The roads of Zion mourn without any going to the appointed feasts. All her gates are deserted; her priests sigh; her virgins are afflicted, and she is in bitterness.

Her enemies have become as chief; her haters are at ease; for Jehovah has afflicted her for the multitude of her sins. Her children have gone, captive before the enemy.

In the days of her affliction and her wandering Jerusalem remembered all her desirable things from previous days; when her people fell into the hand of the foe; and there is no ally for her. The foes saw her; they laughed at her annihilation.

Her uncleanness is in her skirts; she did not remember her end, and has gone down astoundingly. There is no comforter for her. O Jehovah, behold my affliction, for the enemy has magnified himself.

Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Behold and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow which is done to me, with which Jehovah has afflicted me in the day of His fierce anger.

The yoke of my transgressions is bound by His hand; they intertwine; they rise on my neck. He has made my strength to falter; Jehovah has delivered me into their hands. I am not able to rise up.

Jehovah has trampled all my mighty ones in my midst; He has called a gathering against me to crush my young men. Jehovah has trod the virgin daughter of Judah, as in a winepress.

For these I weep; my eye, my eye runs down with water, because the comforter who could refresh my soul is far from me. My sons are desolated because the enemy prevails.

Zion spreads forth her hands; none is comforting to me; Jehovah has commanded concerning Jacob that his enemies should be all around him; Jerusalem has become as an impure thing among them.

Jehovah is righteous, for I have rebelled against His command. I beseech you, all peoples, hear and behold my sorrow. My virgins and my young men went into exile.

Behold, O Jehovah, for I am in trouble; my inward parts ferment; my heart is turned within me, for I have grievously rebelled. On the outside the sword bereaves; in the house it is as death.

They hear that I sigh; there is none to comfort me. All my enemies have heard my evil; they are glad that You have done it. You will bring the day that You have called, and they shall be like me.

Let all their wickedness come before You; and do to them as You have done to me for all my transgressions. For my sighs are many, and my heart is faint.

Jehovah has cast off His altar; He rejected His sanctuary; He has given up the walls of her palaces into the hater's hand. They gave a noise in the house of Jehovah, as a day of meeting.

Her gates have sunk in the ground; He has destroyed and broken her bars. Her kings and her rulers are among the nations. The Law is no more; also her prophets also find no vision from Jehovah.

My eyes fail with tears; my inward parts ferment; my liver is poured on the ground for the ruin of the daughter of my people, in that the children and the babies faint in the streets of the city.

What can I testify for you? What thing shall I compare to you, O daughter of Jerusalem? What shall I equal to you, so that I may comfort you, O virgin daughter of Zion? For your break is great like the sea! Who can heal you?

All who pass by clap their hands at you; they hiss and wag their head at the daughter of Jerusalem, saying, Is this the city which they called the perfection of beauty, the joy of the whole earth?

All your enemies have opened their mouth against you; they hiss and gnash the teeth; they say, We have swallowed her up. Certainly this is the day that we looked for; we have found, we have seen.

You have called as in a solemn day my terrors all around, and there was not an escaped one or a survivor in the day of Jehovah's anger. Those whom I have nursed and multiplied, my enemy has consumed.

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

Remember my affliction and my wandering, as wormwood and bitterness.

It is by Jehovah's kindnesses that we are not destroyed, because His mercies never fail.

They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness.

Jehovah is my portion, says my soul; therefore I will hope in Him.

Jehovah is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him.

It is good that one should hope for the salvation of Jehovah, even in silence.

It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.

He gives his cheek to Him who strikes him; he is filled with reproach.

Who is this who speaks, and it occurs, when the Lord does not command it?

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

Let us lift up our heart and hands to God in Heaven.

You have wrapped Yourself with anger and pursued us; You have slain; You have not pitied.

You have made us as the sweepings and garbage in the midst of the peoples.

All our enemies have opened their mouths against us.

Fear and a pit have come to us, shame and ruin.

The precious sons of Zion are weighed against pure gold; how they are counted as earthen vessels, the work of a potter's hand!

Even the jackals draw out the breast; they suckle their young ones. The daughter of my people is cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness.

The suckling's tongue cleaves to his palate in thirst; the young children ask bread; there is no breaking to them.

And the iniquity of the daughter of my people is heaped more than the sin of Sodom, overthrown as in a moment, and no hands spun on her.

Her Nazarites were purer than snow, whiter than milk; they were redder of bone than corals; their cuttings as lapis lazuli, azure blue.

Their appearance is blacker than soot; they are not recognized in the streets; their skin has shriveled on their bones; it is dried up; it has become like wood.

While we are, our eyes fail, for our help is vain; in our watching we have watched for a nation; it does not save.

Our pursuers were swifter than the eagles of the heavens; they pursued us on the mountains, they lay in wait for us in the wilderness.

Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom, who lives in the land of Uz. The cup also shall pass through unto you; you shall be drunken and stripped naked.

The punishment of your iniquity is fulfilled, O daughter of Zion; He will exile you no more. He will visit your iniquity, O daughter of Edom; He will expose your sins.

Remember, O Jehovah, what has been to us; look down and see our shame.

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

We are pursued on our necks; we grow weary; rest is not given to us.

Servants rule over us; there is no rescuer out of their hand.

Our skin is hot like an oven because of the fever heat of famine.

The crown has fallen from our head. Woe now to us! For we have sinned.

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

On the mountain of Zion is laid waste, the foxes walk on it.

Why do You forget us forever and forsake us the length of days?

Return us to You, O Jehovah, and we will turn; renew our days as of old,

unless You have utterly rejected us; You are very angry against us.