How desolate the city sits [that] was full of people! She has become like a widow, [once] great among the nations! Like a woman of nobility in the provinces, she has become a forced laborer.

She weeps bitterly in the night, her tears [are] on her cheeks; she has no comforter among all her lovers. All her friends have been unfaithful to her; they have become her enemies.

Judah has gone into exile with misery and under hard servitude; she lives among the nations, she has not found a resting place; all her pursuers have overtaken her amidst [her] distress.

Her foes have become [her] {master}, her enemies are at ease; Yahweh has made her suffer because of the greatness of her transgressions. Her children have gone away, captive before the foe.

All her majesty has gone away from the daughter of Zion; her princes have become like young stags that have not found pasture; they have gone away without strength, before the pursuer.

Jerusalem has grievously sinned; therefore she is removed: all that honored her despise her, because they have seen her nakedness: yea, she sighs, and turns away.

Her uncleanness [was] in her skirts; she did not remember her future, she has descended beyond understanding, there is no comforter for her. See, O Yahweh, my persecution! [My] enemy has been made great!

The enemy has stretched out his hand over all her treasures; for she has seen the nations, they entered her sanctuary, those whom you commanded not to enter in your assembly.

Breathing out grief all her people are looking for bread; they have given their desired things for food to give them life: see, O Lord, and take note; for she has become a thing of shame.

Is it nothing to you, all you that pass by? behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, which the LORD has afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger.

From above has he sent fire into my bones, and it prevails against them: he has spread a net for my feet, he has turned me back: he has made me desolate and faint all the day.

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

The Lord has rejected all my mighty ones in my midst. He called an assembly against me, to crush my young men; [like in] a wine press, the Lord has trodden [on] the virgin daughter of Judah.

For these [things], I am weeping, {my eyes flow with tears}; because a comforter is far from me, one to restore my life. My sons are desolate because [the] enemy has prevailed.

Zion stretches out her hands; there is no one to comfort her. Yahweh has commanded against Jacob, [that] those surrounding him [should be] his enemies; Jerusalem has become a defilement among them.

See, O Yahweh, that {I am in distress}; {my stomach} is in torment, my heart has turned inside me because I have certainly rebelled. From outside a sword brings bereavement, inside the house [it is] like death.

They have heard - that, sighing am, I, and am saying - There is none to comfort me, All my foes, - having heard of my calamity - have rejoiced, because, thou, hast done it, - thou hast brought in the day thou didst proclaim, So let them become like me.

Let all their wickedness, come in, before thee, and deal thou severely with them, according as thou hast dealt severely with me, for all my transgressions; for many are my sighs, and, my heart, is sick.

How, {in his anger}, the Lord has covered the daughter of Zion in a cloud! He has thrown down from heavens [to] earth the splendor of Israel, and he has not remembered his footstool in the day of {his anger}.

The Lord has devoured; he has not shown mercy to all the dwellings of Jacob; he has broken down in his wrath the fortifications of the daughter of Judah; he has leveled to the ground, he has dishonored the kingdom and its commanders.

He has cut down {in fierce anger} all the might of Israel; he has withdrawn his right hand from the faces of [the] enemy, and he has burned in Jacob like a flaming fire, it has consumed all around.

He has bent his bow like an enemy; he has set his right hand like a foe, and he has slain all [the] treasures of [the] eye; in the tent of the daughter of Zion, he has poured out his anger like fire.

The Lord has become like an enemy; he has destroyed Israel; he has destroyed all its citadel fortresses; he has ruined all its fortifications and multiplied lamentation and mourning in the daughter of Judah.

He has broken down {his dwelling} place like the garden; he has ruined his appointed feasts; Yahweh has made [them] forget in Zion {festival} and Sabbath, and he has despised in his anger king and priest.

The Lord has rejected his altar; he has rejected his sanctuary; he has delivered into the hands of the enemy the walls of its citadel fortresses. They have cried out in the house of Yahweh like a day of an appointed feast.

Yahweh has planned to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion. He measured [with] a line; he has not restrained his hand from destroying; he caused rampart and wall to mourn; together they have languished away.

Her gates have sunk into the earth; he has ruined and broken her bars, her kings and its princes [are] among the nations; there is no more law. Also, her prophets have not found a revelation from Yahweh.

All your haters are opening their mouths wide against you; making hisses and whistling through their teeth, they say, We have made a meal of her: certainly this is the day we have been looking for; it has come, we have seen it.

