The ways of Zion are sad, because no one comes to the holy meeting; all her doorways are made waste, her priests are breathing out sorrow: her virgins are troubled, and it is bitter for her.

In her skirts were her unclean ways; she gave no thought to her end; and her fall has been a wonder; she has no comforter: see her sorrow, O Lord; for the attacker is lifted up.

“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.

A watch is kept on my sins; they are joined together by his hand, they have come on to my neck; he has made my strength give way: the Lord has given me up into the hands of those against whom I have no power.

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’?”

He has blocked my ways with cut stone;
He has made my paths crooked.

He has turned aside my ways and torn me in pieces;
He has made me desolate.

(Nun) Let us carefully examine our ways, and let us return to the Lord.