¹How the Lord^* has covered the daughter of Zion in darkness in his anger.

He has cast the splendour of Israel

Down from heaven to the earth.

And he did not remember his footstool

On the day of his anger.

²The Lord^* has swallowed up all the settlements of Jacob

And has not had compassion.

In his ire he has demolished the fortifications of the daughter of Judah.

He has cast them to the ground;

He has profaned the kingdom and its princes.

³In his furious anger

He has cut every horn of Israel off;

He has drawn his right hand back from the presence of the enemy,

And he has burned in Jacob as if with blazing fire,

Which has consumed the land all around.

⁴He drew his bow like an enemy;

His right hand stood like an adversary,

And he killed all who were pleasing 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 her palaces,

He brought her fortifications to ruin,

And he increased mourning and lamentation

In the daughter of Judah.

⁶And he did violence to his booth like a garden;

He ravaged his assembly.

The Lord has caused the assembly and the Sabbath to be forgotten in Zion,

And he has rejected king and priest

In his angry indignation.

⁷The Lord^* has repudiated his altar;

He has abhorred his sanctuary.

He has delivered the walls of her palaces into the hand of the enemy.

They have uttered a sound in the house of the Lord

As on a day of the assembly.

⁸The Lord decided to bring the wall of the daughter of Zion to ruin.

He has stretched out a line;

He did not withdraw his hand from swallowing it up,

And he has brought mourning on fortification and wall

– They languish together.

⁹Her gates have sunk into the ground;

He has wrecked and shattered her bolts.

Her king and her princes are among the Gentiles.

There is no book of the law;

Her prophets do not find any vision from the Lord either.

¹⁰The elders of the daughter of Zion are sitting on the ground;

They are silent.

They have put dust on their heads,

They have girded themselves with sackcloth;

The virgins of Jerusalem have lowered their heads to the ground.

¹¹My eyes are exhausted with tears;

My innards are turbulent.

My liver is poured out on the ground

Over the devastation of the daughter of my people,

At the fainting of the child and baby

In the streets of the city.

¹²To their mothers they say,

“Where is the corn and the wine?”

As they faint like a wounded soldier in the streets of the city,

As their life is poured out

In their mothers' bosom.

¹³What can I testify to you?

To what can I liken you, O daughter of Jerusalem?

To what can I compare you,

So as to comfort you, O virgin daughter of Zion?

For your devastation is as great as the sea.

Who can heal you?

¹⁴Your prophets had visions for you

Which were false and deluded,

And they did not reveal your iniquity,

Which would have restored you from your captivity,

But they have had visions for you

Of false prophecies and seductions.

¹⁵All who pass by the way

Clap their hands at you.

They whistle and shake their head

At the daughter of Jerusalem,

And say, “Is this the city of which they say,

‘It is the perfection of beauty

– The joy of all the earth’?”

¹⁶All your enemies gape at you;

They whistle and gnash their teeth.

They say, “We have swallowed her up.

Indeed this is the very day which we have hoped for.

We have arrived at it; we have seen it.”

¹⁷The Lord has done what he devised;

He has carried out his word

Which he appointed in days of old.

He has demolished

And did not show pity.

And he has given the enemy reason to rejoice over you;

He has raised the horn of your adversaries.

¹⁸Their heart cried out to the Lord^*.

O wall of the daughter of Zion,

Let tears run down like a torrent day and night,

Do not give yourself respite;

Do not let the pupil of your eye rest.

¹⁹Arise, shout out in the night at the start of the watches,

Pour out your heart like water in the presence of the Lord^*;

Lift up your hands to him for the life of your small children

Who are fainting with hunger

At the head of all the streets.

²⁰Look, O Lord, and see to whom you have done this.

Will women eat their own fruit

– Infants who are nursed?

Will priest and prophet be killed

In the sanctuary of the Lord^*?

²¹The youth and the old man lie on the ground on the streets.

My virgins and my young men have fallen by the sword.

You have killed them on the day of your anger;

You have slaughtered them

And not shown pity.

²²You have publicized my fears round about,

As on the day of an assembly.

But on the day of the Lord's anger

There was no-one who had escaped or survived.

Those whom I nursed and brought up,

My enemy has finished off.