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Lamentations 2
1 How hath the LORD covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in
his anger, and cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel, and
remembered not his footstool in the day of his anger!
2 The LORD hath swallowed up all the habitations of Jacob, and hath
not pitied: he hath thrown down in his wrath the strong holds of the daughter of
Judah; he hath brought them down to the ground: he hath polluted the kingdom and
the princes thereof.
3 He hath cut off in his fierce anger all the horn of Israel: he
hath drawn back his right hand from before the enemy, and he burned against
Jacob like a flaming fire, which devoureth round about.
4 He hath bent his bow like an enemy: he stood with his right hand
as an adversary, and slew all that were pleasant to the eye in the tabernacle of
the daughter of Zion: he poured out his fury like fire.
5 The LORD was as an enemy: he hath swallowed up Israel, he hath
swallowed up all her palaces: he hath destroyed his strong holds, and hath
increased in the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation.
6 And he hath violently taken away his tabernacle, as if it were of
a garden: he hath destroyed his places of the assembly: the LORD hath caused the
solemn feasts and sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion, and hath despised in the
indignation of his anger the king and the priest.
7 The LORD hath cast off his altar, he hath abhorred his sanctuary,
he hath given up 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 a solemn feast.
8 The LORD hath purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of
Zion: he hath stretched out a line, he hath not withdrawn his hand from
destroying: therefore he made the rampart and the wall to lament; they
languished together.
9 Her gates are sunk into the ground; he hath destroyed and broken
her bars: her king and her princes are among the Gentiles: the law is no more;
her prophets also find no vision from the LORD.
10 The elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground, and keep
silence: they have cast up dust upon their heads; they have girded themselves
with sackcloth: the virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground.
11 Mine eyes do fail with tears, my bowels are troubled, my liver
is poured upon the earth, for the destruction of the daughter of my people;
because the children and the sucklings swoon in the streets of the city.
12 They say to their mothers, Where is corn and wine? when they
swooned as the wounded in the streets of the city, when their soul was poured
out into their mothers' bosom.
13 What thing shall I take to witness for thee? what thing shall I
liken to thee, O daughter of Jerusalem? what shall I equal to thee, that I may
comfort thee, O virgin daughter of Zion? for thy breach is great like the sea:
who can heal thee?
14 Thy prophets have seen vain and foolish things for thee: and
they have not discovered thine iniquity, to turn away thy captivity; but have
seen for thee false burdens and causes of banishment.
15 All that pass by clap their hands at thee; they hiss and wag
their head at the daughter of Jerusalem, saying, Is this the city that men call
The perfection of beauty, The joy of the whole earth?
16 All thine enemies have opened their mouth against thee: they
hiss and gnash the teeth: they say, We have swallowed her up: certainly this is
the day that we looked for; we have found, we have seen it.
17 The LORD hath done that which he had devised; he hath fulfilled
his word that he had commanded in the days of old: he hath thrown down, and hath
not pitied: and he hath caused thine enemy to rejoice over thee, he hath set up
the horn of thine adversaries.
18 Their heart cried unto the LORD, O wall of the daughter of Zion,
let tears run down like a river day and night: give thyself no rest; let not the
apple of thine eye cease.
19 Arise, cry out in the night: in the beginning of the watches
pour out thine heart like water before the face of the LORD: lift up thy hands
toward him for the life of thy young children, that faint for hunger in the top
of every street.
20 Behold, O LORD, and consider to whom thou hast done this. Shall
the women eat their fruit, and children of a span long? shall the priest and the
prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord?
21 The young and the old lie on the ground in the streets: my
virgins and my young men are fallen by the sword; thou hast slain them in the
day of thine anger; thou hast killed, and not pitied.
22 Thou hast called as in a solemn day my terrors round about, so
that in the day of the LORD's anger none escaped nor remained: those that I have
swaddled and brought up hath mine enemy consumed.
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