The Sorrows of Zion

1How lonely sits the city

That was full of people!

She has become like a widow

Who was once great among the nations!

She who was a princess among the provinces

Has become a forced laborer!

2She weeps bitterly in the night

And her tears are on her cheeks;

She has none to comfort her

Among all her lovers.

All her friends have dealt treacherously with her;

They have become her enemies.

3Judah has gone into exile under affliction

And under harsh servitude;

She dwells among the nations,

But she has found no rest;

All her pursuers have overtaken her

In the midst of distress.

4The roads of Zion are in mourning

Because no one comes to the appointed feasts.

All her gates are desolate;

Her priests are groaning,

Her virgins are afflicted,

And she herself is bitter.

5Her adversaries have become her masters,

Her enemies prosper;

For the Lord has caused her grief

Because of the multitude of her transgressions;

Her little ones have gone away

As captives before the adversary.

6All her majesty

Has departed from the daughter of Zion;

Her princes have become like deer

That have found no pasture;

And they have fled without strength

Before the pursuer.

7In the days of her affliction and homelessness

Jerusalem remembers all her precious things

That were from the days of old,

When her people fell into the hand of the adversary

And no one helped her.

The adversaries saw her,

They mocked at her ruin.

8Jerusalem sinned greatly,

Therefore she has become an unclean thing.

All who honored her despise her

Because they have seen her nakedness;

Even she herself groans and turns away.

9Her uncleanness was in her skirts;

She did not consider her future.

Therefore she has fallen astonishingly;

She has no comforter.

“See, O Lord, my affliction,

For the enemy has magnified himself!”

10The adversary has stretched out his hand

Over all her precious things,

For she has seen the nations enter her sanctuary,

The ones whom You commanded

That they should not enter into Your congregation.

11All her people groan seeking bread;

They have given their precious things for food

To restore their lives themselves.

“See, O Lord, and look,

For I am despised.”

12“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.

13From on high He sent fire into my bones,

And it prevailed over them.

He has spread a net for my feet;

He has turned me back;

He has made me desolate,

Faint all day long.

14The yoke of my transgressions is bound;

By His hand they are knit together.

They have come upon my neck;

He has made my strength fail.

The Lord has given me into the hands

Of those against whom I am not able to stand.

15The Lord has rejected all my strong men

In my midst;

He has called an appointed time against me

To crush my young men;

The Lord has trodden as in a wine press

The virgin daughter of Judah.

16For these things I weep;

My eyes run down with water;

Because far from me is a comforter,

One who restores my soul.

My children are desolate

Because the enemy has prevailed.”

17Zion stretches out her hands;

There is no one to comfort her;

The Lord has commanded concerning Jacob

That the ones round about him should be his adversaries;

Jerusalem has become an unclean thing among them.

18“The Lord is righteous;

For I have rebelled against His command;

Hear now, all peoples,

And behold my pain;

My virgins and my young men

Have gone into captivity.

19I called to my lovers, but they deceived me;

My priests and my elders perished in the city

While they sought food to restore their strength themselves.

20See, O Lord, for I am in distress;

My spirit is greatly troubled;

My heart is overturned within me,

For I have been very rebellious.

In the street the sword slays;

In the house it is like death.

21They have heard that I groan;

There is no one to comfort me;

All my enemies have heard of my calamity;

They are glad that You have done it.

Oh, that You would bring the day which You have proclaimed,

That they may become like me.

22Let all their wickedness come before You;

And deal with them as You have dealt with me

For all my transgressions;

For my groans are many and my heart is faint.”

God’s Anger over Israel

1How the Lord has covered the daughter of Zion

With a cloud in His anger!

He has cast from heaven to earth

The glory of Israel,

And has not remembered His footstool

In the day of His anger.

2The Lord has swallowed up; He has not spared

All the habitations of Jacob.

In His wrath He has thrown down

The strongholds of the daughter of Judah;

He has brought them down to the ground;

He has profaned the kingdom and its princes.

