Lamentations 2
1How
hath the LORD covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger, and cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty
of Israel, and remembered not his footstool in the day of his anger!
2The LORD hath swallowed up all the habitations of Jacob, and hath not pitied: he hath thrown down
in his wrath the strong holds of the daughter of Judah; he hath brought them down to the ground: he hath polluted the kingdom
and the princes thereof.
3He hath cut off
in his fierce anger all the horn of Israel: he hath drawn back his right hand from before the enemy, and he burned against
Jacob like a flaming fire, which devoureth round about.
4He
hath bent his bow like an enemy: he stood with his right hand as an adversary, and slew all that were pleasant to the eye
in the tabernacle of the daughter of Zion: he poured out his fury like fire.
5The LORD was as an enemy: he hath swallowed up Israel, he hath swallowed up all her palaces: he hath
destroyed his strong holds, and hath increased in the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation.
6And he hath violently taken away his tabernacle, as if it were of a garden: he
hath destroyed his places of the assembly: the LORD hath caused the solemn feasts and sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion, and
hath despised in the indignation of his anger the king and the priest.
7The LORD hath cast off his altar, he hath abhorred his sanctuary, he hath given up into the hand of
the enemy the walls of her palaces; they have made a noise in the house of the LORD, as in the day of a solemn feast.
8The LORD hath purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion: he hath stretched
out a line, he hath not withdrawn his hand from destroying: therefore he made the rampart and the wall to lament; they languished
together.
9Her gates are sunk into the ground;
he hath destroyed and broken her bars: her king and her princes are among the Gentiles: the law is no more; her prophets also
find no vision from the LORD.
10The elders
of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground, and keep silence: they have cast up dust upon their heads; they have girded themselves
with sackcloth: the virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground.
11Mine eyes do fail with tears, my bowels are troubled, my liver is poured upon the earth, for the
destruction of the daughter of my people; because the children and the sucklings swoon in the streets of the city.
12They say to their mothers, Where is corn and wine? when they swooned as the wounded
in the streets of the city, when their soul was poured out into their mothers' bosom.
13What thing shall I take to witness for thee? what thing shall I liken to thee,
O daughter of Jerusalem? what shall I equal to thee, that I may comfort thee, O virgin daughter of Zion? for thy breach is
great like the sea: who can heal thee?
14Thy
prophets have seen vain and foolish things for thee: and they have not discovered thine iniquity, to turn away thy captivity;
but have seen for thee false burdens and causes of banishment.
15All
that pass by clap their hands at thee; they hiss and wag their head at the daughter of Jerusalem, saying, Is this the city
that men call The perfection of beauty, The joy of the whole earth?
16All thine enemies have opened their mouth against thee: they hiss and gnash the teeth: they say,
We have swallowed her up: certainly this is the day that we looked for; we have found, we have seen it.
17The LORD hath done that which he had devised; he hath fulfilled his word that
he had commanded in the days of old: he hath thrown down, and hath not pitied: and he hath caused thine enemy to rejoice over
thee, he hath set up the horn of thine adversaries.
18Their
heart cried unto the LORD, O wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears run down like a river day and night: give thyself no
rest; let not the apple of thine eye cease.
19Arise,
cry out in the night: in the beginning of the watches pour out thine heart like water before the face of the LORD: lift up
thy hands toward him for the life of thy young children, that faint for hunger in the top of every street.
20Behold, O LORD, and consider to whom thou hast done this. Shall the women eat
their fruit, and children of a span long? shall the priest and the prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord?
21The young and the old lie on the ground in the streets: my virgins and my young
men are fallen by the sword; thou hast slain them in the day of thine anger; thou hast killed, and not pitied.
22Thou hast called as in a solemn day my terrors round about, so that in the day
of the LORD's anger none escaped nor remained: those that I have swaddled and brought up hath mine enemy consumed.
