Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered outside the gate. Therefore, let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach. For we have no continuing city here, but we seek one to come.
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Lamentations
Lamentations 1
¶1. How lonely sits the city that abounded with people! She that was great among the nations has become like a widow. A princess among the provinces, she has become a forced laborer.
2. She weeps bitterly through the night, and her tears are on her cheek. There is not one of all her lovers to comfort her. All her friends have been faithless to her; they have become her enemies.
3. Judah is gone into a captivity of misery and hard labor; she dwells among the nations. She finds no resting place; all her pursuers overtook her amidst her distresses.
4. The roads of Zion are mourning, for no one comes for the appointed time. All her gates are desolate; her priests are groaning, her virgins afflicted, and she is bitter.
5. Her adversaries have become the head; her enemies are at ease, for Jehovah has afflicted her because of the multitude of her transgressions; her children have gone into captivity before the adversary.
6. And from the daughter of Zion all honor has departed; her princes have become like stags that can find no pasture, and they went before the pursuer with no strength.
7. Jerusalem remembers in the days of her affliction and her wandering all her precious things which she had in days of old. When her people fell into the hand of the adversary, and there was no one to help her, her adversaries saw her; they mocked because of her destruction.
8. Jerusalem’s sin is appalling! She has become an unclean thing. All who used to honor her despise her because they have seen her nakedness. She herself groans and turns away.
9. Her uncleanness is in her skirts. She did not consider her latter end, and she fell astonishingly. There is no comforter for her. O Jehovah, see my affliction, for the enemy has magnified himself.
10. The adversary has spread out his hand over all her pleasant things, for she has seen the nations enter her sanctuary, whom you commanded should not enter into your congregation.
11. All her people are groaning, seeking bread; they have given their pleasant things for food to restore the soul. Behold, O Jehovah, and consider, for I am despised!
12. Is it nothing to all you who pass this way? Look, and see, whether there be any sorrow like my sorrow, which has been inflicted on me, with which Jehovah has afflicted me in the day of His burning anger.
13. From above, He sent fire into my bones; yea, He directed it. He spread a net for my feet. He turned me back; He made me desolate, sick every day.
14. The yoke of my transgressions is bound by His hand. They are knit together; they have come up upon my neck. He has made my strength fail. My Lord has given me into the hands of those against whom I cannot rise.
15. My Lord has rejected all my mighty men in my midst. He has called an assembly against me to crush my young men; my Lord has trodden the winepress of the virgin daughter of Judah.
16. For these things, I weep. My eyes, my eyes run with water because the comforter who should restore my soul is far from me. My children are desolate, for the enemy has prevailed.
17. Zion spreads out her hands; there is no comforter for her. Jehovah has commanded concerning Jacob that his adversaries surround him. Jerusalem has become as a menstruous woman among them.
18. Jehovah is righteous, for I rebelled against His commandment. Hear me, I pray, all you peoples, and see my sorrow! My virgins and my young men have gone into captivity.
19. I called for my lovers; they deceived me. My priests and my elders perished in the city when they sought food for themselves; yea, they paid with their life.
20. See, O Jehovah! For I am in distress. My bowels are troubled; my heart is turned within me, for I have grievously rebelled. Outside, the sword bereaves; in the house it is like death.
21. They have heard that I sigh; there is no comforter for me. All my enemies have heard of my misery. They rejoice because you did it; you brought the day you called for. Yet, let them be like me.
22. Let all their evil come before you, and afflict them just as you have afflicted me for all my transgressions; for my groanings are many, and my heart is faint.
Lamentations 2
¶1. How my Lord has covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in His anger. He has cast down the beauty of Israel from heaven to earth, and He did not remember His footstool in the day of His anger.
2. My Lord has swallowed up; He did not spare any of the dwellings of Jacob; in His fury, He threw down the strongholds of the daughter of Judah; He brought them down to the ground; He defiled the kingdom and its princes.