3In fierce anger He has cut off

All the strength of Israel;

He has drawn back His right hand

From before the enemy.

And He has burned in Jacob like a flaming fire

Consuming round about.

4He has bent His bow like an enemy;

He has set His right hand like an adversary

And slain all that were pleasant to the eye;

In the tent of the daughter of Zion

He has poured out His wrath like fire.

5The 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 moaning.

6And He has violently treated His tabernacle like a garden booth;

He has destroyed His appointed meeting place.

The Lord has caused to be forgotten

The appointed feast and sabbath in Zion,

And He has despised king and priest

In the indignation of His anger.

7The Lord has rejected His altar,

He has abandoned His sanctuary;

He has delivered into the hand of the enemy

The walls of her palaces.

They have made a noise in the house of the Lord

As in the day of an appointed feast.

8The Lord determined to destroy

The wall of the daughter of Zion.

He has stretched out a line,

He has not restrained His hand from destroying,

And He has caused rampart and wall to lament;

They have languished together.

9Her gates have sunk into the ground,

He has destroyed and broken her bars.

Her king and her princes are among the nations;

The law is no more.

Also, her prophets find

No vision from the Lord.

10The elders of the daughter of Zion

Sit on the ground, they are silent.

They have thrown dust on their heads;

They have girded themselves with sackcloth.

The virgins of Jerusalem

Have bowed their heads to the ground.

11My eyes fail because of tears,

My spirit is greatly troubled;

My heart is poured out on the earth

Because of the destruction of the daughter of my people,

When little ones and infants faint

In the streets of the city.

12They say to their mothers,

“Where is grain and wine?”

As they faint like a wounded man

In the streets of the city,

As their life is poured out

On their mothers’ bosom.

13How shall I admonish you?

To what shall I compare you,

O daughter of Jerusalem?

To what shall I liken you as I comfort you,

O virgin daughter of Zion?

For your ruin is as vast as the sea;

Who can heal you?

14Your prophets have seen for you

False and foolish visions;

And they have not exposed your iniquity

So as to restore you from captivity,

But they have seen for you false and misleading oracles.

15All 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’?”

16All your enemies

Have opened their mouths wide against you;

They hiss and gnash their teeth.

They say, “We have swallowed her up!

Surely this is the day for which we waited;

We have reached it, we have seen it.”

17The Lord has done what He purposed;

He has accomplished His word

Which He commanded from days of old.

He has thrown down without sparing,

And He has caused the enemy to rejoice over you;

He has exalted the might of your adversaries.

18Their heart cried out to the Lord,

“O wall of the daughter of Zion,

Let your tears run down like a river day and night;

Give yourself no relief,

Let your eyes have no rest.

19Arise, cry aloud in the night

At the beginning of the night watches;

Pour out your heart like water

Before the presence of the Lord;

Lift up your hands to Him

For the life of your little ones

Who are faint because of hunger

At the head of every street.”

20See, O Lord, and look!

With whom have You dealt thus?

Should women eat their offspring,

The little ones who were born healthy?

Should priest and prophet be slain

In the sanctuary of the Lord?

21On the ground in the streets

Lie young and old;

My virgins and my young men

Have fallen by the sword.

You have slain them in the day of Your anger,

You have slaughtered, not sparing.

22You called as in the day of an appointed feast

My terrors on every side;

And there was no one who escaped or survived

In the day of the Lord’s anger.

Those whom I bore and reared,

My enemy annihilated them.

Jeremiah Shares Israel’s Affliction

1I am the man who has seen affliction

Because of the rod of His wrath.

2He has driven me and made me walk

In darkness and not in light.

3Surely against me He has turned His hand

Repeatedly all the day.

4He has caused my flesh and my skin to waste away,

He has broken my bones.

5He has besieged and encompassed me with bitterness and hardship.

6In dark places He has made me dwell,

Like those who have long been dead.

