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!

The roads to 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 have gone into captivity.

Behold, O LORD; for I am in distress: my soul is troubled; my heart is turned within me; for I have grievously rebelled: abroad the sword bereaves, 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 you have done it: you will bring the day that you have announced, and they shall be like unto me.

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

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.

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.

My eyes do fail with tears, my soul is troubled, my heart is poured upon the earth, for the destruction of the daughter of my people; because the children and the infants faint in the streets of the city.

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

What thing shall I take to witness for you? what thing shall I liken to you, O daughter of Jerusalem? what shall I equal to you, that I may comfort you, O virgin daughter of Zion? for your run is vast as the sea: who can heal you?

All that pass by clap their hands at you; they hiss and wag their head at the daughter of Jerusalem, saying, Is this the city that men call 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 it.

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.

He was unto me as a bear lying in wait, and as a lion in secret places.

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

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

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

They are new every morning: great is your faithfulness.

The LORD is my portion, says my soul; therefore will I hope in him.

The LORD is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeks him.

It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD.

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

He gives his cheek to him that strikes him: he is filled full with reproach.

Who is he that says, and it comes to pass, when the Lord commands it not?

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

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

You have covered with anger, and persecuted us: you have slain, you have not pitied.

You have made us as the offscouring and refuse in the midst of the people.

All our enemies have opened their mouths against us.

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

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

For the punishment of the iniquity of the daughter of my people is greater than the punishment of the sin of Sodom, that was overthrown as in a moment, with no hands laid on her.

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.

They have wandered as blind men in the streets, they have polluted themselves with blood, so that men could not touch their garments.

They cried unto them, Depart; it is unclean; depart, depart, touch not: when they fled away and wandered, they said among the nations, They shall no more sojourn there.

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

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.

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

Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom, that dwells in the land of Uz; the cup also shall pass through unto you: you shall be drunk, and shall make yourself naked.

The punishment of your iniquity is accomplished, O daughter of Zion; he will no more carry you away into captivity: he will punish your iniquity, O daughter of Edom; he will uncover your sins.

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 drunk our water at a price; our wood is sold unto us.

Servants have ruled over us: there is none that does deliver us out of their hand.

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

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

Because of the mountain of Zion, which is desolate, the foxes walk upon it.

Why do you forget us forever, and forsake us for so long a time?

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

But you have utterly rejected us; you are very angry against us.