How the city sits solitary, that was full of people! She has become as a widow, who was great among the nations! She who was a princess among the provinces is become tributary!

Judah is 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 within the straits.

The ways of Zion do mourn, because none come to the solemn assembly; all her gates are desolate, her priests do sigh: her virgins are afflicted, and she herself is in bitterness.

From the daughter of Zion all her majesty is departed: her princes are become like harts that find no pasture, they are gone without strength before the pursuer.

Jerusalem has grievously sinned; therefore she is become as an unclean thing; all who honored her despise her, because they have seen her nakedness: yes, she sighs, and turns backward.

Her filthiness was in her skirts; she didn't remember her latter end; therefore is she come down wonderfully; she has no comforter: see, Yahweh, my affliction; for the enemy has magnified himself.

Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look, and see if there be any sorrow like my sorrow, which is brought on me, With which Yahweh has afflicted [me] in the day of his fierce anger.

The yoke of my transgressions is bound by his hand; They are knit together, they are come up on my neck; he has made my strength to fail: The Lord has delivered me into their hands, against whom I am not able to stand.

The Lord has set at nothing all my mighty men in the midst of me; He has called a solemn assembly against me to crush my young men: The Lord has trodden as in a winepress the virgin daughter of Judah.

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

Zion spreads forth her hands; there is none to comfort her; Yahweh has commanded concerning Jacob, that those who are around him should be his adversaries: Jerusalem is among them as an unclean thing.

Yahweh is righteous; for I have rebelled against his commandment: Please hear all you peoples, and see my sorrow: My virgins and my young men are gone into captivity.

See, Yahweh; for I am in distress; my heart 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 proclaimed, and they shall be like me.

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

He has bent his bow like an enemy, he has stood with his right hand as an adversary, Has killed all that were pleasant to the eye: In the tent of the daughter of Zion he has poured out his wrath like fire.

The Lord is become as an enemy, he has swallowed up Israel; He has swallowed up all her palaces, he has destroyed his strongholds; He has multiplied in the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation.

He has violently taken away his tabernacle, as if it were of a garden; he has destroyed his place of assembly: Yahweh has caused solemn assembly and Sabbath to be forgotten in Zion, 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 Yahweh, as in the day of a solemn assembly.

Her gates are sunk into the ground; he has destroyed and broken her bars: Her king and her princes are among the nations where the law is not; Yes, her prophets find no vision from Yahweh.

My eyes do fail with tears, my heart is troubled; My liver is poured on the earth, because of the destruction of the daughter of my people, Because the young children and the infants swoon in the streets of the city.

They tell their mothers, Where is grain and wine? When they swoon as the wounded in the streets of the city, When their soul is poured out into their mothers' bosom.

What shall I testify to you? what shall I liken to you, daughter of Jerusalem? What shall I compare to you, that I may comfort you, virgin daughter of Zion? For your breach is great like 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 called The perfection of beauty, The joy of the whole earth?

All your enemies have opened their mouth wide 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 the day of a solemn assembly, my terrors on every side; There was none that escaped or remained in the day of Yahweh's anger: Those that I have dandled and brought up has my enemy consumed.

He has made me to dwell in dark places, as those that have been long dead.

He is to me as a bear lying in wait, as a lion in secret places.

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

I said, My strength is perished, and my expectation from Yahweh.

My soul still remembers them, and is bowed down within me.

[It is of] Yahweh's loving kindnesses that we are not consumed, because his compassion doesn't fail.

They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

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

Yahweh is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him.

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

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

Who is he who says, and it comes to pass, when the Lord doesn't command it?

Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to Yahweh.

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

You have covered with anger and pursued us; you have killed, you have not pitied.

You have made us an off-scouring and refuse in the midst of the peoples.

All our enemies have opened their mouth wide against us.

Fear and the pit are come on us, devastation and destruction.

How is the gold become dim! [how] is the most pure gold changed! The stones of the sanctuary are poured out at the head of every street.

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 iniquity of the daughter of my people is greater than the sin of Sodom, That was overthrown as in a moment, and no hands were laid on her.

Her nobles were purer than snow, they were whiter than milk; They were more ruddy in body than rubies, their polishing was as of sapphire.

Their appearance is blacker than a coal; they are not known in the streets: Their skin clings to their bones; it is withered, it is become like a stick.

[It is] because of 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 wander as blind men in the streets, they are polluted with blood, So that men can't touch their garments.

They hunt our steps, so that we can't go in our streets: Our end is near, our days are fulfilled; for our end is come.

Our pursuers were swifter than the eagles of the sky: They chased us on the mountains, they laid wait for us in the wilderness.

Rejoice and be glad, daughter of Edom, that dwell in the land of Uz: The cup shall pass through to you also; you shall be drunken, and shall make yourself naked.

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

Remember, Yahweh, what has come on us: Look, and see our reproach.

Our inheritance is turned to strangers, Our houses to aliens.

We are orphans and fatherless; Our mothers are as widows.

We have drunken our water for money; Our wood is sold to us.

Servants rule over us: There is none to deliver us out of their hand.

Our skin is black like an oven, Because of the burning heat of famine.

The joy of our heart is ceased; Our dance is turned into mourning.

The crown is fallen from our head: Woe to us! for we have sinned.

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

For the mountain of Zion, which is desolate: The foxes walk on it.

You, Yahweh, remain forever; Your throne is from generation to generation.

Why do you forget us forever, [And] forsake us so long time?

Turn us to yourself, Yahweh, and we shall be turned. Renew our days as of old.

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