Lamentations 1 - 5

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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.

Jeremiah’s Heavy Chain

א Aleph

I am the man who has seen affliction

Because of the rod of His wrath.

He has driven me and made me walk

In darkness and not in light.

Surely against me He has turned His hand

Repeatedly all the day.

ב Beth

He has caused my flesh and my skin to waste away;

He has broken my bones.

He has besieged and encompassed me with gall and hardship.

Dark places He has made me inhabit,

Like those who have long been dead.

ג Gimel

He has walled me in so that I cannot go out;

He has made my chain heavy.

Even when I cry out and call for help,

He shuts out my prayer.

He has blocked my ways with cut stone;

He has made my paths crooked.

ד Daleth

He is to me like a bear lying in wait,

Like a lion in secret places.

He has turned aside my ways and torn me to pieces;

He has made me desolate.

He bent His bow

And set me as a target for the arrow.

ה He

He made the arrows of His quiver

To enter into my inward parts.

I have become a laughingstock to all my people,

Their music of mockery all the day.

He has saturated me with bitterness;

He has sated me with wormwood.

ו Vav

He has broken my teeth with gravel;

He has made me cower in the dust.

My soul has been rejected from peace;

I have forgotten goodness.

So I say, “My strength has perished,

As well as my hopeful waiting which comes from Yahweh.”

The Lord Will Not Reject Forever

ז Zayin

Remember my affliction and my homelessness, the wormwood and gall.

Surely my soul remembers

And is bowed down within me.

This I will return to my heart;

Therefore I will wait in hope.

ח Heth

The lovingkindnesses of Yahweh indeed never cease,

For His compassions never fail.

They are new every morning;

Great is Your faithfulness.

“Yahweh is my portion,” says my soul,

“Therefore I wait for Him.”

ט Teth

Yahweh is good to those who hope in Him,

To the soul who seeks Him.

It is good that he waits silently

For the salvation of Yahweh.

It is good for a man that he should bear

The yoke in his youth.

י Yodh

Let him sit alone and be silent

Since He has laid it on him.

Let him put his mouth in the dust;

Perhaps there is hope.

Let him give his cheek to the one who strikes him;

Let him be saturated with reproach.

כ Kaph

For the Lord will not reject forever,

For if He causes grief,

Then He will have compassion

According to His abundant lovingkindness.

For He does not afflict from His heart

Or grieve the sons of men.

ל Lamedh

To crush under His feet

All the prisoners of the land,

To deprive a man of justice

In the presence of the Most High,

To defraud a man in his legal case—

These things the Lord does not see with approval.

מ Mem

Who is there who speaks and it happens,

Unless the Lord has commanded it?

Is it not from the mouth of the Most High

That both calamities and good go forth?

Why should any living person or any man

Complain because of his sins?

נ Nun

Let us search out and examine our ways,

And let us return to Yahweh.

We lift up our heart to our hands

Toward God in heaven;

We have transgressed and rebelled;

You have not pardoned.

ס Samekh

You have covered Yourself with anger

And pursued us;

You have killed and have not spared.

You have covered Yourself with a cloud

So that no prayer can pass through.

You have made us mere scum and refuse

In the midst of the peoples.

פ Pe

All our enemies have opened their mouths against us.

Panic and pitfall have befallen us,

Devastation and destruction;

My eyes run down with streams of water

Because of the destruction of the daughter of my people.

ע Ayin

My eyes pour down unceasingly,

Without stopping,

Until Yahweh looks down

And sees from heaven.

My eyes deal severely with my soul

Because of all the daughters of my city.

צ Tsadhe

My enemies without cause

Hunted me down like a bird;

They have silenced my life in the pit

And have placed a stone on me.

Waters flowed over my head;

I said, “I am cut off!”

ק Qoph

I called on Your name, O Yahweh,

Out of the lowest pit.

You have heard my voice,

“Do not hide Your ear from my prayer for relief,

From my cry for help.”

You drew near when I called on You;

You said, “Do not fear!”

ר Resh

O Lord, You have pleaded my soul’s cause;

You have redeemed my life.

O Yahweh, You have seen my oppression;

Judge my case.

You have seen all their vengeance,

All their purposes against me.

שׂ Sin - שׁ Shin

You have heard their reproach, O Yahweh,

All their purposes against me.

The lips of those who rise against me and their whispering

Are against me all day long.

Look on their sitting and their rising;

I am their mocking song.

ת Tav

You will recompense them, O Yahweh,

According to the work of their hands.

You will give them dullness of heart;

Your curse will be on them.

You will pursue them in anger and destroy them

From under the heavens of Yahweh!

