Lamentations 1

1 How lonely she is now, the once crowded city! Widowed is she who was mistress over nations; The princess among the provinces has been made a toiling slave.
2 Bitterly she weeps at night, tears upon her cheeks, With not one to console her of all her dear ones; Her friends have all betrayed her and become her enemies.
3 Judah has fled into exile from oppression and cruel slavery; Yet where she lives among the nations she finds no place to rest: All her persecutors come upon her where she is narrowly confined.
4 The roads to Zion mourn for lack of pilgrims going to her feasts; All her gateways are deserted, her priests groan, Her virgins sigh; she is in bitter grief.
5 Her foes are uppermost, her enemies are at ease; The LORD has punished her for her many sins. Her little ones have gone away, captive before the foe.
6 Gone from daughter Zion is all her glory: Her princes, like rams that find no pasture, Have gone off without strength before their captors.
7 Jerusalem is mindful of the days of her wretched homelessness, When her people fell into enemy hands, and she had no one to help her; When her foes gloated over her, laughed at her ruin.
8 Through the sin of which she is guilty, Jerusalem is defiled; All who esteemed her think her vile now that they see her nakedness; She herself groans and turns away.
9 Her filth is on her skirt; she gave no thought how she would end. Astounding is her downfall, with no one to console her. Look, O LORD, upon her misery, for the enemy has triumphed!
10 The foe stretched out his hand to all her treasures; She has seen those nations enter her sanctuary Whom you forbade to come into your assembly.
11 All her people groan, searching for bread; They give their treasures for food, to retain the breath of life. Look O LORD, and see how worthless I have become!
12 Come, all you who pass by the way, look and see Whether there is any suffering like my suffering, which has been dealt me When the LORD afflicted me on the day of his blazing wrath.
13 From on high he sent fire down into my very frame; He spread a net for my feet, and overthrew me. He left me desolate, in pain all the day.
14 He has kept watch over my sins; by his hand they have been plaited: They have settled about my neck, he has brought my strength to its knees; The Lord has delivered me into their grip, I am unable to rise.
15 All the mighty ones in my midst the Lord has cast away; He summoned an army against me to crush my young men; The LORD has trodden in the wine press virgin daughter Judah.
16 At this I weep, my eyes run with tears: Far from me are all who could console me, any who might revive me; My sons were reduced to silence when the enemy prevailed.
17 Zion stretched out her hands, but there was no one to console her; The LORD gave orders against Jacob for his neighbors to be his foes; Jerusalem has become in their midst a thing unclean.
18 The LORD is just; I had defied his command. Listen, all you peoples, and behold my suffering: My maidens and my youths have gone into captivity.
19 I cried out to my lovers, but they failed me. My priests and my elders perished in the city; Where they sought food for themselves, they found it not.
20 Look, O LORD, upon my distress: all within me is in ferment, My heart recoils within me from my monstrous rebellion. In the streets the sword bereaves, at home death stalks.
21 Give heed to my groaning; there is no one to console me. All my enemies rejoice at my misfortune: it is you who have wrought it. Bring on the day you have proclaimed, that they may be even as I.
22 Let all their evil come before you; deal with them As you have dealt with me for all my sins; My groans are many, and I am sick at heart.

Lamentations 2

1 How the Lord in his wrath has detested daughter Zion! He has cast down from heaven to earth the glory of Israel, Unmindful of his footstool on the day of his wrath.
2 The Lord has consumed without pity all the dwellings of Jacob; He has torn down in his anger the fortresses of daughter Judah; He has brought to the ground in dishonor her king and her princes.
3 He broke off, in fiery wrath, the horn that was Israel's whole strength; He withheld the support of his right hand when the enemy approached; He blazed up in Jacob like a flaming fire devouring all about it.
4 Like an enemy he made taut his bow; with his arrows in his right hand He took his stand as a foe, and slew all on whom the eye doted; Over the tent of daughter Zion he poured out his wrath like fire.
5 The Lord has become an enemy, he has consumed Israel: Consumed all her castles and destroyed her fortresses; For daughter Judah he has multiplied moaning and groaning.
6 He has demolished his shelter like a garden booth, he has destroyed his dwelling; In Zion the LORD has made feast and sabbath to be forgotten; He has scorned in fierce wrath both king and priest.
7 The Lord has disowned his altar, rejected his sanctuary; The walls of her towers he has handed over to the enemy, Who shout in the house of the LORD as on a feast day.
8 The LORD marked for destruction the wall of daughter Zion: He stretched out the measuring line; his hand brought ruin, yet he did not relent--He brought grief on wall and rampart till both succumbed.
9 Sunk into the ground are her gates; he has removed and broken her bars. Her king and her princes are among the pagans; priestly instruction is wanting, And her prophets have not received any vision from the LORD.
10 On the ground in silence sit the old men of daughter Zion; They strew dust on their heads and gird themselves with sackcloth; The maidens of Jerusalem bow their heads to the ground.
11 Worn out from weeping are my eyes, within me all is in ferment; My gall is poured out on the ground because of the downfall of the daughter of my people, As child and infant faint away in the open spaces of the town.
12 They ask their mothers, Where is the cereal?--in vain, As they faint away like the wounded in the streets of the city, And breathe their last in their mothers' arms.
13 To what can I liken or compare you, O daughter Jerusalem? What example can I show you for your comfort, virgin daughter Zion? For great as the sea is your downfall; who can heal you?
14 Your prophets had for you false and specious visions; They did not lay bare your guilt, to avert your fate; They beheld for you in vision false and misleading portents.
15 All who pass by clap their hands at you; They hiss and wag their heads over daughter Jerusalem: Is this the all-beautiful city, the joy of the whole earth?
16 All your enemies open their mouths against you; They hiss and gnash their teeth. They say, We have devoured her. This at last is the day we hoped for; we have lived to see it!
17 The LORD has done as he decreed: he has fulfilled the threat He set forth from days of old; he has destroyed and had no pity, Letting the enemy gloat over you and exalting the horn of your foes.
18 Cry out to the Lord; moan, O daughter Zion! Let your tears flow like a torrent day and night; Let there be no respite for you, no repose for your eyes.
19 Rise up, shrill in the night, at the beginning of every watch; Pour out your heart like water in the presence of the Lord; Lift up your hands to him for the lives of your little ones (Who faint from hunger at the corner of every street).
20 Look, O LORD, and consider: whom have you ever treated thus? Must women eat their offspring, their well-formed children? Are priest and prophet to be slain in the sanctuary of the LORD?
21 Dead in the dust of the streets lie young and old; My maidens and young men have fallen by the sword; You have slain on the day of your wrath, slaughtered without pity.
22 You summoned as for a feast day terrors against me from all sides; There was not, on the day of your wrath, either fugitive or survivor; Those whom I bore and reared my enemy has utterly destroyed.