Is Israel a slave?
Was he born into slavery?
Why else has he become a prey?

Why do you bring a case against Me?
All of you have rebelled against Me.
This is the Lord’s declaration.

Evil generation,
pay attention to the word of the Lord!
Have I been a wilderness to Israel
or a land of dense darkness?
Why do My people claim,
“We will go where we want;
we will no longer come to You”?

This is why the showers haven’t come—
why there has been no spring rain.
You have the brazen look of a prostitute
and refuse to be ashamed.

Why should I forgive you?
Your children have abandoned Me
and sworn by those who are not gods.
I satisfied their needs, yet they committed adultery;
they gashed themselves at the prostitute’s house.

Why have these people turned away?
Why is Jerusalem always turning away?
They take hold of deceit;
they refuse to return.

Why are we just sitting here?
Gather together; let us enter the fortified cities
and perish there,
for the Lord our God has destroyed us.
He has given us poisoned water to drink,
because we have sinned against the Lord.

Listen—the cry of my dear people
from a far away land,
“Is the Lord no longer in Zion,
her King not within her?”
Why have they provoked me to anger
with their carved images,
with their worthless foreign idols?

Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?
So why has the healing of my dear people
not come about?

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Who is the man wise enough to understand this? Who has the Lord spoken to, that he may explain it? Why is the land destroyed and scorched like a wilderness, so no one can pass through?

You will be righteous, Lord,
even if I bring a case against You.
Yet, I wish to contend with You:
Why does the way of the wicked prosper?
Why do all the treacherous live at ease?

And when you ask yourself,
“Why have these things happened to me?”
It is because of your great guilt
that your skirts have been stripped off,
your body exposed.

Hope of Israel,
its Savior in time of distress,
why are You like a foreigner in the land,
like a traveler stopping only for the night?

Why are You like a helpless man,
like a warrior unable to save?
Yet You are among us, Yahweh,
and we are called by Your name.
Don’t leave us!

Have You completely rejected Judah?
Do You detest Zion?
Why do You strike us
with no hope of healing for us?
We hoped for peace,
but there was nothing good;
for a time of healing,
but there was only terror.

Why has my pain become unending,
my wound incurable,
refusing to be healed?
You truly have become like a mirage to me—
water that is not reliable.

“When you tell these people all these things, they will say to you, ‘Why has the Lord declared all this great disaster against us? What is our guilt? What is our sin that we have committed against the Lord our God?’

Why did I come out of the womb
to see only struggle and sorrow,
to end my life in shame?

“Many nations will pass by this city and ask one another, ‘Why did the Lord do such a thing to this great city?’

Is this man Coniah a despised, shattered pot,
a jar no one wants?
Why are he and his descendants hurled out
and cast into a land they have not known?

Why should you and your people die by the sword, famine, or plague as the Lord has threatened against any nation that does not serve the king of Babylon?

Do not listen to them. Serve the king of Babylon and live! Why should this city become a ruin?

So now, why have you not rebuked Jeremiah of Anathoth who has been acting like a prophet among you?

Ask and see
whether a male can give birth.
Why then do I see every man
with his hands on his stomach like a woman in labor
and every face turned pale?

Why do you cry out about your injury?
Your pain has no cure!
I have done these things to you
because of your enormous guilt
and your innumerable sins.

Zedekiah king of Judah had imprisoned him, saying: “Why are you prophesying, ‘This is what the Lord says: Look, I am about to hand this city over to Babylon’s king, and he will capture it.

You are to proclaim concerning Jehoiakim king of Judah: This is what the Lord says: You have burned the scroll, saying, ‘Why have you written on it: The king of Babylon will certainly come and destroy this land and cause it to be without man or beast?’

Then Johanan son of Kareah suggested to Gedaliah in private at Mizpah, “Let me go kill Ishmael son of Nethaniah. No one will know it. Why should he kill you and scatter all of Judah that has gathered to you so that the remnant of Judah would perish?”

“So now, this is what the Lord, the God of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: Why are you doing such great harm to yourselves? You are cutting off man and woman, child and infant from Judah, leaving yourselves without a remnant.

Why have I seen this?
They are terrified,
they are retreating,
their warriors are crushed,
they flee headlong,
they never look back,
terror is on every side!
This is the Lord’s declaration.

Why have your strong ones been swept away?
Each has not stood,
for the Lord has thrust him down.

About the Ammonites, this is what the Lord says:

Does Israel have no sons?
Is he without an heir?
Why then has Milcom dispossessed Gad
and his people settled in their cities?

Why do you brag about your valleys,
your flowing valley,
you faithless daughter?
You who trust in your treasures
and boast, “Who can attack me?”