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.

 
 
 

Going to Jesus

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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 in the midst of desperation.

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 now 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 been magnified.

10. The adversary has spread out his hand over all her pleasant things, for she has seen the nations enter her sanctuary, whom you had commanded should not enter into your congregation.

11. All her people are groaning. They seek bread; they have given their pleasant things for food to restore the soul. See, O Jehovah, and consider, for I am despised!

12. Is it nothing to all you 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 has sent fire into my bones and governed it. He spread a net for my feet. He turned me back; He made me desolate and sick all the 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 their hands; I cannot rise up.

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, as in a winepress, the virgin, the 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 shall surround him. Jerusalem has become as a menstruous woman among them.

18. Jehovah is righteous, for I rebelled 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 while they sought food for themselves; then they returned their soul.

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 one to comfort me. All my enemies have heard of my evil. They rejoice because you have done it; you have brought the day you called for. Yet, let them be like me.

22. Let all their evil be brought 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

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¶1. How the 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 and did not spare all the pastures of Jacob, and 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. He cut off in his burning anger all the horn of Israel. He took back 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 set as 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. The Lord was like an enemy. He swallowed up Israel; he swallowed up all her palaces. He destroyed his strongholds, and multiplied mourning and moaning in the daughter of Judah.

6. And He laid waste His booth 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; in His indignant anger, He has spurned king and priest.

7. The Lord has rejected His altar; He repudiated His sanctuary. He delivered the walls of her palaces into the hand of an enemy; they have made a shout in the house of Jehovah, as in the day of a set time.

8. Jehovah determined to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion. He stretched out a line; he did not turn back His hand from swallowing up. And He caused the rampart and the wall to mourn; they languish 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 heads to the ground.

11. My eyes fail with tears; my bowels are troubled; my liver is poured out to the ground because of the destruction of the daughter of my people, for 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, when their soul was poured 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 great as the sea is your ruin; who can heal you?

14. Your prophets see vanity and foolishness for you. And they do not make known your iniquity to turn away your captivity, but they see vain and seductive oracles for you.

15. All who pass by in the way clap their hands because of you, and they hiss and shake their heads 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 planned; He has fulfilled His word that He commanded in days of old. He has overthrown and not pitied, and the enemy has rejoiced over you; He has exalted the horn of your enemy.

18. Their heart cried out to the 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 flow of your eyes be cut off.

19. Arise! Cry out in the night! At the beginning of the night-watches pour out your heart like water before the Lord! Lift your hands to him for the life of your children who faint for hunger at the top of all the streets.

20. Behold, O Jehovah, and consider to whom you have done such. Should women consume their fruit, tender children? Shall priest and prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord?

21. Young and old lie on the ground in the streets; my virgins have fallen by the sword. You killed them in the day of your anger; you have slaughtered and not pities.

22. You called for my terrors round about me as on an appointed day, and on the day of Jehovah’s anger there were none who escaped or survived. Those whom I carried and raised my enemy has consumed.

Lamentations 3

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¶1. I am the man who has seen affliction from the rod of His fury.

2. He has led me and taken me 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 waste away; He has broken my bones.

5. He has built up against me, and bitterness and distress surround me.

6. He has made me to dwell in dark places, like those long dead.

7. He has made a wall about me, and I cannot get out; He has made my chain heavy.

8. And even when I cry out and shout, He shuts out my prayer.

9. He has walled up my path 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 of 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 made me drunk with wormwood.

16. He broke my teeth with gravel; He covered me with ash.

17. And He removed my soul far from peace; I forgot what is good.

18. And I said, “My strength and my hope in Jehovah have perished.”

19. Remember my affliction and my wandering, the wormwood, and the poison.

20. My soul continually remembers, and it is bowed down within me.

21. This will I bring to mind; in this, I will have hope:

22.the loving kindness of Jehovah, for it never ceases; His compassions, for they never end;

23. they are new every morning. O 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 Jehovah.

27. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.

¶28. He will sit alone 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 satisfied by his reproach,

31.but 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 willfully 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 from before the face of the Most High,

36.to subvert a man in his cause, my Lord does not contenance.

37. Who says “this”, and it comes to pass if my Lord has not commanded it?

38. Out of the mouth of the Most High comes evil and good.

39. Why does a living man complain – a man – because 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 have rebelled; you have not forgiven.

43. You have shut us off in anger and persecuted us; you have killed; you have had no pity.

44. You covered yourself with a cloud which prayer cannot pass through.

45. You made us as offscouring and garbage among the peoples.

46. All our enemies open their mouths 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 is no stopping,

50.until He looks down, and Jehovah sees from heaven

51. My eye afflicts my soul because of all the daughters of my city.

52. My enemies chased, hunting me like a bird without cause.

53. They have cut my life off into the pit and cast a stone on me.

54. Waters flowed over my head; I said, “I am cut off.”

55. I called upon your name, O Jehovah, from the depths of the pit.

56. You hear my voice; do not hide your ear, to give me respite at my cry.

57. You drew near in the day when I called upon you; you said, “Do not be afraid.”

58. O Lord, plead my soul’s causes; redeem 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 all the day.

63. Behold their sitting down and their rising up. I am their song.

64. Return, O Lord, a recompense upon them according to the work of their hands.

65. Give them hardness of heart, your curse upon them.

66. In your anger, pursue and destroy them from under the heavens of the Lord!

Lamentations 4

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¶1. How the gold has grown dim! The pure gold is altered! The stones of the holy place have been poured out at the top of every street.

2. The precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold, how they 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 ate delicacies are desolate in the streets. Those who were brought up in scarlet embrace the trash heap.

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 it.

7. Her Nazirites were purer than snow; they were whiter than milk. Their bodies were ruddier than rubies. They were cut as a sapphire.

8. Their form is darker than black; they are not recognized in the streets. Their skin clings to their bones; it has 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 the produce of the field.

10. The hands of compassionate women have boiled their own children; they were 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 foundation.

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. It was because of sins of her prophets, transgressions of her priests, who shed righteous blood in her midst.

14. They 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, yea, they wandered, they said among the nations, “They shall not sojourn there again.”

16. The face of the Lord has divided 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, still watching for our vain help though we watched intently for a nation that could not save us.

18. They tracked our steps as we went in our streets. Our end was near; our days had filled for our end had come.

19. Our persecutors were swifter than the eagles in the heavens. 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 Pit, of whom we said, “Under his shadow, we will live with the Gentiles.”

21. Rejoice, and be glad, O daughter of Edom, who dwell in the land of Uz. The cup shall also pass through you; you shall become drunk and strip yourself bare.

22. Your iniquity is complete, O daughter of Zion; He will no longer keep you in captivity. He will visit your iniquity, O daughter of Edom; He will uncover your sins.

Lamentations 5

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¶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 orphans without a father; our mothers are as widows.

4. We drink our water with silver; our wood comes to us at a price.

5. Our persecutors are at our necks. We labor; there is no rest for us.

6. We gave our hand to the Egyptians, and the Assyrians, to be satisfied with bread.

7. Our fathers sinned, and they are not; we bear their transgressions.

8. Slaves rule over us; there is no one to rescue us from their hand.

9. We get our bread at the risk of our lives because of the sword in the wilderness.

10. Our skin is blackened like a fire-pot because of terrible famine.

11. They ravished the women in Zion, the virgins of the cities of Judah.

12. Princes were hung by their hands; the faces of elders were not honored.

13. They carried off the young men to the grinding mill, and children staggered under the wood.

14. The elders have ceased being at the gate, the young men from their song.

15. The joy of our heart ceased; our dance was turned into mourning.

16. The crown has fallen from our head; woe to us now, 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. For will you utterly reject us? You are exceedingly angry with us.


Footnotes

[1] cp. Isaiah 53:6.

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