“I weep for these things;
My eyes overflow with tears,
Because a comforter,
One who could restore my soul, is far away from me.
My children are desolate and perishing,
For the enemy has prevailed.”

Zion stretches out her hands,
But there is no comforter for her.
The Lord has commanded concerning Jacob
That his neighbors should be his enemies;
Jerusalem has become a filthy thing [an object of contempt] among them.

See, O Yahweh, that {I am in distress}; {my stomach} is in torment, my heart has turned inside me because I have certainly rebelled. From outside a sword brings bereavement, inside the house [it is] like 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.

Let all their wickedness come before thee; and do unto them, as thou hast done unto me for all my transgressions: for my sighs are many, and my heart is faint.

How the Lord has covered the Daughter of Zion (Jerusalem)
With a cloud in His anger!
He has cast down from heaven to the earth
The glory and splendor of Israel
And has not remembered His footstool
In the day of His anger.

The Lord has swallowed up; He has not spared
All the country places of Jacob.
In His wrath He has thrown down
The strongholds of the Daughter of Judah (Jerusalem).
He has brought them down to the ground [in disgrace];
He has debased the kingdom and its princes.

In fierce anger He has cut off and destroyed
Every horn of Israel.
He has withdrawn His right hand
From the presence of the enemy.
And He has burned in Jacob like a flaming fire
Consuming all around.

He has bent His bow like an enemy;
He has set His right hand like an adversary
And slain all that were delightful and pleasing to the eye;
In the tent of the Daughter of Zion
He has poured out His wrath like fire.

The Lord has become like an enemy;
He has swallowed up Israel.
He has swallowed up all its palaces;
He has destroyed its strongholds
And multiplied in the Daughter of Judah
Mourning and lamentation (expressions of grief).

And He has violently broken down His temple like a [fragile] garden hedge;
He has destroyed His appointed meeting place.
The Lord has caused the appointed feast and Sabbath
To be forgotten in Zion
And has despised and rejected the king and the priest
In the indignation of His anger.

The Lord has rejected His altar;
He has abandoned His sanctuary.
He has given into the hand of the enemy
The walls of her palaces;
They have made a noise in the house of the Lord
As on a day of an appointed feast.

Yahweh has planned to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion. He measured [with] a line; he has not restrained his hand from destroying; he caused rampart and wall to mourn; together they have languished away.

Her gates have sunk into the ground;
He has destroyed and broken her bars.
Her king and her princes are [exiled] among the nations;
The law is no more.
Also, her prophets no longer find
Vision from the Lord.

All your haters are opening their mouths wide against you; making hisses and whistling through their teeth, they say, We have made a meal of her: certainly this is the day we have been looking for; it has come, we have seen it.

The Lord has done what He planned;
He has accomplished His word
Which He commanded from days of old.
He has demolished without sparing,
And He has caused the enemy to rejoice over you;
He has exalted the power of your enemies.

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?

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

Thou hast 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 swaddled and brought up hath mine enemy consumed.

I am [Jeremiah] the man who has seen affliction
Because of the rod of His wrath.

He has led me and made me walk
In darkness and not in light.

Surely He has turned His hand against me
Repeatedly all the day.

He has caused my flesh and my skin to waste away;
He has shattered my bones.

He has besieged and surrounded me with bitterness and hardship.

He has made me live in dark places
Like those who have long been dead.

He walled me in so that I cannot get out;
He has weighted down my chain.

Also, when I cry out desperately for help, he has shut out my prayer.

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.

He has bent His bow
And set me as a target for the arrow.

He has caused the arrows of His quiver
To enter my inner parts.

He has filled me with bitterness;
He has made me drunk with wormwood (bitterness).

He has broken my teeth with gravel;
He has [covered me with ashes and] made me cower in the dust.

And thou hast removed my soul far off from peace: I forgat prosperity.

So I said, "My endurance has expired; I have lost all hope of deliverance from the Lord."

My soul continually remembers them
And is bowed down within me.

Let him sit alone [in hope] and keep quiet,
Because God has laid it on him [for his benefit].

For even though he causes grief he has compassion according to the greatness of his royal love.

For he has no pleasure in troubling and causing grief to the children of men.

to subvert a person in a legal dispute --the Lord has not found delight [in these things].

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

We have transgressed and have rebelled: thou hast not pardoned.

Thou hast covered with anger, and persecuted us: thou hast slain, thou hast not pitied.

Thou hast covered thyself with a cloud, that our prayer should not pass through.

Thou hast made us as the offscouring and refuse in the midst of the people.

Fear and a snare has come upon us, desolation and destruction.

until the Lord looks down from heaven and sees what has happened.

Water has flown over my head, I said, "I am cut off."

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

Thou hast drawn near in the day I call Thee, Thou hast said, Fear not.

O Lord, thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul; thou hast redeemed my life.

O LORD, thou hast seen my wrong: judge thou my cause.

Thou hast seen all their vengeance and all their imaginations against me.

Thou hast heard their reproach, O LORD, and all their imaginations against me;

How dark and dim the gold has become,
How the pure gold has changed!
The sacred stones [of the temple] are poured out and scattered
At the head of every street.

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

Their appearance is [now] blacker than soot [because of the prolonged famine];
They are not recognized in the streets;
Their skin clings to their bones;
It is withered, and it has become [dry] like wood.

The Lord has fulfilled His wrath;
He has poured out His fierce anger
And has kindled a fire in Zion
That has consumed her foundations.

