¹How the gold is dimmed; the good pure gold is changed! The stones of holiness are poured out at the head of every street.

²The precious children of Zion, who were weighed in fine gold, how they are considered as jars of earthenware, the work of the hands of a potter!

³Even jackals supply the breast and nurse their young; the daughter of my people has become cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness.

⁴The tongue of the suckling clings to its palate in thirst; children ask for bread, and no one spreads it out for them.

⁵Those who ate delicacies are desolate in the streets; those nourished in scarlet embrace ash heaps.

⁶The guilt of the daughter of my people became great more than the sin of Sodom, which was overthrown in a moment, and no hands writhed in it.

⁷Her consecrated ones were brighter than snow, more dazzling than milk; their bone was redder than corals, their cutting a sapphire.

⁸Their form is darker than blackness; they are not recognized in the streets. Their skin has contracted upon their bone; it has become dry as wood.

⁹Better were those slain by the sword than those slain by hunger, who flow away, pierced through for want of the produce of the field.

¹⁰The hands of compassionate women cooked their children; they became food for them in the breaking of the daughter of my people.

¹¹Yahweh completed his rage; he poured out the burning of his anger, and he kindled a fire in Zion that consumed her foundations.

¹²The kings of the land did not believe, nor all the inhabitants of the world, that the opponent and enemy would enter the gates of Jerusalem.

¹³From the sins of her prophets, the guilt of her priests, who shed in her midst the blood of the righteous.

¹⁴They tottered blind in the streets; they were defiled with blood, so that people could not touch their garments.

¹⁵"Away! Unclean!" they called to them. "Away, away, do not touch!" For they burst forth, and also staggered; they said among the nations, "They shall not go on living here."

¹⁶The face of Yahweh divided them; he will not again look on them. They did not lift up the face of priests, and elders they did not show favor to.

¹⁷Still our eyes are spent, looking to our help, a vapor; from our outlook-post we watched for a nation that does not save.

¹⁸They hunted our steps so that we could not go walking in our open squares; our end drew near, our days were filled, for our end had come.

¹⁹Our pursuers were swifter than the eagles of the sky; over the mountains they hotly chased us, in the wilderness they lay in wait for us.

²⁰The breath of our nostrils, the anointed of Yahweh, was captured in their pits; of whom we said, "Under his shadow we will live among the nations."

²¹Exult and rejoice, daughter of Edom, you who dwell in the land of Uz! Yet to you the cup will pass; you will become drunk and lay yourself bare.

²²Your guilt perished, daughter of Zion; he will never go you into exile. Your guilt he punished, daughter of Edom; he went into exile over your sins.