5
1The Lord has become like an enemy;
2he has swallowed up Israel;
3he has swallowed up all its palaces; he has laid in ruins its strongholds, and he has multiplied in the daughter of Judah
4mourning and lamentation.
6
He has laid waste his booth like a garden, laid in ruins
5his meeting place;
6the LORD has made Zion forget festival and
7Sabbath, and in his fierce indignation has spurned king and priest.
7
8The Lord has scorned his altar,
9disowned his sanctuary;
10he has delivered into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces;
11they raised a clamor in the house of the LORD as on the day of festival.
8
12The LORD determined to lay in ruins
13the wall of the daughter of Zion;
14he stretched out the measuring line; he did not restrain his hand from destroying;
15he caused rampart and wall to lament;
16they languished together.
9
Her gates have sunk into the ground;
17he has ruined
18and broken her bars;
19her king and princes are among the nations; the law is no more, and
20her prophets find no vision from the LORD.
10
The elders of the daughter of Zion
21sit on the ground
22in silence;
23they have thrown dust on their heads and
24put on sackcloth; the young women of Jerusalem have bowed their heads to the ground.
11
25My eyes are spent with weeping;
26my stomach churns;
27my bile is poured out to the ground
28because of the destruction of the daughter of my people,
29because infants and babies
30faint in the streets of the city.
12
They cry to their mothers,
31"Where is bread and wine?"
32as they faint like a wounded man in the streets of the city, as their life is poured out on their mothers' bosom.
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What can I say for you,
33to what compare you, O daughter of Jerusalem?
34What can I liken to you, that I may comfort you, O virgin daughter of Zion?
35For your ruin is vast as the sea; who can heal you?
14
36Your prophets have seen for you false and deceptive visions;
37they have not exposed your iniquity to
38restore your fortunes,
39but have seen for you
40oracles that are false and misleading.
15
All who pass along the way clap their hands at you;
41they hiss and wag their heads at the daughter of Jerusalem: "Is this the city that was called
42the perfection of beauty,
43the joy of all the earth?"