4
Now I plan not to return to the city but to stay here, and I will neither eat nor drink but lament and fast without ceasing, until I die."
5
I abandoned the thoughts that had preoccupied me and responded to her in anger:
6
"Most foolish of all women, don't you see our grief and what has befallen us?
7
Zion the mother of us all is afflicted in sadness and utterly dejected. Grieve mightily
8
now because we all grieve, and be sorrowful because we are all sorrowful. But you are mourning only for one son!
9
Ask the earth, and she will tell you that she is the one who should mourn, since so many have sprouted upon her.
10
From her, from the beginning, all have been born and others will come. Look, nearly all go to ruin, and their multitude is doomed to destruction.
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Who then ought to mourn the more? Shouldn't she who has lost such a great multitude rather than you, who grieve for one?
12
Perhaps you say to me, ‘My lamentation isn't like that of the earth, because I lost the fruit of my womb, which I bore with pains and brought forth with sorrows.
13
The earth, however, is just following the way of the earth; the multitude that is present on it goes as it came.'
14
I would then say to you, ‘As you gave birth with grief, so also from the beginning the earth yielded its fruit, humanity, to him who made it.'