Lamentations 2

Lamentations 2

God’s Anger Over Jerusalem

1How the Lord has covered the daughter of Zion

with a cloud in His anger!

He has cast down from heaven to the earth

the beauty of Israel;

He has not remembered His footstool

in the day of His anger.

2The Lord has swallowed up without mercy

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.

3He has cut off in fierce anger

all the might of Israel;

He has drawn back His right hand

from before the enemy.

He has burned against Jacob

like a flaming fire, devouring all around.

4He has bent His bow like an enemy,

with his right hand set like an adversary;

He has killed all who were pleasant to His eye;

in the tabernacle of the daughter of Zion,

He has poured out His fury like fire.

5The Lord has become like an enemy;[#Jer 30:14]

He has swallowed up Israel,

He has swallowed up all her palaces;

He has destroyed her strongholds,

and has increased mourning and lamentation

in the daughter of Judah.

6He has violently taken away His tabernacle as if it were a garden;

He has destroyed His place of assembly;

the Lord has caused the solemn feasts and Sabbaths

to be forgotten in Zion.

In his fierce indignation He has despised the king and the priest.

7The Lord has scorned His altar,

He has disowned His sanctuary;

He has given up the walls of her palaces

into the hand of the enemy.

They have made a noise in the house of the Lord

as on the day of a solemn feast.

8The Lord has purposed to destroy

the wall of the daughter of Zion.

He has stretched out a line;

He has not withdrawn His hand from destroying;

therefore He caused the rampart and the wall to lament;

they 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,

and her prophets find

no vision from the Lord .

10The elders of the daughter of Zion

sit on the ground in silence;

they throw dust on their heads

and gird themselves with sackcloth.

The virgins of Jerusalem

bow their heads to the ground.

11My eyes fail with tears,

my spirit is greatly troubled;

my bile is poured on the ground

because of the destruction of the daughter of my people,

because the children and infants faint

in the streets of the city.

12They say to their mothers,

“Where is grain and wine?”

when they faint like a wounded man

in the streets of the city,

as their life is poured out

on their mothers’ bosom.

13What can I say for you,

to what shall I liken you,

O daughter of Jerusalem?

What shall I compare with you,

that I may comfort you,

O virgin daughter of Zion?

For your devastation is great like the sea;

who can heal you?

14Your prophets have seen for you

false and deceptive visions;

they have not revealed your iniquity,

to bring back your captives,

but have seen for you oracles

that are false and misleading.

15All who pass by

clap their hands at you;

they hiss and shake their heads

at the daughter of Jerusalem, saying,

“Is this the city that men call

the perfection of beauty,

the joy of the whole earth?”

16All your enemies

have opened their mouth against you;

they hiss and gnash their teeth.

They say, “We have swallowed her up!

Certainly this is the day that we longed for;

we have found it; we have seen it.”

17The Lord has done what He planned;

He has fulfilled His word

that He had commanded in the days of old.

He has thrown down and has not pitied,

and He has caused the enemy to rejoice over you;

He has exalted the power of your adversaries.

18Their heart cried to the Lord:[#Ps 119:145]

O wall of the daughter of Zion,

let your tears run down

like a river day and night;

give yourself no rest,

your eyes no respite!

19Arise, cry out in the night,

at the beginning of the watches;

pour out your heart like water

before the face of the Lord.

Lift your hands to Him

for the lives of your young children,

who faint for hunger

at the head of every street.

20Look, O Lord , and consider!

To whom have You done this?

Should the women eat their offspring,

the children who were born healthy?

Should the priest and the prophet be killed

in the sanctuary of the Lord?

21The young and the old lie

on the ground in the streets;

my virgins and my young men

have fallen by the sword;

You have killed them in the day of Your anger,

You have slaughtered and not pitied.

22You have invited as to a feast day the terrors all around;[#Ps 31:13; Jer 6:25]

in the day of the Lord ’s anger

no one escaped or survived;

those whom I held and raised

my enemy destroyed.

The Holy Bible, Modern English Version Copyright © 2024, 2017, 2014 by United Bible Association. Published and distributed by Charisma House. All rights reserved.
Published by: United Bible Association