KJ3 Literal Translation
Lamentations 2
Jeremiah laments the misery of Jerusalem. He complains to Jehovah.
1How the Lord has clouded over the daughter of Zion in His anger! He cast the beauty of Israel down from the heavens to the earth, and did not remember His footstool in the day of His wrath.
2The Lord swallowed up all of Jacob's dwelling-places, and did not pity. In His wrath He has broken down the strongholds of the daughter of Judah. He made them touch to the earth. He has defiled the kingdom and its rulers.
3He cut off all the horn of Israel in the heat of His anger. He has turned back His right hand from the face of the enemy, and He burned in Jacob as a flaming fire; it consumes round about.
4He trod His bow like an enemy, and set His right hand like an oppressive one; and killed all who were desirable to the eye in the tent of the daughter of Zion. He poured out His fury like fire.
5The Lord was like an enemy; He swallowed up Israel; He swallowed up all his fortresses and destroyed his strongholds; and He increased mourning and weeping in the daughter of Judah.
6And He violated his pavilion like a garden and destroyed his appointed meeting-places. Jehovah made appointed meeting-places and sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion, and He rejected king and priest in the fury of His anger.
7The Lord has cast off His altar; He rejected the holy place. He has delivered the walls of her fortresses into the hand of the enemy. They gave a noise in Jehovah's house, as a day of meeting.
8Jehovah devised to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion; He has stretched out a line. He has not turned back His hand from swallowing; and He made rampart and wall lament; they languish together.
9Her gates have sunk in the earth, He made perish and shattered her bars. Her kings and her rulers are among the nations. The Law is not. Also her prophets have not found a vision from Jehovah.
10They sit on the ground; the elders of Zion's daughters are silent. They made dust go up on their heads, they gird on sackcloth. The virgins of Jerusalem let their heads go down to the ground.
11And my eyes are at an end with tears, my bowels ferment; my liver is poured on the ground for the ruin of the daughter of my people, in the fainting of children and sucklings in the broad places of the city.
12They say to their mothers, Where are grain and wine? In their fainting, they are like the wounded in the plazas of the city, in their pouring out their lives to their mothers' bosom.
13What can I testify for you? To what will I compare you, O daughter of Jerusalem? To what shall I liken you that I may comfort you, O virgin daughter of Zion? For your breaking is great like the sea! Who can heal you?
14Your prophets have visioned vanity and foolishness for you; and they have not revealed your iniquity in order to turn back your captivity. Yea, they visioned for you burdens of vanity and seductions.
15All who pass by clap their palms at you. They hiss and wag their head at the daughter of Jerusalem, saying, Is this the city which they called the perfection of beauty, the joy of all the earth?
16All your enemies have opened their mouth against you; they hiss and gnash the teeth; they say, We have swallowed up. Surely this is the day for which we waited; we have found; we have seen.
17Jehovah has done that which He purposed; He fulfilled His Word which He commanded from days of earliest time. He has dashed and not pitied. And He made the enemy to rejoice over you; He raised the horn of your oppressive ones.
18Their heart cried to the Lord. O wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears go down like a torrent by day and by night; do not give relief to yourself; let not the daughter of your eye rest.
19Rise up, cry out in the night at the head of the watches; pour out your heart like waters before the face of the Lord. Lift up your palms to Him for the life of your children who are faint with hunger at the head of every outside place.
20See, O Jehovah, and look! To whom have you done thus? Should women eat their fruit, children of tender care? Should priest and prophet be killed in the holy place of the Lord?
21Young and old lie on the ground of the outside places. My virgins and my young men have fallen by the sword. You have killed in the day of Your anger. You have killed, You have not pitied.
22You have called my terrors round about, as in a day of appointed meeting; and there was not a fugitive or a survivor in the day of the anger of Jehovah. Those whom I have nursed and multiplied, my enemy has consumed.
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