God’s Anger over Israel

1How the Lord has covered the daughter of Zion
            With a cloud in His anger!
            He has cast from heaven to earth
            The glory of Israel,
            And has not remembered His footstool
            In the day of His anger.

      2The Lord has swallowed up; He has not spared
            All the habitations of Jacob.
            In His wrath He has thrown down
            The strongholds of the daughter of Judah;
            He has brought them down to the ground;
            He has profaned the kingdom and its princes.

      3In fierce anger He has cut off
            All the strength of Israel;
            He has drawn back His right hand
            From before the enemy.
            And He has burned in Jacob like a flaming fire
            Consuming round about.

      4He has bent His bow like an enemy;
            He has set His right hand like an adversary
            And slain all that were pleasant to the eye;
            In the tent of the daughter of Zion
            He has poured out His wrath like fire.

      5The Lord has become like an enemy.
            He has swallowed up Israel;
            He has swallowed up all its palaces,
            He has destroyed its strongholds
            And multiplied in the daughter of Judah
            Mourning and moaning.

      6And He has violently treated His tabernacle like a garden booth;
            He has destroyed His appointed meeting place.
            The LORD has caused to be forgotten
            The appointed feast and sabbath in Zion,
            And He has despised king and priest
            In the indignation of His anger.

      7The Lord has rejected His altar,
            He has abandoned His sanctuary;
            He has delivered 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 an appointed feast.

      8The LORD determined to destroy
            The wall of the daughter of Zion.
            He has stretched out a line,
            He has not restrained His hand from destroying,
            And He has caused rampart and wall to lament;
            They have languished together.

      9Her gates have sunk into the ground,
            He has destroyed and broken her bars.
            Her king and her princes are among the nations;
            The law is no more.
            Also, her prophets find
            No vision from the LORD.

      10The elders of the daughter of Zion
            Sit on the ground, they are silent.
            They have thrown dust on their heads;
            They have girded themselves with sackcloth.
            The virgins of Jerusalem
            Have bowed their heads to the ground.

      11My eyes fail because of tears,
            My spirit is greatly troubled;
            My heart is poured out on the earth
            Because of the destruction of the daughter of my people,
            When little ones and infants faint
            In the streets of the city.

      12They say to their mothers,
            “Where is grain and wine?”
            As they faint like a wounded man
            In the streets of the city,
            As their life is poured out
            On their mothers’ bosom.

      13How shall I admonish you?
            To what shall I compare you,
            O daughter of Jerusalem?
            To what shall I liken you as I comfort you,
            O virgin daughter of Zion?
            For your ruin is as vast as the sea;
            Who can heal you?

      14Your prophets have seen for you
            False and foolish visions;
            And they have not exposed your iniquity
            So as to restore you from captivity,
            But they have seen for you false and misleading oracles.

      15All who pass along the way
            Clap their hands in derision at you;
            They hiss and shake their heads
            At the daughter of Jerusalem,
            “Is this the city of which they said,
            ‘The perfection of beauty,
            A joy to all the earth’?”

      16All your enemies
            Have opened their mouths wide against you;
            They hiss and gnash their teeth.
            They say, “We have swallowed her up!
            Surely this is the day for which we waited;
            We have reached it, we have seen it.”

      17The LORD has done what He purposed;
            He has accomplished His word
            Which He commanded from days of old.
            He has thrown down without sparing,
            And He has caused the enemy to rejoice over you;
            He has exalted the might of your adversaries.

      18Their heart cried out to the Lord,
            “O wall of the daughter of Zion,
            Let your tears run down like a river day and night;
            Give yourself no relief,
            Let your eyes have no rest.

      19“Arise, cry aloud in the night
            At the beginning of the night watches;
            Pour out your heart like water
            Before the presence of the Lord;
            Lift up your hands to Him
            For the life of your little ones
            Who are faint because of hunger
            At the head of every street.”

      20See, O LORD, and look!
            With whom have You dealt thus?
            Should women eat their offspring,
            The little ones who were born healthy?
            Should priest and prophet be slain
            In the sanctuary of the Lord?

      21On the ground in the streets
            Lie young and old;
            My virgins and my young men
            Have fallen by the sword.
            You have slain them in the day of Your anger,
            You have slaughtered, not sparing.

      22You called as in the day of an appointed feast
            My terrors on every side;
            And there was no one who escaped or survived
            In the day of the LORD’S anger.
            Those whom I bore and reared,
            My enemy annihilated them.