How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become as a widow! she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary!

She weepeth sore in the night, And her tear is on her cheeks, There is no comforter for her out of all her lovers, All her friends dealt treacherously by her, They have been to her for enemies.

The ways of Zion are mourning, Without any coming at the appointed time, All her gates are desolate, her priests sigh, Her virgins are afflicted -- and she hath bitterness.

Her adversaries have become chief, Her enemies have been at ease, For Jehovah hath afflicted her, For the abundance of her transgressions, Her infants have gone captive before the adversary.

And go out from the daughter of Zion doth all her honour, Her princes have been as harts -- They have not found pasture, And they go powerless before a pursuer.

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.

Great is the sin of Jerusalem; for this cause she has become an unclean thing: all those who gave her honour are looking down on her, because they have seen her shame: now truly, breathing out grief, she is turned back.

Her (ceremonial) uncleanness was on her skirts;
She did not [seriously] consider her future.
Therefore she has come down [from throne to slavery] in an astonishing manner;
She has no comforter.
“O Lord” [cries Jerusalem], “look at my affliction,
For the enemy has magnified himself [in triumph]!”

The adversary hath spread out his hand upon all her pleasant things: for she hath seen that the heathen entered into her sanctuary, whom thou didst command that they should not enter into thy congregation.

Breathing out grief all her people are looking for bread; they have given their desired things for food to give them life: see, O Lord, and take note; for she has become a thing of shame.

Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the LORD hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger.

From above hath he sent fire into my bones, and it prevaileth against them: he hath spread a net for my feet, he hath turned me back: he hath made me desolate and faint all the day.

The yoke of my transgressions is bound by his hand: they are wreathed, they are come up upon my neck; he hath made my strength to fail; the Lord hath delivered me into hands out of which I am not able to rise up.

The Lord hath set at nought all my mighty men in the midst of me; He hath called a solemn assembly against me to crush my young men: The Lord hath trodden as in a winepress the virgin daughter of Judah.

{Ayin} Therefore do I weep, and mine eyes gush out of water: for the comforter that should quicken me is far from me. My children are driven away. For why? The enemy hath gotten the over hand.

Zion stretches out her hands; there is no one to comfort her. Yahweh has commanded against Jacob, [that] those surrounding him [should be] his enemies; Jerusalem has become a defilement among them.

“The Lord is righteous and just;
For I have rebelled against His commandment (His word).
Hear now, all you peoples,
And look at my pain;
My virgins and my young men
Have gone into captivity.

I called out to my lovers, but they deceived me. My priests and my elders have died within the city while looking for something to eat to keep themselves alive.

Behold, O LORD; for I am in distress: my bowels are troubled; mine heart is turned within me; for I have grievously rebelled: abroad the sword bereaveth, at home there is as death.

They have heard that I sigh: there is none to comfort me: all mine enemies have heard of my trouble; they are glad that thou hast done it: thou wilt bring the day that thou hast called, and they shall be like unto me.

ת TavLet all their wickedness come before You,
and deal with them
as You have dealt with me
because of all my transgressions.
For my groans are many,
and I am sick at heart.

{Aleph} Alas, how hath the LORD darkened the daughter of Zion so sore in his wrath? As for the honour of Israel, he hath casten it down from heaven: How happeneth it, that he remembered not his own foot stool when he was angry?

The Lord has given up to destruction all the living-places of Jacob without pity; pulling down in his wrath the strong places of the daughter of Judah, stretching out on the earth the wounded, even her king and her rulers.

He hath cut off in the heat of anger every horn of Israel, He hath turned backward His right hand From the face of the enemy, And He burneth against Jacob as a flaming fire, It hath devoured round about.

He hath bent his bow like an enemy: he stood with his right hand as an adversary, and slew all that were pleasant to the eye in the tabernacle of the daughter of Zion: he poured out his fury like fire.

{He} The LORD is become like as it were an enemy: he hath cast down Israel and all his places. Yea, all his strongholds hath he destroyed, and filled the daughter of Judah with much sorrow and heaviness.

And he hath violently taken away his tabernacle, as if it were of a garden: he hath destroyed his places of the assembly: the LORD hath caused the solemn feasts and sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion, and hath despised in the indignation of his anger the king and the priest.

The Lord has rejected his altar; he has rejected his sanctuary; he has delivered into the hands of the enemy the walls of its citadel fortresses. They have cried out in the house of Yahweh like a day of an appointed feast.

The LORD hath purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion: he hath stretched out a line, he hath not withdrawn his hand from destroying: therefore he made the rampart and the wall to lament; they languished together.

{Tet} Her ports are cast down to the ground, her bars are broken and smitten in sunder: her king and princes are carried away to the gentiles. They have neither law nor Prophets, nor yet any vision from the LORD.

(Yod) The elders of Daughter Zion sit on the ground in silence. They have thrown dirt on their heads; They have dressed in sackcloth. Jerusalem's young women stare down at the ground.

Consumed by tears have been my eyes, Troubled have been my bowels, Poured out to the earth hath been my liver, For the breach of the daughter of my people; In infant and suckling being feeble, In the broad places of the city,

They say to their mothers, Where is corn and wine? when they swooned as the wounded in the streets of the city, when their soul was poured out into their mothers' bosom.

