How does the city sit lovely, that was full of people! how has she become as a widow! she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how has she become a slave!

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

Judah has gone into captivity because of affliction, and because of great servitude: she dwells among the nations, she finds no rest: all her persecutors overtook her in her distress.

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

And from the daughter of Zion all her beauty has departed: her princes have become like harts that find no pasture, and they have gone 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 filthiness is in her skirts; she remembers not her latter end; therefore she came down awesomely: she had no comforter. O LORD, behold my affliction: for the enemy has magnified himself.

The adversary has spread out his hand over all her precious things: for she has seen that the nations entered into her sanctuary, whom you did command that they should not enter into your congregation.

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 trodden under foot all my mighty men in the midst of me: he has called an assembly against me to crush my young men: the Lord has trodden the virgin, the daughter of Judah, as in a winepress.

Zion spreads forth her hands, and there is none to comfort her: the LORD has commanded concerning Jacob, that his adversaries should be round about him: Jerusalem is as an unclean thing among them.

How the Lord has covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger, and cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel, and remembered not his footstool in the day of his anger!

The Lord has swallowed up all the habitations of Jacob, and has not pitied: he has thrown down in his wrath the strongholds of the daughter of Judah; he has brought them down to the ground: he has polluted the kingdom and its princes.

He has cut off in his fierce anger all the might of Israel: he has drawn back his right hand from before the enemy, and he burned against Jacob like a flaming fire, which devours round about.

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

The Lord was as an enemy: he has swallowed up Israel, he has swallowed up all her palaces: he has destroyed his strongholds, and has increased in the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation.

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

The Lord has cast off his altar, he has abhorred his sanctuary, he has given up into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces; they have made a noise in the house of the LORD, as in the day of a solemn feast.

The LORD has purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion: he has stretched out a line, he has not withdrawn his hand from destroying: therefore he made the rampart and the wall to lament; they languished together.

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

The LORD has done that which he had purposed; he has fulfilled his word that he had commanded in the days of old: he has thrown down, and has not pitied: and he has caused your enemy to rejoice over you, he has set up the might of your adversaries.

You have called as in a solemn day my terrors round about, so that in the day of the LORD'S anger none escaped nor remained: those that I have cared for and brought up has my enemy consumed.

I am the man that has seen affliction by the rod of his wrath.

He has led me, and brought me into darkness, but not into light.

Surely against me has he turned; he turns his hand against me all the day.

My flesh and my skin has he made old: he has broken my bones.

He has besieged me, and surrounded me with gall and travail.

He has set me in dark places, like they that are long dead.

He has hedged me in, that I cannot get out: he has made my chain heavy.

He has enclosed my ways with hewn stone, he has made my paths crooked.

He has turned aside my ways, and pulled me in pieces: he has made me desolate.

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

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

He has filled me with bitterness, he has made me drunk with wormwood.

He has also broken my teeth with gravel stones, he has covered me with ashes.

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.

He sits alone and keeps silence, because he has borne it upon him.

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

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

Even the jackals draw out the breast, they nurse their young ones: the daughter of my people has become cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness.

Their appearance is now blacker than coal; they are not known in the streets: their skin cleaves to their bones; it is withered, it has become like a dry stick.

The LORD has accomplished his fury; he has poured out his fierce anger, and has kindled a fire in Zion, and it has devoured its foundations.

The anger of the LORD has scattered them; he will no longer regard them: they respected not the persons of the priests, they favored not the elders.

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

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

The crown has fallen from our head: woe unto us, that we have sinned!