Yahweh has done what he has planned; he has fulfilled his promise that he ordained from the days of old; he has demolished and not shown mercy; he has made an enemy rejoice over you, he has exalted the {might} of your foes.

See, O Yahweh, and do consider, to whom thou hast acted thus severely, - Will women, devour, their own fruit - the children they have dandled? Shall priest and prophet, be slain in the sanctuary of My Lord?

The young and the old lie on the ground in the streets: my virgins and my young men have fallen by the sword; thou hast slain them in the day of thy anger; thou hast killed, and not pitied.

Thou hast called as in a solemn day my terrors around, so that in the day of the LORD'S anger none escaped nor remained: those that I have swaddled and brought up, hath my enemy consumed.

I am a man who has seen misery, under the rod of his wrath.

He has driven me along, he brought darkness and not light.

Surely he has turned his hand against me, all day long.

He has worn out my flesh and skin, he has broken my bones.

{He has besieged} and engulfed me with bitterness and hardship.

In darkness he has let me dwell like [the] dead of long ago.

He has built a wall around me, I cannot go out; he has made my bronze fetters heavy.

Also, when I cry out desperately for help, he has shut out my prayer.

He has blocked my ways with dressed stones; he has made my paths crooked.

He has forsaken my way and torn me to pieces; he has caused me desolation.

He has bent his bow and set me as the target for the arrow.

He has caused the arrows of his quiver to enter into my heart.

He has filled me with bitterness, he has drenched me [with] wormwood.

He has broken my teeth on grit, he has trampled me down in ash.

And thou hast removed my soul far off from peace: I forgat prosperity.

And I said, My strength and my hope has perished from the LORD:

My soul has them still in remembrance, and is humbled in me.

Let him sit alone and be silent when he has laid it on him.

For even though he causes grief he has compassion according to the greatness of his royal love.

For he has no pleasure in troubling and causing grief to the children of men.

to subvert a person in a legal dispute --the Lord has not found delight [in these things].

{Who can speak} and it will happen [if] the Lord has not commanded [it]?

We have transgressed and have rebelled: thou hast not pardoned.

Thou hast covered with anger, and persecuted us: thou hast slain, thou hast not pitied.

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

Thou hast made us as the offscouring and refuse in the midst of the people.

Fear and a snare has come upon us, desolation and destruction.

until the Lord looks down from heaven and sees what has happened.

Water has flown over my head, I said, "I am cut off."

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

Thou hast drawn near in the day I call Thee, Thou hast said, Fear not.

O Lord, thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul; thou hast redeemed my life.

O LORD, thou hast seen my wrong: judge thou my cause.

Thou hast seen all their vengeance and all their imaginations against me.

Thou hast heard their reproach, O LORD, and all their imaginations against me;

How [the] gold has grown dim, the pure gold has changed. The stones of holiness are scattered at the head of every street.

Even the jackal bears the beast and nurses their cubs; [but] the daughter of my people has become ruthless, like ostriches in the wilderness.

[Now] their appearance is blacker than soot, they are not recognized in the streets; their skin has shriveled on their bones, it has become dry like wood.

Yahweh has completed his anger, he has poured out {his fierce anger}; he has kindled a fire in Zion, it consumed her foundations.

It is because of the sins of her prophets and the evil-doing of her priests, by whom the blood of the upright has been drained out in her.

The presence of Yahweh has scattered them, he will no longer watch over them; {they did not honor the priests}, they did not show mercy [to] elders.

They hunted our steps, from walking in our streets; our end has come near, {our days are finished}, our end has come.

The punishment of your iniquity has been completed, O daughter of Zion;
He will exile you no longer.
But He will punish your iniquity, O daughter of Edom;
He will expose your sins!

Remember, O Yahweh, what has become of us; take note, and see our disgrace!

Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, our houses, to foreigners.

Our skin has become as hot as an oven,
Because of the burning heat of famine.

The old men are no longer seated in the doorway, and the music of the young men has come to an end.

The joy of our hearts has stopped; our circle-dancing has changed to a mourning ceremony.

The crown has fallen from our head; woe to us, for we have sinned!

Because of this, our heart has become faint, because of these, our eyes have become dim.

because of Mount Zion, which lies desolate
and has jackals prowling in it.

But thou hast utterly rejected us; thou art very wroth against us.