7He has walled me in so that I cannot go out;

He has made my chain heavy.

8Even when I cry out and call for help,

He shuts out my prayer.

9He has blocked my ways with hewn stone;

He has made my paths crooked.

10He is to me like a bear lying in wait,

Like a lion in secret places.

11He has turned aside my ways and torn me to pieces;

He has made me desolate.

12He bent His bow

And set me as a target for the arrow.

13He made the arrows of His quiver

To enter into my inward parts.

14I have become a laughingstock to all my people,

Their mocking song all the day.

15He has filled me with bitterness,

He has made me drunk with wormwood.

16He has broken my teeth with gravel;

He has made me cower in the dust.

17My soul has been rejected from peace;

I have forgotten happiness.

18So I say, “My strength has perished,

And so has my hope from the Lord.”

Hope of Relief in God’s Mercy

19Remember my affliction and my wandering, the wormwood and bitterness.

20Surely my soul remembers

And is bowed down within me.

21This I recall to my mind,

Therefore I have hope.

22The Lord’s lovingkindnesses indeed never cease,

For His compassions never fail.

23They are new every morning;

Great is Your faithfulness.

24“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,

“Therefore I have hope in Him.”

25The Lord is good to those who wait for Him,

To the person who seeks Him.

26It is good that he waits silently

For the salvation of the Lord.

27It is good for a man that he should bear

The yoke in his youth.

28Let him sit alone and be silent

Since He has laid it on him.

29Let him put his mouth in the dust,

Perhaps there is hope.

30Let him give his cheek to the smiter,

Let him be filled with reproach.

31For the Lord will not reject forever,

32For if He causes grief,

Then He will have compassion

According to His abundant lovingkindness.

33For He does not afflict willingly

Or grieve the sons of men.

34To crush under His feet

All the prisoners of the land,

35To deprive a man of justice

In the presence of the Most High,

36To defraud a man in his lawsuit—

Of these things the Lord does not approve.

37Who is there who speaks and it comes to pass,

Unless the Lord has commanded it?

38Is it not from the mouth of the Most High

That both good and ill go forth?

39Why should any living mortal, or any man,

Offer complaint in view of his sins?

40Let us examine and probe our ways,

And let us return to the Lord.

41We lift up our heart and hands

Toward God in heaven;

42We have transgressed and rebelled,

You have not pardoned.

43You have covered Yourself with anger

And pursued us;

You have slain and have not spared.

44You have covered Yourself with a cloud

So that no prayer can pass through.

45You have made us mere offscouring and refuse

In the midst of the peoples.

46All our enemies have opened their mouths against us.

47Panic and pitfall have befallen us,

Devastation and destruction;

48My eyes run down with streams of water

Because of the destruction of the daughter of my people.

49My eyes pour down unceasingly,

Without stopping,

50Until the Lord looks down

And sees from heaven.

51My eyes bring pain to my soul

Because of all the daughters of my city.

52My enemies without cause

Hunted me down like a bird;

53They have silenced me in the pit

And have placed a stone on me.

54Waters flowed over my head;

I said, “I am cut off!”

55I called on Your name, O Lord,

Out of the lowest pit.

56You have heard my voice,

“Do not hide Your ear from my prayer for relief,

From my cry for help.”

57You drew near when I called on You;

You said, “Do not fear!”

58O Lord, You have pleaded my soul’s cause;

You have redeemed my life.

59O Lord, You have seen my oppression;

Judge my case.

60You have seen all their vengeance,

All their schemes against me.

61You have heard their reproach, O Lord,

All their schemes against me.

62The lips of my assailants and their whispering

Are against me all day long.

63Look on their sitting and their rising;

I am their mocking song.

64You will recompense them, O Lord,

According to the work of their hands.

65You will give them hardness of heart,

Your curse will be on them.

66You will pursue them in anger and destroy them

From under the heavens of the Lord!