What thing shall I take to witness for thee? what thing shall I liken to thee, O daughter of Jerusalem? what shall I equal to thee, that I may comfort thee, O virgin daughter of Zion? for thy breach is great like the sea: who can heal thee?

Your prophets look on your behalf; they see false and deceptive visions. They did not expose your sins in order to restore what had been captured. Instead, they crafted oracles for you that are false and misleading.

All that pass by clap their hands at thee; they hiss and wag their head at the daughter of Jerusalem, saying, Is this the city that men call The perfection of beauty, The joy of the whole earth?

All thine enemies have opened their mouth against thee: 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.

Jehovah hath done what he had devised; he hath fulfilled his word which he had commanded from the days of old: he hath thrown down, and hath not spared, and he hath caused the enemy to rejoice over thee; he hath set up the horn of thine adversaries.

צ TsadeThe hearts of the people cry out to the Lord.
Wall of Daughter Zion,
let your tears run down like a river
day and night.
Give yourself no relief
and your eyes no rest.

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

Behold, O LORD, and consider to whom thou hast done this. Shall the women eat their fruit, and children of a span long? shall the priest and the prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord?

Lain on the earth in out-places have young and old, My virgins and my young men have fallen by the sword, Thou hast slain in a day of Thine anger, Thou hast slaughtered -- Thou hast not pitied.

Thou dost call as at a day of appointment, My fears from round about, And there hath not been in the day of the anger of Jehovah, An escaped and remaining one, They whom I stretched out and nourished, My enemy hath consumed!

Me, hath he driven out and brought into darkness, and not light;

Against me only he turneth his hand, and layeth it ever upon me.

He hath worn out my flesh and my skin. He hath broken my bones.

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

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

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

He bent his bow, aiming at me with his arrow.

My soul has been cast far away from peace;
I have forgotten happiness.

{Zayin} O remember yet my misery and my trouble; the wormwood and the gall.

My mind keeps reflecting on it, and I become depressed.

Yet I call this to mind,
and therefore I have hope:

It is of the LORD'S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.

“The Lord is my portion and my inheritance,” says my soul;
“Therefore I have hope in Him and wait expectantly for Him.”

The LORD is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him.

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

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

He sitteth alone and keepeth silence, because he hath borne it upon him.

Let him put his mouth in the dust [in recognition of his unworthiness];
There may yet be hope.

But though he cause grief, yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies.

For he doth not plague, and cast out the children of men from his heart.

to wrong a man in his cause, will not the Lord see it?

Who is he that saith, and it cometh to pass, when the Lord commandeth it not?

Out of the mouth of the most High proceedeth not evil and good?

What -- sigh habitually doth a living man, A man for his sin?

נ NunLet us search out and examine our ways,
and turn back to the Lord.

All our enemies have opened their mouth wide against us.

Whole rivers of water gush out of mine eyes, for the great hurt of my people.

Mine eye is poured out, And doth not cease without intermission,

Until Yahweh out of the heavens shall look forth, and see,

My eyes [see things that] bring pain to my soul
Because of all the daughters of my city.

{Tsadi} Mine enemies hunted me out sharply, like a bird; yea, and that without a cause.

They silenced me in the pit
And placed a stone over me.

I called upon thy name, O LORD, out of the low dungeon.

Thou hast heard my voice: hide not thine ear at my breathing, at my cry.

You drew near when I called out to you. You said, "Stop being afraid"

Look at their sitting and their rising [their actions and secret counsels];
I am their mocking song [the subject of their ridicule].

Return to them what is deserved, O Yahweh, according to the work of their hands.

Persecute them, O LORD, with thine indignation, and root them out from under the heaven.

How is the gold become dim! how is the most fine gold changed! the stones of the sanctuary are poured out in the top of every street.

The [noble and] precious sons of Zion,
[Once] worth their weight in fine gold,
How they are regarded [merely] as earthen jars,
The work of a potter’s hands!

Even the sea monsters draw out the breast, they give suck to their young ones: the daughter of my people is become cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness.

The tongue of the sucking child cleaveth to the roof of his mouth for thirst: the young children ask bread, and no man breaketh it unto them.

Those eating of dainties have been desolate in out-places, Those supported on scarlet have embraced dunghills.

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

Her consecrated ones were pure above snow, they were white above milk, they were red of body above pearls, their figure sapphire:

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

[The] hands of compassionate women, have cooked their children; they became as something to eat in the destruction of the daughter of my people.

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

To the kings of the earth and to all the people of the world it did not seem possible that the attackers and the haters would go into the doors of Jerusalem.

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 have wandered naked in out-places, They have been polluted with blood, Without any being able to touch their clothing,

They cried unto them, Depart ye; it is unclean; depart, depart, touch not: when they fled away and wandered, they said among the heathen, They shall no more sojourn there.

The face of Jehovah hath divided them, He doth not add to behold them, The face of priests they have not lifted up, Elders they have not favoured.

As for us, our eyes as yet failed for our vain help: in our watching we have watched for a nation that could not save us.

צ TsadeOur steps were closely followed
so that we could not walk in our streets.
Our end drew near; our time ran out.
Our end had 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.

שׂ SinSo rejoice and be glad, Daughter Edom,
you resident of the land of Uz!
Yet the cup will pass to you as well;
you will get drunk and expose yourself.