Yahweh’s Wrath Spent

א Aleph

How dark the gold has become,

How the pure gold has changed!

The sacred stones are poured out

At the head of every street.

ב Beth

The precious sons of Zion,

Weighed against fine gold,

How they are regarded as earthen jars,

The work of a potter’s hands!

ג Gimel

Even jackals offer the breast;

They nurse their young;

But the daughter of my people has become cruel

Like ostriches in the wilderness.

ד Daleth

The tongue of the nursing baby cleaves

To the roof of its mouth because of thirst;

The infants ask for bread,

But no one breaks it for them.

ה He

Those who ate delicacies

Are desolate in the streets;

Those reared in crimson

Embrace ash pits.

ו Vav

So the iniquity of the daughter of my people

Is greater than the sin of Sodom,

Which was overthrown as in a moment,

And no hands whirled toward her.

ז Zayin

Her Nazirites were purer than snow;

They were whiter than milk;

They were more ruddy in body than corals,

Their polishing was like lapis lazuli.

ח Heth

Their form is blacker than soot;

They are not recognized in the streets;

Their skin is shriveled on their bones;

It is withered, it has become like wood.

ט Teth

Better are those pierced through with the sword

Than those pierced through with hunger;

For their life flows away, being stricken

For lack of the produce of the field.

י Yodh

The hands of compassionate women

Boiled their own children;

They became food for them

Because of the destruction of the daughter of my people.

כ Kaph

Yahweh has spent His wrath;

He has poured out His burning anger;

And He has kindled a fire in Zion

Which has devoured its foundations.

ל Lamedh

The kings of the earth did not believe,

Nor did any of the inhabitants of the world,

That the adversary and the enemy

Could enter the gates of Jerusalem.

מ Mem

Because of the sins of her prophets

And the iniquities of her priests,

Who have shed in her midst

The blood of the righteous;

נ Nun

They wandered, blind, in the streets;

They were defiled with blood

So that no one could touch their garments.

ס Samekh

“Depart! Unclean!” they cried of themselves.

“Depart, depart, do not touch!”

So they fled and wandered;

Men among the nations said,

“They shall not continue to sojourn with us.”

פ Pe

The presence of Yahweh has eradicated them;

He will not continue to look at them;

They did not honor the priests;

They did not favor the elders.

ע Ayin

Yet our eyes were spent,

Looking for help was vanity;

In our watching we have watched

For a nation that could not save.

צ Tsadhe

They hunted our steps

So that we could not walk in our open squares;

Our end drew near,

Our days were finished,

For our end had come.

ק Qoph

Our pursuers were swifter

Than the eagles of the sky;

They hotly pursued us on the mountains;

They waited in ambush for us in the wilderness.

ר Resh

The breath of our nostrils, the anointed of Yahweh,

Was captured in their pits,

Of whom we had said, “Under his shadow

We shall live among the nations.”

שׂ Sin

Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom,

Who inhabits the land of Uz;

But the cup will pass on to you as well;

You will become drunk and make yourself naked.

ת Tav

The punishment of your iniquity has come to an end, O daughter of Zion;

He will exile you no longer.

But He will punish your iniquity, O daughter of Edom;

He will expose your sins!

O Yahweh, Remember Us!

Remember, O Yahweh, what has happened to us;

Look, and see our reproach!

Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers,

Our houses to foreigners.

We have become orphans without a father;

Our mothers are like widows.

We drink our water by means of silver;

Our wood comes to us at a price.

Our pursuers are at our necks;

We are worn out; there is no rest for us.

We have given over our hands to Egypt and Assyria to get enough bread.

Our fathers sinned; they are no more;

It is we who have borne their iniquities.

Slaves rule over us;

There is no one to tear us away from their hand.

We get our bread at the risk of our lives

Because of the sword in the wilderness.

Our skin has become as hot as an oven

Because of the burning heat of famine.

They violated the women in Zion,

The virgins in the cities of Judah.

Princes were hung by their hands;

Elders were not respected.

Young men lifted up the stone at the grinding mill,

And youths stumbled down under loads of wood.

Elders have ceased from being at the gate,

Young men from their music.

The joy of our hearts has ceased;

Our dancing has been turned into mourning.

The crown has fallen from our head;

Woe to us, for we have sinned!

Because of this our heart is faint;

Because of these things our eyes are dim;

Because of Mount Zion which lies desolate,

Foxes walk about in it.

You, O Yahweh, sit enthroned forever;

Your throne is from generation to generation.

Why do You forget us forever?

Why do You forsake us so long?

Cause us to return to You, O Yahweh, that we may be returned;

Renew our days as of old,

Even if You have utterly rejected us

And are exceedingly angry with us.

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