3. In His burning anger, He cut off the whole horn of Israel; He withdrew His right hand from before the enemy and burned against Jacob like a flame of fire which consumed round about.
4. He has bent His bow like an enemy; His right hand is firmly set like an adversary, and He slew all who were pleasant to the eye in the tent of the daughter of Zion; He poured out His fury like fire.
5. My Lord was like an enemy; He swallowed up Israel; He swallowed up all her palaces; He destroyed His strongholds and multiplied mourning and lamentation in the daughter of Judah.
6. And He laid waste His pavilion as if it were a garden. He destroyed His appointed place; Jehovah has caused the appointed time and the Sabbath to be forgotten in Zion, and in His indignant anger, He spurned king and priest.
7. My Lord has rejected His altar; He repudiated His sanctuary; He delivered the walls of her palaces into the hand of an enemy; they have raised a shout in the house of Jehovah, as in the day of an appointed feast.
8. Jehovah determined to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion; He stretched out a line; He did not withdraw His hand from swallowing up, and He caused rampart and wall to mourn; they languished together.
9. Her gates have sunk to the ground; He has destroyed and shattered her bars; her king and her princes are among the nations; the law is no more; even her prophets find no vision from Jehovah.
10. The elders of the daughter of Zion sit on the ground; they are silent; they throw dust on their heads; they gird themselves in sackcloth; the virgins of Jerusalem bow their head to the ground.
11. My eyes fail with tears; my bowels are troubled; my liver is poured out to the ground for the destruction of the daughter of my people because child and suckling faint in the streets of the city.
12. They say to their mothers, “Where is the grain and the wine?”, as they faint like the wounded in the streets of the city, as their soul pours itself out into their mother’s bosom.
13. What can I testify against you? To what can I liken you, O daughter of Jerusalem? To what can I compare you, that I might comfort you, O virgin daughter of Zion? For as great as the sea is your ruin. Who can heal you?
14. Your prophets saw vanity and insipidity for you. And they did not expose your iniquity to turn away your captivity, but they saw vain and seductive oracles for you.
15. All who pass by in the way clap their hands because of you; they hiss and shake their head at the daughter of Jerusalem, saying, “Is this the city that they call the perfection of beauty, the joy of all the earth?”
16. All your enemies open their mouth against you; they hiss and gnash their teeth. They say, “We have swallowed her up. Surely, this is the day that we waited for! We have come to it; we have seen it.”
17. Jehovah has done what He determined; He has accomplished His word that He commanded in days of old; He has overthrown and not pitied; He has made the enemy to rejoice over you; He has exalted the horn of your enemy.
18. Their heart cried out to my Lord, “O Wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears run down like a river day and night; give yourself no rest; let not the apple of your eye be put to silence.”
19. Arise! Cry out in the night! At the beginning of the night-watches pour out your heart like water before the face of my Lord! Lift your hands to Him for the life of your children who faint for hunger at the head of all the streets!
20. Behold, O Jehovah, and consider to whom you have done such. Should women consume their fruit, their tender children? Should priest and prophet be slain in the sanctuary of my Lord?
21. Young and old lie on the ground in the streets; my virgins and my young men have fallen by the sword. You killed them in the day of your anger; you have slaughtered; you have not pitied.
22. You called for my terrors round about me as at an appointed feast, and on the day of Jehovah’s anger, there were none who escaped or survived. Those whom I carried and raised, my enemy consumed.
Lamentations 3
¶1. I am the man who has seen affliction from the rod of His fury.
