Lamentations 1 - 2

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Zion Lays Desolate

א Aleph

How lonely sits the city

That was great with people!

She has become like a widow

Who was once great among the nations!

She who was a princess among the provinces

Has become a forced laborer!

ב Beth

She weeps bitterly in the night,

And her tears are on her cheeks;

She has none to comfort her

Among all her lovers.

All her friends have dealt treacherously with her;

They have become her enemies.

ג Gimel

Judah has gone into exile because of affliction

And because of great slavery;

She sits among the nations,

But she has found no rest;

All her pursuers have overtaken her

In the midst of distress.

ד Daleth

The roads of Zion are in mourning

Because no one comes to the appointed times.

All her gates are desolate;

Her priests are sighing,

Her virgins are grieving,

And she herself is bitter.

ה He

Her adversaries have become her masters;

Her enemies are complacent;

For Yahweh has caused her grief

Because of the greatness of her transgressions;

Her infants have gone away

As captives before the adversary.

ו Vav

So all her majesty

Has gone out from the daughter of Zion;

Her princes have become like deer

That have found no pasture;

So they have fled without strength

Before the pursuer.

ז Zayin

In the days of her affliction and homelessness

Jerusalem remembers all her precious things

That were from the days of old,

When her people fell into the hand of the adversary

And no one helped her.

The adversaries saw her;

They laughed at her ruin.

ח Heth

Jerusalem sinned greatly;

Therefore she has become an impure thing.

All who honored her despise her

Because they have seen her nakedness;

Even she herself sighs and turns away.

ט Teth

Her uncleanness was in her skirts;

She did not remember her future.

Therefore she has gone down astonishingly;

She has no comforter.

“See, O Yahweh, my affliction,

For the enemy has magnified himself!”

י Yodh

The adversary has stretched out his hand

Over all her desirable things,

For she has seen the nations enter her sanctuary,

The ones whom You commanded

That they should not enter into Your assembly.

כ Kaph

All her people are sighing, seeking bread;

They have given their desirable things for food

To restore their souls.

“See, O Yahweh, and look,

For I am despised.”

ל Lamedh

“Is it nothing to all you who pass this way?

Look and see if there is any pain like my pain

Which was dealt severely to me,

Which Yahweh grieved me with on the day of His burning anger.

מ Mem

From on high He sent fire into my bones,

And it dominated them.

He has spread a net for my feet;

He has turned me back;

He has made me desolate,

Faint all day long.

נ Nun

The yoke of my transgressions is bound;

By His hand they are knit together.

They have come upon my neck;

He has made my strength stumble.

The Lord has given me into the hands

Of those against whom I am not able to stand.

ס Samekh

The Lord has rejected all my mighty men

In my midst;

He has called an appointed time against me

To break my young men;

The Lord has trodden as in a wine press

The virgin daughter of Judah.

ע Ayin

For these things I am weeping;

My eyes run down with water;

Because far from me is a comforter,

One who restores my soul.

My children are desolate

Because the enemy has prevailed.”

פ Pe

Zion stretches out her hands;

There is no one to comfort her;

Yahweh has commanded concerning Jacob

That the ones round about him should be his adversaries;

Jerusalem has become an impure thing among them.

צ Tsadhe

“Yahweh is righteous;

For I have rebelled against His command;

Hear now, all peoples,

And behold my pain;

My virgins and my young men

Have gone into captivity.

ק Qoph

I called to my lovers, but they deceived me;

My priests and my elders breathed their last in the city

While they sought food for themselves in order to restore their souls.

ר Resh

See, O Yahweh, for I am in distress;

My inmost being is greatly disturbed;

My heart is overturned within me,

For I have been very rebellious.

In the street the sword bereaves;

In the house it is like death.

שׁ Shin

They have heard that I am sighing;

There is no one to comfort me;

All my enemies have heard of the evil done to me;

They rejoice that You have done it.

You have brought the day which You have proclaimed,

So that they will become like me.

ת Tav

Let all their evil come before You;

And deal severely with them as You have dealt severely with me

For all my transgressions;

For my groans are great and my heart is faint.”

The Anger of Yahweh

א Aleph

How the Lord has covered the daughter of Zion

With a cloud in His anger!

He has cast from heaven to earth

The beauty of Israel,

And has not remembered the footstool of His feet

In the day of His anger.

