22 You have called as on a day of appointment my sojourners from round about, So that in a day of Yahweh’s anger there was no delivered one or survivor; Those whom I cradled in arms and made to increase, my enemy has consumed them.

Chapter 3
1 I am the master who has seen humiliation under the club of His rage;
2 He leads me and makes me walk in darkness and not light;
3 Surely against me again and again He is turning His hand all the day.
4 He wears out my flesh and my skin; He breaks my bones;
5 He builds against me and encompasses me with destitution and stress;
6 He makes me dwell in utter darkness like the eonian dead.
7 He dikes me about so that I cannot go forth; He makes my copper fetters heavy;
8 Even when I cry out and implore, He shuts out my prayer;
9 He dikes my ways with trimmed stone; He contorts my tracks.
10 A bear lying in ambush is He to me, a lion in concealments;
11 He withdraws me from my ways and tears me apart; He makes me desolate.
12 He positions His bow and is setting me as a target for the arrow;
13 He pierces my innermost being with the sons of His quiver.
14 I have become the sport of all peoples, their jest all the day;
15 He surfeits me with bitter herbs; He satiates me with absinth.
16 He is breaking up my teeth on gravel; He makes me fare on ashes;
17 My soul is cast off from peace; I am oblivious of good;
18 And I think my endurance has perished, and my hope from Yahweh.
19 Remember my humiliation and my homelessness, the absinth and poison;
20 My soul is remembering, yea remembering and is prostrate within me.
21 This I recall to my heart, and therefore I have hope:
22 It is by Yahweh’s benignities that we have not come to end, that His compassions are not finished;
23 They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness;
24 Yahweh is my portion, my soul declares; therefore I shall hope for Him.
25 Yahweh is good to those who are expectant, to the soul that seeks after Him;
26 It is good that one should wait in stillness for the salvation of Yahweh;
27 It is good for a master that he should bear the yoke in his youth;
28 Let him sit alone and be still when He lifts it up on him;
29 Let him put his mouth to the soil; perhaps there will be expectation;
30 Let him give his cheek to his smiter; let him be surfeited with reproach.
31 For Yahweh is not casting off for the eon;
32 Indeed though He afflicts, yet He has compassion according to the abundance of His benignities;
33 For He does not humiliate from His heart or so afflict the sons of man.
34 To crush beneath His feet all the prisoners of the earth,
35 To turn aside right judgment for a master in front of the face of the Supreme,
36 To overturn a human in his cause, does not Yahweh see?
37 Who is this who speaks and it comes about if Yahweh does not determine it?
38 Do not both the evil and the good come forth from the mouth of the Supreme?
39 Of what shall a living man complain, a master concerning his sins?
40 Let us search and investigate our ways and return unto Yahweh;
41 Let us lift up our heart with our palms to the El in the heavens:
42 We have transgressed and rebelled; You have not pardoned;
43 You have blanketed us with anger and pursued us; You have killed and have not spared;
44 You have blanketed Yourself with a cloud to keep prayer from passing through.
45 You have made us offscouring and rejection among the peoples;
46 They open their mouth wide at us, all our enemies;
47 Alarm and pitfall come upon us, tumult and brokenness;
48 My eye runs down with rillets of water at the brokenness of the daughter of my people.
49 My eye will spill forth and not be stilled, without intermission,
50 Until Yahweh gazes down and sees from the heavens;
51 My eye deals severely with my soul because of all the daughters of my city.
52 My enemies hunt, yea hunt me like a bird, gratuitously;
53 They efface my life in a dungeon, which they block up over me with a stone;
54 Waters float over my head; I say: I am severed;
55 I call on Your Name, O Yahweh, from the nether parts of the dungeon;
56 Hear my voice; Do not obstruct Your ear to my imploring for my mitigation.
57 Come near in the day I am calling You; say: Do not be fearful;
58 Contend, O Yahweh, the cause of my soul; redeem my life;
59 See, O Yahweh, the mistreatment of me; do judge right judgment for me;
60 See all their vengeance, all their devisings against me;
61 Hear their reproach, O Yahweh, all their devisings against me;
62 The lips of those rising against me and their chant are against me all the day;
63 Do look at their sitting and their rising; I am their jest.
64 Turn back upon them a requital, O Yahweh, according to the deeds of their hands;
65 Give them petrifaction of heart; Your execration be on them;
66 Pursue in anger and exterminate them from under the heavens of Yahweh.

