Lamentations 2:1-22 How in His anger Yahweh has covered the daughter of Zion with a thick cloud! He flung from the heavens to earth the beauty of Israel; He did not remember His footstool in the day of His anger.

CLV⁽ⁱ⁾ ¹ How in His anger Yahweh has covered the daughter of Zion with a thick cloud! He flung from the heavens to earth the beauty of Israel; He did not remember His footstool in the day of His anger. ² Yahweh has swallowed up and has not spared all the oases of Jacob; He has demolished, in His rage, the fortresses of the daughter of Judah; He made them touch the earth; He has profaned the kingdom and its chiefs." ³ He hacked down all the horn of Israel in the heat of anger; He has turned back His right hand in the presence of the enemy; And He is consuming in Jacob like a blazing fire that devours all around. ⁴ He has positioned His bow like an enemy, setting His right hand like a foe; And He is killing all that is coveted by the eye in the tent of the daughter of Zion; He has poured out His fury like fire." ⁵ Yahweh has become like an enemy; He has swallowed up Israel; He has swallowed up all her citadels; He has ruined its fortresses; And He is multiplying, in the daughter of Judah, complaint and complaining." ⁶ He is casting down His booth as in a garden; He has ruined His appointed festivals; Yahweh has made appointed festivals and sabbath forgotten in Zion, And in the indignation of His anger He is spurning king and priest." ⁷ Yahweh has cast off His altar; He has disowned His sanctuary; He has surrendered the walls of her citadels into the hand of the enemy. They have raised their voice in the House of Yahweh as on the day of an appointed festival. ⁸ Yahweh has designed to ruin the wall of the daughter of Zion; He has stretched out the measuring tape; He has not turned back His hand from dismantling; So He makes the rampart and wall mourn; together they are enfeebled. ⁹ Her gates have sunk into the earth; He destroyed and broke her bars; Her king and her chiefs are among the nations; there is no law. Also her prophets find no vision from Yahweh. ¹⁰ They sit on the earth; the elders of the daughter of Zion are silent; They cast up soil on their head; they gird themselves in sackcloth; The virgins of Jerusalem bow down their head to the earth. ¹¹ My eyes are exhausted with tears; my bowels are in turmoil; My liver is poured out on the earth over the brokenness of the daughter of my people, While the infant and suckling droop in the town squares;" ¹² They are saying to their mothers, Where is grain and wine? While they droop like the wounded in the city squares, While their soul is poured out on their mothers' bosom." ¹³ What shall I testify to you? What shall I liken to you, daughter of Jerusalem? What shall I equate to you, that I may comfort you, virgin daughter of Zion? For your brokenness is great as the sea; who shall heal you? ¹⁴ Your prophets envision for you futility and trumpery, And they do not expose your depravity to reverse your captivity, But they are envisioning for you loads of futility and false inducements." ¹⁵ They slap their palms at you, all who pass your way; They hiss and jerk their head to and fro at the daughter of Jerusalem:Is this the city which they call the consummation of loveliness, the elation of the entire earth? ¹⁶ They open their mouth wide at you, all your enemies; They hiss and gnash their teeth; they say, We have swallowed them up! Yea, this is the day that we expected; we have come upon it and have seen it!" ¹⁷ Yahweh has done what He had planned; He has carried through His saying, What He determined from days long ago; He has demolished and has not spared; And He is making the enemy rejoice over you; He exalts the horn of your foes." ¹⁸ Their heart cries out to Yahweh, the Wall of the daughter of Zion; Let tears descend like a torrent by day and night; Do not give yourself intermission; do not let your eye be still." ¹⁹ Arise, make appeal in the night at the beginning of the vigils; Pour out your heart like water before the presence of Yahweh; Lift your palms to Him for the soul of your infants who droop in famine at the head of every street." ²⁰ See, O Yahweh, and look at those whom You have dealt severely thus; Should women be eating their own fruit, their infants cradled in arms? Should priest and prophet be killed in the sanctuary of Yahweh? ²¹ They lie on the earth of the streets, youth and elder, My virgins and my choice young men, they have fallen by the sword; You have killed in the day of Your anger; You have slaughtered and have not spared;" ²² You have called as on a day of appointment my sojourners from round about, So that in a day of Yahweh's anger there was no delivered one or survivor; Those whom I cradled in arms and made to increase, my enemy has consumed them."