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He hath not withdrawn his hand from destroying: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.