Lamentations 2:1 - 2:19

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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.”

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