Lamentations 2

How the Lord has covered daughter Zion with a cloud in his anger!
He has cast the splendor of Israel from heaven to earth and has not remembered his footstool on the day of his anger. The Lord has swallowed up all the dwellings of Jacob without pity.
In his wrath he has torn down the strongholds of daughter Judah and brought them to the ground.
He has profaned the kingdom and its officials. In burning anger he has cut off every horn of Israel.
He has drawn back his right hand before the enemy and burned in Jacob like a flaming fire that devours all around. He has bent his bow like an enemy, his right hand set like a foe, and killed all that was precious to the eye.
In the tent of daughter Zion he has poured out his wrath like fire. The Lord has become like an enemy.
He has swallowed up Israel, swallowed up all her palaces, and ruined his strongholds.
He has multiplied mourning and lamentation in daughter Judah. He has torn apart his booth like a garden shelter and destroyed his meeting place.
The LORD has made festival and Sabbath forgotten in Zion;
in his burning anger he has despised king and priest. The Lord has rejected his altar and spurned his sanctuary.
He has given the walls of her palaces into the enemy’s hand.
They have raised a shout in the house of the LORD as on a festival day. The LORD determined to destroy the wall of daughter Zion.
He stretched out the measuring line and did not withdraw his hand from swallowing it up.
He made rampart and wall mourn;
together they languished. Her gates have sunk into the ground;
he has destroyed and broken her bars.
Her king and officials are among the nations;
the law is no more.
Her prophets too find no vision from the LORD. The elders of daughter Zion sit on the ground in silence.
They have thrown dust on their heads and put on sackcloth.
The virgins of Jerusalem have bowed their heads to the ground. My eyes are spent with tears;
my inward parts churn.
My liver is poured out on the ground because of the destruction of the daughter of my people, as children and nursing infants faint in the city’s squares. They say to their mothers, “Where are grain and wine?”
as they faint like the wounded in the city’s squares, as their life is poured out in their mothers’ laps. What testimony can I give you?
To what can I compare you, daughter Jerusalem?
What can I liken to you, to comfort you, virgin daughter Zion?
For your ruin is as vast as the sea.
Who can heal you? Your prophets saw false and foolish visions for you.
They did not expose your iniquity to restore your fortunes, but saw false and misleading oracles for you. All who pass by clap their hands at you.
They hiss and shake their heads at daughter Jerusalem: “Is this the city they called ‘the perfection of beauty, the joy of the whole earth’?” All your enemies open their mouths against you.
They hiss and gnash their teeth, saying, “We have swallowed her up!
This is indeed the day we waited for.
We have reached it;
we have seen it!” The LORD has done what he planned.
He has fulfilled the word he commanded in the days of old.
He has torn down without pity, made the enemy rejoice over you, and raised the horn of your foes. Their heart cried out to the Lord.
Wall of daughter Zion, let tears flow like a torrent day and night.
Give yourself no rest;
let the pupil of your eye never be still. Rise! Cry out in the night, at the beginning of the watches!
Pour out your heart like water before the presence of the Lord.
Lift your hands to him for the lives of your little ones, fainting with hunger at the head of every street. “Look, LORD, and see whom you have treated this way.
Should women eat their offspring, the little ones they tenderly nurtured?
Should priest and prophet be killed in the sanctuary of the Lord? Young and old lie on the ground in the streets.
My virgins and young men have fallen by the sword.
You have killed on the day of your anger;
you have slaughtered without pity. As on a festival day, you summoned my terrors from every side.
On the day of the LORD’s anger no one escaped or survived.
Those I tenderly nurtured and raised, my enemy has consumed.”

Rights and attribution