2. He has driven me and made me go into a darkness with no light.
3. Surely, His hand turns against me again and again all the day long.
4. My flesh and my skin are wasted away; He has broken my bones.
5. He has laid siege and compassed me about with bitterness and hardship.
6. He has made me to dwell in dark places, like those long dead.
7. He has walled me in, and I cannot get out; He has made my chain heavy.
8. Even when I cry out and plead for help, He shuts out my prayer.
9. He has walled up my paths with hewn stone; He has made my paths crooked.
10. He was to me a bear lying in wait, a lion lurking in secret places.
11. He turned aside my paths, and He tore me in pieces; He made me desolate.
12. He bent His bow and set me as the target for the arrow.
13. The arrows of His quiver He caused to enter into my innermost parts.
14. I was a derision to all my people, their song all the day.
15. He has filled me with bitter things; He has made me drink wormwood.
16. He also broke my teeth with gravel; He made me cower in ashes.
17. Yea, my soul is denied peace; I have forgotten what is good,
18.and I said, “My strength and my hope from Jehovah have perished.”
19. Oh, remember my affliction and my wandering, the wormwood and poison!
20. My soul certainly remembers and is bowed down within me.
¶21. This thing will I bring to mind; because of this, I have hope:
22.the tender mercies of the Lord. Yea, we are not consumed because His compassions do not fail;
23. they are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness!
24. “Jehovah is my portion,” says my soul. Therefore, I will hope in Him.
25. The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him.
26. It is good both to hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord.
27. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.
¶28. Alone will he sit and keep silent, for He has laid our iniquities upon him;[1]
29.He will put his mouth in the dust, that there may be hope;
30.He will give his cheek to the one striking him; he will be filled with reproach.
31. Yet, He will not cast off my Lord forever.
32. For though He cause grief, yet will He have compassion according to the abundance of His lovingkindness.
33. For He does not willingly afflict and grieve the children of men.
34. To crush under His feet all the earth’s prisoners,
35.to thrust aside the judgment of a man in the presence of the Most High,
36.to subvert a man in his cause, the Lord does not countenance.
¶37. Who can say anything and it come to pass if the Lord has not commanded it?
38. Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that evil and good come?
39. Why does a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sin?
40. Let us search out and examine our ways and return to Jehovah.
41. Let us lift up our heart with our hands to God in the heavens.
42. We have transgressed and rebelled; you have not forgiven.
43. You have covered yourself with anger and put us to flight; you have killed; you have had no pity.
44. You covered yourself with a cloud which prayer cannot pass through.
45. You are making us like offscouring and garbage in the midst of the nations.
46. All our enemies have opened their mouth against us.
47. Terror and a pit are upon us, devastation and destruction.
¶48. My eye runs down with streams of water because of the destruction of the daughter of my people.
49. My eye streams and does not cease; there will be no respite
50.until Jehovah looks down and sees from heaven.
51. My eye has brought me grief because of all the daughters of my city.
¶52. Without cause, my enemies have relentlessly hunted me like a bird.
53. They have cut my life off in the Pit and cast a stone over me.
54. Waters flowed over my head; I said, “I am cut off.”
55. I called upon your name, O Jehovah, from the lowest Pit.
56. You heard my voice; you did not cover your ear, to give me relief at my cry.
57. You drew near in the day I called upon you. You said, “Do not be afraid.”
58. My Lord, you pleaded my cause; you redeemed my life.
¶59. You have seen, O Lord, the wrong done to me. Judge my cause!
60. You have seen all their vindictiveness, all their machinations against me.
61. You have heard their reproach, O Lord, and all their thoughts against me;
62.the lips of those who rise against me and their murmuring are against me every day.
63. Behold their sitting down and their rising up. I am their song.
64. You will return, O Lord, a recompense upon them according to the work of their hands.
65. You will give them hardness of heart, your curse upon them.
66. In your anger, you will pursue and exterminate them from under the heavens of the Lord!
Lamentations 4
¶1. How the gold has grown dim! The pure gold is altered! The stones of the holy place have been poured out at the head of every street.
2. How the precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold, are considered as earthen jars, the work of a potter’s hands.
3. Even wolves offer the breast; they suckle their young. The daughter of my people has become cruel like ostriches in the wilderness.
