All her people groan seeking bread;
They have given their precious things for food
To restore their lives themselves.
“See, O Lord, and look,
For I am despised.”

“Is it nothing to all you who pass this way?
Look and see if there is any pain like my pain
Which was severely dealt out to me,
Which the Lord inflicted on the day of His fierce anger.

Zion stretches out her hands;
There is no one to comfort her;
The Lord has commanded concerning Jacob
That the ones round about him should be his adversaries;
Jerusalem has become an unclean thing among them.

“I called to my lovers, but they deceived me;
My priests and my elders perished in the city
While they sought food to restore their strength themselves.

“They have heard that I groan;
There is no one to comfort me;
All my enemies have heard of my calamity;
They are glad that You have done it.
Oh, that You would bring the day which You have proclaimed,
That they may become like me.

“Let all their wickedness come before You;
And deal with them as You have dealt with me
For all my transgressions;
For my groans are many and my heart is faint.”

The elders of the daughter of Zion
Sit on the ground, they are silent.
They have thrown dust on their heads;
They have girded themselves with sackcloth.
The virgins of Jerusalem
Have bowed their heads to the ground.

They say to their mothers,
“Where is grain and wine?”
As they faint like a wounded man
In the streets of the city,
As their life is poured out
On their mothers’ bosom.

All who pass along the way
Clap their hands in derision at you;
They hiss and shake their heads
At the daughter of Jerusalem,
“Is this the city of which they said,
‘The perfection of beauty,
A joy to all the earth’?”

All your enemies
Have opened their mouths wide against you;
They hiss and gnash their teeth.
They say, “We have swallowed her up!
Surely this is the day for which we waited;
We have reached it, we have seen it.”

Their heart cried out to the Lord,
“O wall of the daughter of Zion,
Let your tears run down like a river day and night;
Give yourself no relief,
Let your eyes have no rest.

See, O Lord, and look!
With whom have You dealt thus?
Should women eat their offspring,
The little ones who were born healthy?
Should priest and prophet be slain
In the sanctuary of the Lord?

You called as in the day of an appointed feast
My terrors on every side;
And there was no one who escaped or survived
In the day of the Lord’s anger.
Those whom I bore and reared,
My enemy annihilated them.

I have become a laughingstock to all my people,
Their mocking song all the day.

Let him put his mouth in the dust,
Perhaps there is hope.

Who is there who speaks and it comes to pass,
Unless the Lord has commanded it?

You have covered Yourself with a cloud
So that no prayer can pass through.

All our enemies have opened their mouths against us.

You have seen all their vengeance,
All their schemes against me.

You have heard their reproach, O Lord,
All their schemes against me.

The lips of my assailants and their whispering
Are against me all day long.

Look on their sitting and their rising;
I am their mocking song.

You will recompense them, O Lord,
According to the work of their hands.

Even jackals offer the breast,
They nurse their young;
But the daughter of my people has become cruel
Like ostriches in the wilderness.

Her consecrated ones were purer than snow,
They were whiter than milk;
They were more ruddy in body than corals,
Their polishing was like lapis lazuli.

Their appearance is blacker than soot,
They are not recognized in the streets;
Their skin is shriveled on their bones,
It is withered, it has become like wood.

The hands of compassionate women
Boiled their own children;
They became food for them
Because of the destruction of the daughter of my people.

They wandered, blind, in the streets;
They were defiled with blood
So that no one could touch their garments.

The breath of our nostrils, the Lord’s anointed,
Was captured in their pits,
Of whom we had said, “Under his shadow
We shall live among the nations.”

Our pursuers are at our necks;
We are worn out, there is no rest for us.

Our fathers sinned, and are no more;
It is we who have borne their iniquities.

Slaves rule over us;
There is no one to deliver us from their hand.

Princes were hung by their hands;
Elders were not respected.

Elders are gone from the gate,
Young men from their music.