She weeps bitterly in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks: among all her lovers she has none to comfort her: all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they have become her enemies.

Judah has gone into captivity because of affliction, and because of great servitude: she dwells among the nations, she finds no rest: all her persecutors overtook her in her distress.

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 remembered in the days of her affliction and of her miseries all her pleasant things that she had in the days of old, when her people fell into the hand of the enemy, and none did help her: the adversaries saw her, and did mock at her sabbaths.

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 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.

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.

I called for my lovers, but they deceived me: my priests and my elders died in the city, while they sought their food to relieve their souls.

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.

How the Lord has covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger, and cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel, and remembered not his footstool in the day of his anger!

The Lord has swallowed up all the habitations of Jacob, and has not pitied: he has thrown down in his wrath the strongholds of the daughter of Judah; he has brought them down to the ground: he has polluted the kingdom and its princes.

He has cut off in his fierce anger all the might of Israel: he has drawn back his right hand from before the enemy, and he burned against Jacob like a flaming fire, which devours round about.

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.

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.

The LORD has done that which he had purposed; he has fulfilled his word that he had commanded in the days of old: he has thrown down, and has not pitied: and he has caused your enemy to rejoice over you, he has set up the might of your adversaries.

Arise, cry out in the night: in the beginning of the watches pour out your heart like water before the face of the Lord: lift up your hands toward him for the life of your young children, that faint for hunger at the head of every street.

Behold, O LORD, and consider to whom you have done this. Shall the women eat their offspring, the children of their tender care? shall the priest and the prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord?

The young and the old lie on the ground in the streets: my virgins and my young men have fallen by the sword; you have slain them in the day of your anger; you have killed, and not pitied.

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 has set me in dark places, like they that are long dead.

He has hedged me in, that I cannot get out: he has made my chain heavy.

Also when I cry and shout, he shuts out my prayer.

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

He has turned aside my ways, and pulled me in pieces: he has made me desolate.

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

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

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

He puts his mouth in the dust; if so be there may be hope.

To subvert a man in his cause, the Lord approves not.

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

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

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

They have cut off my life in the dungeon, and cast a stone upon me.

You drew near in the day that I called upon you: you said, Fear not.

Persecute and destroy them in anger from under the heavens of the LORD.

Even the jackals draw out the breast, they nurse their young ones: the daughter of my people has become cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness.

They that did eat delicacies are desolate in the streets: they that were brought up in scarlet embrace ash heaps.

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.

Her princes were purer than snow, they were whiter than milk, they were more ruddy in body than rubies, their appearance was of sapphire:

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.

The hands of the compassionate women have boiled their own children: they were their food in the destruction of the daughter of my people.

The LORD has accomplished his fury; he has poured out his fierce anger, and has kindled a fire in Zion, and it has devoured its foundations.

For the sins of her prophets, and the iniquities of her priests, that have shed the blood of the just in the midst of her,

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.

The breath of our nostrils, the anointed of the LORD, was taken in their pits, of whom we said, Under his shadow we shall live among the nations.

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.

We got our bread at the peril of our lives because of the sword in the wilderness.

Our skin was black like an oven because of the terrible famine.

They ravished the women in Zion, and the maidens in the cities of Judah.