The Lord who rules over all told me to say to this people, "Take note of what I say. Call for the women who mourn for the dead! Summon those who are the most skilled at it!"

They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

They came to the house of the synagogue ruler where he saw noisy confusion and people weeping and wailing loudly.

The Lord who rules over all told me to say to this people, "Take note of what I say. Call for the women who mourn for the dead! Summon those who are the most skilled at it!" I said, "Indeed, let them come quickly and sing a song of mourning for us. Let them wail loudly until tears stream from our own eyes and our eyelids overflow with water.

Because of Israel's sins this is what the Lord, the God who commands armies, the sovereign One, says: "In all the squares there will be wailing, in all the streets they will mourn the dead. They will tell the field workers to lament and the professional mourners to wail.

Listen to the howling of shepherds, because their magnificence has been destroyed. Listen to the roaring of young lions, because the thickets of the Jordan have been devastated.

So my heart moans for Moab like a flute playing a funeral song. Yes, like a flute playing a funeral song, my heart moans for the people of Kir Heres. For the wealth they have gained will perish.

When Jesus entered the ruler's house and saw the flute players and the disorderly crowd,

Howl, fir tree, because the cedar has fallen; the majestic trees have been destroyed. Howl, oaks of Bashan, because the impenetrable forest has fallen.

Throughout each and every province where the king's edict and law were announced there was considerable mourning among the Jews, along with fasting, weeping, and sorrow. Sackcloth and ashes were characteristic of many.

I said, "I will weep and mourn for the grasslands on the mountains, I will sing a mournful song for the pastures in the wilderness because they are so scorched no one travels through them. The sound of livestock is no longer heard there. Even the birds in the sky and the wild animals in the fields have fled and are gone."

As they wail they will lament over you, chanting: "Who was like Tyre, like a tower in the midst of the sea?"