{Khaf} All her people seek their bread with heaviness, and look: what precious things every man hath, that giveth he for meat to save his life. Consider, O LORD, and see, how vile I am become.

{Mem} From above hath he sent down a fire into my bones: and it burned them cruelly. He hath laid a net for my feet, and thrown me wide open: he hath made me desolate, so that I must ever be mourning.

{Kuf} I called for my lovers, but they beguiled me; for my Priests and counselors, but they perished: even while they sought for meat, to save their lives.

{Vav} Her tabernacle - which was like a garden of pleasure - hath he destroyed; her high solemn feasts hath he put down. The LORD hath brought it so to pass, that the high solemn feasts and Sabbaths in Zion are clean forgotten. In his heavy displeasure hath he made the king and priests to be despised.

{Zayin} The LORD hath forsaken his own altar, and is wroth with his own sanctuary, and hath given the walls of their towers into the hands of the enemy. Their enemies made a noise in the house of the LORD, as it had been in a solemn feast day.

{Lamed} Even when they spake to their mothers, "Where is meat and drink?" For while they so said, they fell down in the streets of the city, like as they had been wounded, and some died in their mothers' bosom.

{Beth} My flesh and my skin hath he made old, my bones hath he bruised.

He hath stopped up my ways with four square stones, and made my paths crooked.

He hath bent his bow, and made me as it were a mark to shoot at.

Thou hast made us outcasts, and to be despised among the Heathen.

{Beth} The children of Zion that were always in honour, and clothed with the most precious gold: how are they now become like the earthen vessels which be made with the potter's hand?

{Yod} The women, which of nature are pitiful, have sodden their own children with their hands that they might be their meat, in the miserable destruction of the daughter of my people.

Afore time we yielded ourselves to the Egyptians, and now to the Assyrians, only that we might have bread enough.