Tuesday of Holy Week: Lamentations 2

How the Lord in his anger

    has humiliated daughter Zion!

He has thrown down from heaven to earth

    the splendor of Israel;

he has not remembered his footstool

    in the day of his anger.

² The Lord has destroyed without mercy

    all the dwellings of Jacob;

in his wrath he has broken down

    the strongholds of daughter Judah;

he has brought down to the ground in dishonor

    the kingdom and its rulers.

³ He has cut down in fierce anger

    all the might of Israel;

he has withdrawn his right hand from them

    in the face of the enemy;

he has burned like a flaming fire in Jacob,

    consuming all around.

⁴ He has bent his bow like an enemy,

    with his right hand set like a foe;

he has killed all in whom we took pride

    in the tent of daughter Zion;

he has poured out his fury like fire.

⁵ The Lord has become like an enemy;

    he has destroyed Israel.

He has destroyed all its palaces,

    laid in ruins its strongholds,

and multiplied in daughter Judah

    mourning and lamentation.

⁶ He has broken down his booth like a garden,

    he has destroyed his tabernacle;

the Lord has abolished in Zion

    festival and sabbath,

and in his fierce indignation has spurned

    king and priest.

⁷ The Lord has scorned his altar,

    disowned his sanctuary;

he has delivered into the hand of the enemy

    the walls of her palaces;

a clamor was raised in the house of the Lord

    as on a day of festival.

⁸ The Lord determined to lay in ruins

    the wall of daughter Zion;

he stretched the line;

    he did not withhold his hand from destroying;

he caused rampart and wall to lament;

    they languish together.

⁹ Her gates have sunk into the ground;

    he has ruined and broken her bars;

her king and princes are among the nations;

    guidance is no more,

and her prophets obtain

    no vision from the Lord.

¹⁰ The elders of daughter Zion

    sit on the ground in silence;

they have thrown dust on their heads

    and put on sackcloth;

the young girls of Jerusalem

    have bowed their heads to the ground.

¹¹ My eyes are spent with weeping;

    my stomach churns;

my bile is poured out on the ground

    because of the destruction of my people,

because infants and babes faint

    in the streets of the city.

¹² They cry to their mothers,

    “Where is bread and wine?”

as they faint like the wounded

    in the streets of the city,

as their life is poured out

    on their mothers’ bosom.

¹³ What can I say for you, to what compare you,

    O daughter Jerusalem?

To what can I liken you, that I may comfort you,

    O virgin daughter Zion?

For vast as the sea is your ruin;

    who can heal you?

¹⁴ Your prophets have seen for you

    false and deceptive visions;

they have not exposed your iniquity

    to restore your fortunes,

but have seen oracles for you

    that are false and misleading.

¹⁵ All who pass along the way

    clap their hands at you;

they hiss and wag their heads

    at daughter Jerusalem;

“Is this the city that was called

    the perfection of beauty,

    the joy of all the earth?”

¹⁶ All your enemies

    open their mouths against you;

they hiss, they gnash their teeth,

    they cry: “We have devoured her!

Ah, this is the day we longed for;

    at last we have seen it!”

¹⁷ The Lord has done what he purposed,

    he has carried out his threat;

as he ordained long ago,

    he has demolished without pity;

he has made the enemy rejoice over you,

    and exalted the might of your foes.

¹⁸ Cry aloud to the Lord!

    O wall of daughter Zion!

Let tears stream down like a torrent

    day and night!

Give yourself no rest,

    your eyes no respite!

¹⁹ Arise, cry out in the night,

    at the beginning of the watches!

Pour out your heart like water

    before the presence of the Lord!

Lift your hands to him

    for the lives of your children,

who faint for hunger

    at the head of every street.

²⁰ Look, O Lord, and consider!

    To whom have you done this?

Should women eat their offspring,

    the children they have borne?

Should priest and prophet be killed

    in the sanctuary of the Lord?

²¹ The young and the old are lying

    on the ground in the streets;

my young women and my young men

    have fallen by the sword;

in the day of your anger you have killed them,

    slaughtering without mercy.

²² You invited my enemies from all around

    as if for a day of festival;

and on the day of the anger of the Lord

    no one escaped or survived;

those whom I bore and reared

    my enemy has destroyed.