4. The tongue of the nursing child cleaves to the roof of its mouth with thirst. Children ask for bread; there is no one to break it to them.
5. Those who used to eat delicacies are desolate in the streets. Those who were brought up in scarlet embrace trash heaps.
6. For the iniquity of the daughter of my people is greater than the sin of Sodom that was overthrown in a moment, and no hands were wrung for her.
7. Her Nazirites were purer than snow; they were whiter than milk. Their bodies were ruddier than rubies, their form as a sapphire.
8. Their appearance is darker than black; they are unrecognizable in the streets. Their skin clings to their bones; it is dried out like wood.
9. Those slain by the sword are better off than those slain by hunger, they who fade away, pierced through by lack of produce of the field.
10. The hands of compassionate women have boiled their own children; they became food for them during the destruction of the daughter of my people.
11. Jehovah fully spent His fury; He poured out His burning anger and kindled a fire in Zion that consumed its foundations.
12. The kings of the earth and all the inhabitants of the world would not have believed that foe or enemy could enter into the gates of Jerusalem.
13. Because of the sins of her prophets and the transgressions of her priests who shed blood of righteous men in her midst,
14. they have staggered as blind men in the streets; they were defiled by the blood, with men not able to touch their garments.
15. They cried to them, “Turn aside! Unclean! Turn aside! Turn aside! Do not touch!” When they fled, they also became wanderers. Men said among the nations, “They may no longer dwell here.”[2]
16. The presence of the Lord has scattered them; He will no more have regard for them. They had no respect for the faces of the priests; they showed no favor to the elders.
17. Our eyes failed, continually watching in vain for our help. In our watching, we watched for a nation that could not save.
18. They hunted our steps so that we could not walk in our streets. Our end drew near; our days were fulfilled. Yea, our end came.
19. Our persecutors were swifter than eagles of the sky. They hotly pursued us upon the mountains; they lay in wait for us in the wilderness.
20. The breath of our nostrils, Jehovah’s Messiah, was taken in their traps, of whom we said, “Under his shadow, we will live with the Gentiles.”
21. Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom, dwelling in the land of Uz. The cup will also pass to you; you will be drunk and make yourself naked.
22. The punishment for your iniquity is finished, O daughter of Zion; He will no longer keep you in exile. He will visit your iniquity, O daughter of Edom; He will expose your sins.
Lamentations 5
¶1. Remember, O Jehovah, what has come upon us; look, and see our reproach.
2. Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, our houses to aliens.
3. We are fatherless orphans; our mothers are widows.
4. We drink our water for silver; our wood comes at a price.
5. Our persecutors are at our neck. We labor, and there is no rest for us.
6. We submitted to the Egyptians and the Assyrians, to be satisfied with bread.
7. Our fathers sinned, and they are not; we are burdened down with their transgressions.
8. Slaves rule over us; there is no one to rescue us out of their hand.
9. We get our bread at risk of our lives because of the sword of the wilderness.
10. Our skin is blackened like a fire-pot because of terrible famine.
11. They humbled the women in Zion, the virgins of the cities of Judah.
12. Princes were hanged by their hands; the faces of elders were not honored.
13. They carried off young men to the grinding mill, and boys staggered under the wood.
14. The elders have ceased from the gate, the young men from their song.
15. The joy of our heart ceased; our dancing was turned into mourning.
16. The crown of our head fell; woe to us, for we have sinned.
17. For this, our heart is sick; for these things, our eyes are dimmed.
18. For Mount Zion is desolate; foxes go about on it.
¶19. You, O Jehovah, remain forever, your throne, from generation to generation.
20. Why have you forgotten us forever? You have forsaken us for so long!
21. Turn us back to you, O Jehovah, and we shall be turned; renew our days as in times past.
22. Yea, have you utterly rejected us? You have been exceedingly angry with us.
Footnotes
[1] Cf. Isaiah 53:6.
[2] Or, “They will not dwell there again.”