1
How hath the Lord in his anger covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud! He hath cast down from the heavens unto the earth the beauty of Israel , and remembered not his footstool in the day of his anger .
2
The Lord hath swallowed up all the dwellings of Jacob , and hath not spared; he hath thrown down in his wrath the strongholds of the daughter of Judah : he hath brought [them] down to the ground ; he hath profaned the kingdom and the princes thereof.
3
He hath cut off in fierce anger all the horn of Israel : he hath withdrawn his right hand from before the enemy ; and he burned up Jacob like a flaming fire , devouring round about .
4
He hath bent his bow like an enemy ; he stood with his right hand as an adversary, and hath slain all that was pleasant to the eye : in the tent of the daughter of Zion , he hath poured out his fury like fire .
5
The Lord is become as an enemy : he hath swallowed up Israel ; he hath swallowed up all her palaces ; he hath destroyed his strongholds , and hath multiplied in the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation.
6
And he hath violently cast down his enclosure as a garden ; he hath destroyed his place of assembly: Jehovah hath caused set feast and sabbath to be forgotten in Zion, and hath despised in the indignation of his anger king and priest.
7
The Lord hath cast off his altar , he hath rejected his sanctuary; he hath given up into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces : they have made a noise in the house of Jehovah , as on the day of a set feast.
8
Jehovah hath purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion: he hath stretched out the line, he hath not withdrawn his hand from destroying; and he hath made the rampart and the wall to lament: they languish together.
9
Her gates are sunk into the ground ; he hath destroyed and broken her bars . Her king and her princes are among the nations : the law is no [more]; her prophets also find no vision from Jehovah .
10
The elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground , they keep silence; they have cast dust upon their heads , they have girded themselves with sackcloth : the virgins of Jerusalem hang down their head to the ground .
11
Mine eyes are consumed with tears , my bowels are troubled; my liver is poured upon the earth , because of the ruin of the daughter of my people; because infant and suckling swoon in the streets of the city.
12
They say to their mothers , Where is corn and wine ? when they swoon as the wounded in the streets of the city ; when they pour out their soul into their mothers ' bosom .
13
What shall I take to witness for thee? what shall I liken unto thee, daughter of Jerusalem ? What shall I equal to thee, that I may comfort thee, virgin daughter of Zion? For thy ruin is great as the sea : who will heal thee?
14
Thy prophets have seen vanity and folly for thee; and they have not revealed thine iniquity , to turn away thy captivity ; but have seen for thee burdens of falsehood and causes of expulsion.
15
All that pass by clap [their] hands at thee; they hiss and shake their head at the daughter of Jerusalem : Is this the city which they called, The perfection of beauty , The joy of the whole earth ?
16
All thine enemies open their mouth against thee, they hiss and gnash the teeth : they say , We have swallowed [her] up; this is forsooth the day that we looked for: we have found , we have seen [it].
17
Jehovah hath done what he had devised; he hath fulfilled his word which he had commanded from the days of old : he hath thrown down, and hath not spared, and he hath caused the enemy to rejoice over thee; he hath set up the horn of thine adversaries .
18
Their heart cried unto the Lord. O wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears run down like a torrent day and night : give thyself no respite; let not the apple of thine eye rest.
19
Arise, cry out in the night , in the beginning of the watches; pour out thy heart like water before the face of the Lord: lift up thy hands toward him for the life of thy young children, who faint from hunger at the top of all the streets .
20
See , Jehovah , and consider to whom thou hast done this! Shall the women eat their fruit , the infants that they nursed? Shall priest and prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord ?
21
The child and the old man lie on the ground in the streets ; my virgins and my young men are fallen by the sword : thou hast slain [them] in the day of thine anger ; thou hast killed , thou hast not spared.
22
Thou hast called up, as on the day of a set feast, my terrors on every side ; and in the day of Jehovah's anger there was none that escaped or remained: those that I have nursed and brought up hath mine enemy consumed.