Lamentations 3 - 4

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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!

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