It is because of the sins of her prophets and the evil-doing of her priests, by whom the blood of the upright has been drained out in her.

The presence of the Lord scattered them [among the nations];
He will not continue to look after them.
They did not honor the priests;
They did not favor the elders.

The enemy hunted our steps,
So that we could not walk in our streets;
Our end drew near,
Our days were finished
For our end had come.

The punishment of your iniquity has been completed, O daughter of Zion;
He will exile you no longer.
But He will punish your iniquity, O daughter of Edom;
He will expose your sins!

O Lord, remember what has come upon us;
Look, and see our reproach (national disgrace)!

Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers,
Our houses to foreigners.

Our skin has become as hot as an oven,
Because of the burning heat of famine.

The old men are no longer seated in the doorway, and the music of the young men has come to an end.

The joy of our hearts has ended;
Our dancing has been turned into mourning.

The crown has fallen from our head [our honor is covered with dust]!
Woe to us, for we have sinned!

Because of this, our heart has become faint, because of these, our eyes have become dim.

because of Mount Zion, which lies desolate
and has jackals prowling in it.

But thou hast utterly rejected us; thou art very wroth against us.

And he said to me, Son of man, I am sending you to the children of Israel, to an uncontrolled nation which has gone against me: they and their fathers have been sinners against me even to this very day.

And the sons are brazen-faced and hard-hearted to whom I am sending thee, and thou hast said unto them: Thus said the Lord Jehovah:

As for them, whether they listen or refuse [to listen]—for they are a rebellious house—yet they will know and be fully aware of the fact that there has been a prophet among them.

And thou hast spoken My words unto them, whether they hear or whether they forbear, for they are rebellious.

And He saith unto me, 'Son of man, go, enter in unto the house of Israel, and thou hast spoken with My words unto them.

and go, enter in unto the Removed, unto the sons of thy people, and thou hast spoken unto them, and hast said unto them: Thus said the Lord Jehovah: whether they hear, or whether they forbear.'

that there is a word of Jehovah unto me, saying, 'Son of man, a watchman I have given thee to the house of Israel, and thou hast heard from My mouth a word, and hast warned them from Me.

In My saying to the wicked: Thou dost surely die; and thou hast not warned him, nor hast spoken to warn the wicked from his wicked way, so that he doth live; he -- the wicked -- in his iniquity dieth, and his blood from thy hand I require.

Yet if thou warn the wicked, and he turn not from his wickedness, nor from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou hast delivered thy soul.

Again, When a righteous man doth turn from his righteousness, and commit iniquity, and I lay a stumblingblock before him, he shall die: because thou hast not given him warning, he shall die in his sin, and his righteousness which he hath done shall not be remembered; but his blood will I require at thine hand.

Nevertheless if thou warn the righteous man, that the righteous sin not, and he doth not sin, he shall surely live, because he is warned; also thou hast delivered thy soul.

and thy tongue I cause to cleave unto thy palate, and thou hast been dumb, and art not to them for a reprover, for a rebellious house are they.

And in My speaking with thee, I do open thy mouth, and thou hast said unto them: Thus said the Lord Jehovah; the hearer doth hear, and the forbearer doth forbear; for a rebellious house are they.

And thou, son of man, take to thee a brick, and thou hast put it before thee, and hast graven on it a city -- Jerusalem,

and hast placed against it a siege, and builded against it a fortification, and poured out against it a mount, and placed against it camps, yea, set thou against it battering-rams round about.

And thou, take to thee an iron pan, and thou hast made it a wall of iron between thee and the city; and thou hast prepared thy face against it, and it hath been in a siege, yea, thou hast laid siege against it. A sign it is to the house of Israel.

'And thou, lie on thy left side, and thou hast placed the iniquity of the house of Israel on it; the number of the days that thou liest on it, thou bearest their iniquity.

And I -- I have laid on thee the years of their iniquity, the number of days, three hundred and ninety days; and thou hast borne the iniquity of the house of Israel.

And when thou hast accomplished them, lie again on thy right side, and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days: I have appointed thee each day for a year.

And unto the siege of Jerusalem thou dost prepare thy face, and thine arm is uncovered, and thou hast prophesied concerning it.

And, behold, I will lay bands upon thee, and thou shalt not turn thee from one side to another, till thou hast ended the days of thy siege.

And thou, take to thee wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentiles, and millet, and spelt, and thou hast put them in one vessel, and made them to thee for bread; the number of the days that thou art lying on thy side -- three hundred and ninety days -- thou dost eat it.

And I said, "Ah, Lord Yahweh! Look! I have not been defiling myself, and a dead body and mangled carcass I have not eaten from my childhood until now, and {unclean meat} has not come into my mouth!"

And He saith unto me, 'See, I have given to thee bullock's dung instead of man's dung, and thou hast made thy bread by it.'

And thou, son of man, take to thee a sharp weapon, the barber's razor thou dost take to thee, and thou hast caused it to pass over thy head, and over thy beard, and thou hast taken to thee weighing scales, and apportioned them.

A third part with fire thou dost burn in the midst of the city, at the fulness of the days of the siege; and thou hast taken the third part, thou dost smite with a weapon round about it; and the third part thou dost scatter to the wind, and a weapon I draw out after them.

And thou hast taken thence a few in number -- and hast bound them in thy skirts;

and of them thou dost take again, and hast cast them unto the midst of the fire, and hast burned them in the fire -- out of it cometh forth a fire unto all the house of Israel.

This is what the Lord has said: This is Jerusalem: I have put her among the nations, and countries are round her on every side;