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Jehovah hath purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion:{HR}He hath stretched out a line, he hath not withdrawn his hand from destroying:{HR}Therefore he made the rampart and the wall to lament; they languished together.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