¹And as for you, deliver a lamentation to the leading men of Israel, ²and say,

‘What is your mother?

A lioness which lies down among the lions

And brings up her cubs among the young lions.

³And she brought up one of her cubs;

It became a young lion

And learned to catch prey.

It ate a man.

⁴The nations heard of it;

It was caught in their pit,

And they brought it with hooks to the land of Egypt.

⁵And the lioness realized after waiting

That her hope was lost,

And she took another of her cubs

And made it a young lion.

⁶So it walked around among the lions

And became a young lion,

And it learned to catch prey.

It ate a man.

⁷And it knew its desolate haunts,

And it laid their cities waste,

And the land and its fulness were devastated

By the sound of its roaring.

⁸Then the nations took action against it,

Round about from various countries.

And they spread their net against it.

It was caught in their pit,

⁹And they put it in a cage using hooks,

And they brought it to the king of Babylon.

They brought it in nets

So that its voice would no longer be heard

On the mountains of Israel.

¹⁰Your mother is like a vine

Planted in your blood by water.

She became fruitful and full of branches

Due to the abundant water.

¹¹And she had strong branches

For the sceptres of rulers,

And its height became great

Among the thick branch growth,

And it appeared in its height

With the abundance of its branches.

¹²But she was plucked up in fury;

She was cast down to the ground,

And the east wind dried her fruit up.

Her strong branches broke apart and dried up,

And a fire consumed it.

¹³And now she has been planted in the desert,

In an arid and thirsty land.

¹⁴And fire spread from the stem of her branches;

It consumed her fruit,

And there was no strong branch in her

– No sceptre for ruling.

This is a lamentation,

And a lamentation it has become.’ ”