Lamentations 1:1-22
The Book of Lamentations
1 How lonely she sits, the city great in people!she has become like a widow, the great among the nations.Princess among the provinces, she has come to serfdom.
2 She is weeping in the night, has tears on her cheeks;there is not a comforter for her out of all her lovers,all her friends have played her false, become enemies to her.
3 * Judah has gone to an expatriate life because of destitution and overwork;she has settled among the nations but not found a resting-place;everybody who was hunting her down has come upon her in a tight place.
4 * The roads to Sion are mourning not to have people coming in to the holy dates;all her gates are desolate, her priests are moaning,her maidens are sorrowing, and she is in bitter grief.
5 Her foes are in control, her enemies are untroubled,because Jehovah has reduced her to misery for her multitude of crimes.The children in her have gone into foreign slavery before the foe.
6 And all the stateliness of the daughter of Sion has gone out of her,her generals have become like deer that find no pastureand have gone along strengthless before a pursuer.
7 * Jerusalem remembers her days of misery and homelessnesswhen her people were falling by a foeman’s hand and she had no helper;foemen saw her, laughed over her extinction.
8 Jerusalem did sin, so she has become a piece of garbage;all who had been honoring her hold her cheap because they have seen her nakedness;she too moans and retreats backward.
9 She has her defilement on her skirts; she did not bethink herself of her future.She has come down extraordinarily; there is nobody to comfort her.“Jehovah, see my miserable state, because the enemy is swaggering.”
10 A foe has spread his hand over all she held dear;for she has seen heathens come into her sanctuary,of whom you commanded “you shall not have them come into the assembly.”
11 All her people are moaning, hunting for bread,have given what they held dearest for food to bring back life.See, Jehovah, and look, because I stand cheap.
12 Not toward you, all passersby! look and seeif there is a hurt like mine that has been inflicted on me,the sorrow Jehovah gave me in his day of anger.
13 * From aloft he sent fire down into my bones,he spread his net for my feet, drove me backward,struck me desolate, sick all day.
14 He paid attention to my offenses; they interwove in his hands, they came up over my neck, he brought my strength to a fall.The Lord gave me into the hands of those against whom I cannot stand up.
15 * The Lord has spurned all my braves within me,has called a convention against me to mangle my young men, trodden winepress for Judah’s maiden daughter.
16 Over these things I weep, my eye streams down water,because far away is any who would comfort me, would bring me back to life,my sons are desolate because an enemy is in power.
17 Sion spreads out her hands, has no comforter.Jehovah has commissioned Jacob’s foes all round him,Jerusalem has become a piece of garbage among them.
18 Jehovah is in the right, because I had disobeyed him.Listen, all peoples, and see my hurt!My maidens and young men have gone into foreign slavery.
19 I called to my lovers; they failed me.My priests and elders breathed their last in the citywhen they had hunted for food to bring their lives back with.
20 * See, Jehovah, how I am distressed; my vitals are boiling,my heart turns over in me, because I was disobedient.Outdoors the sword bereaves, indoors there is death.
21 Listen when I moan! I have no comforter.All my enemies hear of my calamity, they rejoice because you acted.Bring the day you have announced and let them be like me!
22 Let all their viciousness come before youand treat them as you treated me for all my crimes.For my moans are many and my heart is sick.
Footnotes
^ 1:3 Lit. between tight cramps
^ 1:4 Lit. to the dates
^ 1:7 Codd. and homelessness, all her things of beauty that had been from of old, when her people
^ 1:13 Var. sent fire into my bones and it seized it, he spread Var. sent fire into my bones and disciplined me, he spread Var. sent fire into my bones and put me down, he spread
^ 1:15 Lit. to break my young men
^ 1:20 Var. there is the like of death
