¹How the Lord has beclouded the daughter of Zion in his anger! He has thrown down from the skies to the land the splendor of Israel, and has not remembered the footstool of his feet in the day of his anger.

²The Lord has swallowed up without sparing all the pastures of Jacob; in his wrath he has torn down the fortifications of the daughter of Judah; he has made them touch the land; he has defiled the kingdom and its officials.

³In burning anger he has cut off every horn of Israel; he has turned his right hand backward from before the enemy; he has burned in Jacob like a fire of flame that consumes all around.

⁴He has bent his bow like an enemy; his right hand has taken its stand like an enemy, and he has killed all the desirable things of the eye. In the tent of the daughter of Zion he has poured out his rage like fire.

⁵The Lord has become like an enemy; he has swallowed up Israel, swallowed up all her palaces, ruined his fortifications, and multiplied in the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation.

⁶He has treated his booth violently like a garden, and ruined his appointed place; Yahweh has caused appointed time and sabbath to be forgotten in Zion, and in the indignation of his anger has spurned king and priest.

⁷The Lord has rejected his altar, abhorred his sanctuary; he has shut up the walls of her palaces in the hand of an enemy. They have given voice in the house of Yahweh as on the day of an appointed time.

⁸Yahweh planned to ruin the wall of the daughter of Zion; he stretched out a line and did not turn back his hand from swallowing up. He made rampart and wall mourn; together they have languished.

⁹Her gates drowned in the land, he perished and broke down her bars; her king and her officials are in the nations, there is no instruction; also her prophets did not find a vision from Yahweh.

¹⁰The elders of the daughter of Zion sit on the land in silence; they have thrown up dust on their heads, and girded themselves with sackcloth. The virgins of Jerusalem have brought down their heads to the land.

¹¹My eyes are spent with tears, my inward parts boil, my liver is poured out on the ground over the destruction of the daughter of my people, as infant and nursling faint in the open places of the town.

¹²They say to their mothers, Where are grain and wine? as they faint away like the fatally wounded in the open places of the city, as their being pours out into the bosom of their mothers.

¹³What can I testify to you, what can I liken to you, daughter of Jerusalem? What can I make equal to you, that I may comfort you, virgin daughter of Zion? For your destruction is as great as the sea; who can heal you?

¹⁴Your prophets saw to you vain and whitewash, and they did not uncover over your guilt to return your captivity; they saw to you oracles of the vain, and things to draw aside.

¹⁵All who pass by on the road clapped their palms at you; they hissed and shook their heads at the daughter of Jerusalem: Is this the city of which they said, The whole of beauty, a joy to all the land?

¹⁶All your enemies opened their mouths against you; they hissed and gnashed their teeth; they said, We have swallowed her up. Surely this is the day we waited for; we have found it, we have seen it.

¹⁷Yahweh has done what he purposed; he has fulfilled his word, which he commanded in days of old. He has torn down without sparing, and has made the enemy rejoice over you; he has lifted up the horn of your opponents.

¹⁸Their heart cried out to the Lord. O wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears flow down like a wadi by day and by night; do not give yourself any respite; do not let the daughter of your eye be still.

¹⁹Rise, cry aloud in the night, at the head of the night watches; pour out your heart like water before the face of the Lord; lift up your palms to him for the life of your children, who faint from hunger at the head of every street.

²⁰See, Yahweh, and look: to whom have you dealt severely like this? Shall women eat their offspring, the infants they dandled? Or shall priest and prophet be killed in the sanctuary of the Lord?

²¹Boy and old man lay down on the ground in the streets; my virgins and my young men have fallen by the sword. You killed them on the day of your anger; you slaughtered, you did not spare.

²²You summoned as on an appointed day my terrors from all around; and there was no refugee or survivor on the day of the anger of Yahweh. Those whom I stretched out and multiplied, my enemy has finished off.