God’s Anger over Israel

1 How 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.

2 The 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.

3 In 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.

4 He 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.

5 The 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.

6 And 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.

7 The 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.

8 The 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.

9 Her 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.

10 The 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.

11 My 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.

12 They 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.

13 How 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?

14 Your 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.

15 All 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’?”

16 All 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.”

17 The 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.

18 Their 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.”

20 See, 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?

21 On 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.

22 You 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.