ב Beth

The Lord has swallowed up; He has not spared

All the habitations of Jacob.

In His wrath He has pulled down

The strongholds of the daughter of Judah;

He has brought them down to the ground;

He has profaned the kingdom and its princes.

ג Gimel

In hot anger He has cut in pieces

All the strength of Israel;

He has turned back His right hand

From before the enemy.

And He has burned in Jacob like a flaming fire

Devouring round about.

ד Daleth

He has bent His bow like an enemy;

He has set His right hand like an adversary

And killed all that were desirable to the eye;

In the tent of the daughter of Zion

He has poured out His wrath like fire.

ה He

The Lord has become like an enemy.

He has swallowed up Israel;

He has swallowed up all its palaces;

He has brought its strongholds to ruin

And multiplied in the daughter of Judah

Mourning and moaning.

ו Vav

And He has violently treated His tabernacle like a garden booth;

He has brought His appointed meeting place to ruin.

Yahweh has caused to be forgotten

The appointed time and sabbath in Zion,

And He has spurned king and priest

In the indignation of His anger.

ז Zayin

The Lord has rejected His altar;

He has abandoned His sanctuary;

He has delivered into the hand of the enemy

The walls of her palaces.

They have made a noise in the house of Yahweh

As in the day of an appointed time.

ח Heth

Yahweh determined to bring to ruin

The wall of the daughter of Zion.

He has stretched out a line;

He has not turned His hand back from swallowing up,

And He has caused rampart and wall to mourn;

They have languished together.

ט Teth

Her 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.

Also, her prophets find

No vision from Yahweh.

י Yodh

The elders of the daughter of Zion

Sit on the ground; they are silent.

They have thrown dust up on their heads;

They have girded themselves with sackcloth.

The virgins of Jerusalem

Have bowed their heads down to the ground.

כ Kaph

My eyes fail because of tears;

My inmost being is greatly disturbed;

My heart is poured out on the earth

Because of the destruction of the daughter of my people,

When infants and nursing babies faint

In the open squares of the city.

ל Lamedh

They say to their mothers,

“Where is grain and wine?”

As they faint like a wounded man

In the open squares of the city,

As their life is poured out

On their mothers’ bosom.

מ Mem

What shall I testify about you?

To what shall I equate you,

O daughter of Jerusalem?

To what shall I liken you as I comfort you,

O virgin daughter of Zion?

For your destruction is as vast as the sea;

Who can heal you?

נ Nun

Your prophets have beheld for you

Worthless and ineffective visions;

And they have not uncovered your iniquity

So as to return you from captivity,

But they have beheld for you worthless and misleading oracles.

ס Samekh

All who pass along the way

Clap their hands in derision at you;

They hiss and shake their heads

At the daughter of Jerusalem,

“Is this the city of which they said,

‘The perfection of beauty,

The joy of the whole earth’?”

פ Pe

All your enemies

Have opened their mouths wide against you;

They hiss and gnash their teeth.

They say, “We have swallowed her up!

Surely this is the day for which we have hoped;

We have found it, we have seen it.”

ע Ayin

Yahweh has done what He purposed;

He has completed His word

Which He commanded from days of old.

He has pulled down without sparing,

And He has caused the enemy to be glad over you;

He has exalted the might of your adversaries.

צ Tsadhe

Their heart cried out to the Lord,

“O wall of the daughter of Zion,

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

Give yourself no relief;

Let your eyes not be still.

ק Qoph

Arise, cry aloud in the night

At the head of the night watches;

Pour out your heart like water

Before the presence of the Lord;

Lift up your hands to Him

For the life of your infants

Who are faint because of hunger

At the head of every street.”

ר Resh

See, O Yahweh, and look!

With whom have You dealt thus?

Should women eat their offspring,

The infants who were born healthy?

Should priest and prophet be killed

In the sanctuary of the Lord?

שׁ Shin

On the ground in the streets

Lie young and old;

My virgins and my young men

Have fallen by the sword.

You have killed them in the day of Your anger;

You have slaughtered, not sparing.

ת Tav

You called as in the day of an appointed time

My terrors on every side;

And there was no one who escaped or survived

In the day of Yahweh’s anger.

Those whom I gave birth to and reared,

My enemy consumed them.

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