Lamentations of Jeremiah 2 The Siege, Famine, and Ruin of Jerusalem

 Lamentations of Jeremiah 2

The Siege, Famine, and Ruin of Jerusalem

1 How the Lord has covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger! He has cast down the glory of Israel from heaven to earth, and has not remembered his footstool in the day of his anger.

2 The Lord has devoured all the dwellings of Jacob, and has not had pity; in his wrath he has thrown down the strongholds of the daughter of Judah, and has brought them down to the ground; he has profaned the kingdom and its princes.

3 In the fury of his anger he has cut off all the strength of Israel; he has withdrawn his right hand from before the enemy; and he has burned against Jacob like a flame of fire that consumes everything around.

4 He has bent his bow like an enemy; he has set his right hand like an adversary, and has slain all that was pleasant to the sight; he has poured out his indignation like fire on the tent of the daughter of Zion.

5 The Lord has become like an enemy; He devoured Israel, he devoured all her palaces, he destroyed her strongholds; and he multiplied lamentation and sorrow in the daughter of Judah.

6 He violently tore down her booth as if it were a garden booth; he destroyed her congregation: the Lord in Zion has made the solemnity and the Sabbath forgetful, and in the indignation of his anger he has rejected with contempt the king and the priest.

7 The Lord has rejected her altar, he detests her sanctuary; he has given the walls of her palaces into the hand of the enemy: they cried out in the house of the Lord, as on a day of solemn assembly.

8 The Lord intended to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion; he stretched out the measuring line, he did not withdraw his destroying hand; he made the outer wall and the wall groan; they are weakened together.

9 They have broken down its gates, he has destroyed and broken its bars; its king and its princes are among the nations where there is no law, nor do its prophets find any vision from the Lord.

10 The elders of the daughter of Zion sit silently on the ground; they throw dust on their heads, they gird themselves with sackcloth; the virgins of Jerusalem bow their heads to the ground.

11 My eyes are consumed with tears, my bowels are troubled, my liver is poured out on the ground because of the destruction of the daughter of my people; for the children and infants faint in the streets of the city.

12 Their mothers say, “Where is the grain and the wine?” when they faint like the wounded in the streets of the city, their souls poured out in their mothers’ laps.

13 What testimony shall I bring to you? To whom shall I compare you, O daughter of Jerusalem? To whom shall I liken you, that I may comfort you, O virgin daughter of Zion? For your wound is as great as the sea; who will heal you?

14 Your prophets have seen for you vanity and folly, and have not exposed your iniquity, to turn away your captivity; but they have seen for you vain burdens and causes of expulsion.

15 All who pass by clap their hands, they hiss, and shake their heads at the daughter of Jerusalem, saying, “Is this the city which they ruled, perfect in beauty, the joy of all the earth?”

16 All your enemies open their mouths against you, they hiss and gnash their teeth; they say, “We have devoured her; surely this is the day we have waited for; we have found it, we have seen it.”

17 The Lord has done what he intended; he has fulfilled his word, which he commanded from the days of old: he has overthrown, and has not spared; He made the enemy rejoice because of you, he exalted the power of your adversaries.

18 Their hearts cried out to the Lord: “O wall of the daughter of Zion, let your tears flow like a river day and night; give yourself no rest, let not the apple of your eye cease.”

19 “Arise, cry out in the night, at the beginning of the watches; pour out your heart like water before the face of the Lord; lift up your hands to him for the life of your little children, who faint from hunger at the entrance of every street.”

20 “See, O Lord, and consider to whom you have done this! Shall women eat the fruit of themselves, the children they bear in their arms? Or shall priest and prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord?”

21 Young and old lie on the ground in the streets; my virgins and my young men have fallen by the sword; you have killed them in the day of your wrath; You slaughtered them and had no pity on them.

22 You summoned my fears from every side, as on a solemn day; on the day of the Lord’s wrath, no one escaped or remained: those whom I carried in my hands and upheld, my enemy consumed.