Chapter 4
1 How the gold is tarnished! the good certified gold is altered; The holy stones are strewn about at the head of all the streets.
2 The precious sons of Zion, those classed with glittering gold, How they are accounted as earthenware crocks, the work of the hands of a potter!
3 Even wild-jackals offer forth the breast; they suckle their whelps; But the daughter of my people is cruel like ostriches in the wilderness;
4 The tongue of the suckling clings to its palate from thirst; Infants beg for bread; there is no one spreading it out to them.
5 Those who ate dainties are desolated in the streets; Those who were fostered in crimson embrace ash heaps.
6 Indeed the depravity of the daughter of my people is greater than the sin of Sodom, Which was overturned as in a moment though no hands travailed against it!
7 Her Nazirites were purged more than snow; they were more shimmering than milk; In bodily staunchness they were more ruddy than rubies, their long-beard like sapphire.
8 Now their visage is darker than soot; they are not recognized in the streets; Their skin is shrunken over their bones, is dried up; it has become like wood.
9 Better off were they who were slain by the sword than those slain by famine, Those who are succumbing, stabbed from lack of produce of the field.
10 The hands of compassionate women cook their children; They become a repast for them in the brokenness of the daughter of my people.
11 Yahweh has made His fury whole; He has poured out His hot anger; And He is ravaging with fire in Zion which is devouring its foundations.
12 The kings of the earth did not believe, nor any of the dwellers of the habitance, That foe and enemy could enter into the gateways of Jerusalem.
13 Because of the sins of her prophets, the depravities of her priests, Who were pouring out within her the blood of the righteous,
14 They rove about blind in the streets; they are sullied with blood, So that no one dare touch their clothing;
15 Go away! unclean! they call out to them; go away! go away! do not touch! Because they wander forth and rove about, men say among the nations: They shall not continue to sojourn here.
16 The face of Yahweh has made them split up; He shall not continue to look upon them; They have not respected the priests; they have not favored the elders.
17 Furthermore for us our eyes are exhausted looking for our help in vain; From our watchtower we watched for a nation which could not save us.
18 They hunt our steps, keeping us from walking in our squares; Our end draws near; our days reach their fill; indeed our end has come.
19 Our pursuers have become fleeter than the vultures of the heavens; They dash after us upon the mountains; they lie in ambush for us in the wilderness.
20 The spirit of our nostrils, the anointed of Yahweh, he is seized in their pits, Of whom we said: In his shadow we shall live among the nations.
21 Be elated and rejoice, daughter of Edom, you who are dwelling in the land of Uz; To you also shall pass the cup of Yahweh; you shall become drunk and denude yourself.
22 Your wretchedness will come to end, daughter of Zion; He shall not continue to carry you away into exile; He will note your depravity, daughter of Edom; He will expose your sins.

Chapter 5
1 Remember, O Yahweh, what has happened to us; look, and see our reproach.
2 Our allotment is turned over to aliens, our houses to foreigners.
3 We have become orphans without a father; our mothers are like widows.
4 Our own water we drink for money; our wood comes with a price.
5 With a yoke on our neck, we are pursued; we are weary, and there is no rest for us.
6 We give the hand to Egypt and Assyria in order to be satisfied with bread.
7 Our fathers sinned and are no more, and we ourselves are burdened with their depravities.
8 Slaves rule over us; there is no one to tear us off from their hand.
9 At the risk of our soul we bring in our bread in view of the sword of the wilderness.
10 Our skin is fervid like a stove in view of the simoons of famine.
11 They humiliate women in Zion, virgins in the cities of Judah.
12 Chiefs are hung by their hands; the face of the old is not honored.
13 Choice young men must bear the grinding, and youths falter under loads of wood.
14 Elders have ceased from the gateway, choice youth from their accompaniment of song.
15 The elation of our heart has ceased; our fluting is turned to mourning.
16 The crown has fallen from our head; woe to us that we have sinned!
17 At this our heart is languishing; because of these things our eyes are darkened.
18 Because of Mount Zion which is desolate, foxes prowl about it.
19 Yet You, O Yahweh, are dwelling for the eon; Your throne endures for generation after generation.
20 Why are You forgetting us so permanently, forsaking us for length of days?
21 Restore us to Yourself, O Yahweh, and we shall return; renew our days as of long ago,
22 Unless You have rejected us, yea utterly rejected, and are wrathful against us exceedingly.