She weepeth bitterly in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks: among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her: all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they are become her enemies.

The ways of Zion do mourn, because none come to the solemn feasts: all her gates are desolate: her priests sigh, her virgins are afflicted, and she is in bitterness.

Her adversaries are the chief, her enemies prosper; for the LORD hath afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions: her children are gone into captivity before the enemy.

And from the daughter of Zion all her beauty hath departed: her princes are become like harts that find no pasture, and they are gone without strength before the pursuer.

The yoke of my transgressions is bound by his hand: they are wreathed, and come up upon my neck: he hath made my strength to fall, the Lord hath delivered me into their hands, from whom I am not able to rise.

For these things I weep; my eye, my eye runneth down with water, because the comforter that should relieve my soul is far from me: my children are desolate, because the enemy prevailed.

The LORD is righteous; for I have rebelled against his commandment: hear, I pray you, all people, and behold my sorrow: my virgins and my young men are gone into captivity.

Behold, O LORD; for I am in distress: my bowels are troubled; my heart is turned within me; for I have grievously rebelled: abroad the sword bereaveth, at home there is as death.

They have heard that I sigh: there is none to comfort me: all my enemies have heard of my trouble; they are glad that thou hast done it: thou wilt bring the day that thou hast called, and they shall be like me.

Let all their wickedness come before thee; and do to them, as thou hast done to me for all my transgressions: for my sighs are many, and my heart is faint.

He hath bent his bow like an enemy: he stood with his right hand as an adversary, and slew all that were pleasant to the eye in the tabernacle of the daughter of Zion: he poured out his fury like fire.

And he hath violently taken away his tabernacle, as if it were of a garden: he hath destroyed his places of the assembly: the LORD hath caused the solemn feasts and sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion, and in the indignation of his anger hath despised the king and the priest.

Her gates are sunk into the ground; he hath destroyed and broken her bars: her king and her princes are among the Gentiles: the law is no more: her prophets also find no vision from the LORD.

My eyes do fail with tears, my bowels are troubled, my liver is poured upon the earth, for the destruction of the daughter of my people; because the children and the sucklings swoon in the streets of the city.

They say to their mothers, Where is corn and wine? when they swooned as the wounded in the streets of the city, when their soul was poured out into their mothers' bosom.

He hath set me in dark places, as they that are dead of old.

He hath bent his bow, and set me as a mark for the arrow.

It is of the LORD'S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.

They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.

Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the LORD.

Let us lift up our heart with our hands to God in the heavens.

Thou hast covered thyself with a cloud, that our prayer should not pass through.

All our enemies have opened their mouths against us.

Thou hast heard my voice: hide not thy ear at my breathing, at my cry.

How is the gold become dim! how is the most fine gold changed! the stones of the sanctuary are poured out at the head of every street.

The precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold, how are they esteemed as earthen pitchers, the work of the hands of the potter!

They that fed delicately are desolate in the streets: they that were brought up in scarlet embrace dunghills.

Her Nazarites were purer than snow, they were whiter than milk, they were more ruddy in body than rubies, their polishing was of sapphire:

Their visage is blacker than a coal; they are not known in the streets: their skin cleaveth to their bones; it is withered, it is become like a stick.

They that are slain with the sword are better than they that are slain with hunger: for these pine away, stricken through for want of the fruits of the field.

The hands of the pitiful women have boiled their own children: they were their food in the destruction of the daughter of my people.

As for us, our eyes as yet failed for our vain help: in our watching we have watched for a nation that could not save us.

They hunt our steps, that we cannot go in our streets: our end is near, our days are fulfilled; for our end is come.

Our persecutors are swifter than the eagles of heaven: they pursued us upon the mountains, they laid wait for us in the wilderness.

The breath of our nostrils, the anointed of the LORD, was taken in their pits, of whom we said, Under his shadow we shall live among the heathen.

Remember, O LORD, what is come upon us: consider, and behold our reproach.

Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens.

We are orphans and fatherless, our mothers are as widows.

We have drank our water for money; our wood is sold to us.

Our necks are under persecution: we labor, and have no rest.

Our fathers have sinned, and are not; and we have borne their iniquities.

We procured our bread with the peril of our lives, because of the sword of the wilderness.

Our skin was black like an oven because of the terrible famine.

Princes were hanged by their hand: the faces of elders were not honored.

The joy of our heart hath ceased; our dance is turned into mourning.

The crown is fallen from our head: woe to us, that we have sinned!

For this our heart is faint; for these things our eyes are dim.

Turn thou us to thee, O LORD, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old.