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.

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.

All her people groan, they are searching for bread. They give their treasures for food, to bring back life. See, O Yahweh, and look, [how] I am despised.

Is it nothing to you, {all who pass by}? Look and see if there is sorrow like my sorrow, which was dealt to me, which Yahweh inflicted on the {day of his wrath}.

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.

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 hear that I was groaning; [there is] no comforter for me. All my enemies have heard my misery, they are pleased that you have done it. Bring [that] day that you have proclaimed, And let them be like me.

He has cut down {in fierce anger} all the might of Israel; he has withdrawn his right hand from the faces of [the] enemy, and he has burned in Jacob like a flaming fire, it has consumed all around.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

To their mothers they say, "Where is the bread and wine?" as they faint like the wounded in [the] public squares of a city, as their life is being poured out onto the bosom of their mothers.

Their heart cried to the Lord, "O wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears stream down like a river; day and night, do not give yourself relief, do not give your eyes rest.

"Arise, cry out in the night, at the beginning of the night watches; pour out your heart like water, before the face of the Lord. Lift to him your hands, for the life of your children, who faint in starvation, at the head of all streets."

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

To me he [is] like a bear lying in wait, a lion in hiding.

My enemies hunt me without cause, like a bird.

Look at their sitting and their standing, I [am] their mocking song.

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.

We have become orphans, fatherless, our mothers are like widows.

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