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Lamentations 2

God’s Anger over Israel

1How the Lord has covered the daughter of Zion

With a cloud in His anger!

The glory of Israel from heaven to earth,

And has not remembered His footstool

In the day of His anger.

2The Lord has destroyed; He has not spared

All the settlements of Jacob.

In His wrath He has overthrown

The strongholds of the daughter of Judah,

He has hurled them down to the ground;

He has profaned the kingdom and its leaders.

3In fierce anger He has cut off

All the strength of Israel;

He has pulled back His right hand

From the enemy.

And He has burned in Jacob like a flaming fire

Consuming on all sides.

4He has bent His bow like an enemy;

His right hand is positioned like an adversary,

And He has killed everything that was 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 engulfed Israel;

He has engulfed all its palaces,

He has destroyed its strongholds

And caused great mourning and grieving in the daughter of Judah.

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

He has destroyed His appointed meeting place.

The Lord has caused

The appointed feast and Sabbath in Zion to be forgotten,

And He has despised king and priest

In the indignation of His anger.

7The Lord has rejected His altar,

He has repudiated His sanctuary;

He has handed over

The walls of her palaces to the enemy.

They have made a noise in the house of the Lord

As on 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 mourn;

They have languished together.

9Her gates have sunk into the ground,

He has destroyed and broken her bars.

Her king and her leaders are among the nations;

The Law is gone.

Her prophets, too, find

No vision from the Lord.

10The elders of the daughter of Zion

Sit on the ground and are silent.

They have thrown dust on their heads;

They have put on 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 languish

In the streets of the city.

12They say to their mothers,

“Where is grain and wine?”

As they faint like a wounded person

In the streets of the city,

As their lives are poured out

In their mothers’ arms.

13How shall I admonish you?

What shall I compare to you,

Daughter of Jerusalem?

What shall I liken to you as I comfort you,

Virgin daughter of Zion?

For your collapse is as vast as the sea;

Who can heal you?

14Your prophets have seen for you

Worthless and deceptive visions;

And they have not exposed your wrongdoing

So as to restore you from captivity,

But they have seen for you worthless and misleading pronouncements.

15All who pass along the way

Clap their hands in ridicule at you;

They hiss and shake their heads

At the daughter of Jerusalem:

“Is this the city of which they said,

‘Perfect in 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 engulfed her!

This certainly is the day which we awaited;

We have reached it, we have seen it!”

17The Lord has done what He determined;

He has accomplished His word

Which He commanded from days of old.

He has torn down without sparing,

And He has helped the enemy to rejoice over you;

He has exalted the might of your adversaries.

18Their heart cried out to the Lord:

“You wall of the daughter of Zion,

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

Give yourself no relief,

Let your eyes have no rest.

19“Arise, whimper in the night

At the beginning of the night watches;

Pour out your heart like water

Before the presence of the Lord;

Raise your hands to Him

For the life of your little ones

Who languish because of hunger

At the head of every street.

20“See, Lord, and look!

With whom have You dealt this way?

Should women really eat their children,

The little ones who were born healthy?

Should priest and prophet really be killed

In the sanctuary of the Lord?

21“On the ground in the streets

Lie young and old;

My virgins and my young men

Have fallen by the sword.

You have put them to death on the day of Your anger,

You have slaughtered, without sparing.

22“You called as on the day of an appointed feast

My terrors on every side;

And there was no one who survived or escaped

On the day of the Lord’s anger.

As for those whom I brought forth healthy and whom I raised,

My enemy annihilated them.”

Lamentations

Chapter 2

2 of 5