Lamentations
4 How gold is tarnishing, the best nuggets deteriorating,
Sacred stones being spilled at every street-corner!
2 Sion’s most precious sons, prized at their weight in red gold, how they were classed with earthen jars, work of a potter’s hands!
3 Even jackals offer a teat, suckle their cubs;
the daughter of my people became cruel like the ostriches in the wilderness.
4 A sucking baby’s tongue stuck to its palate for thirst.
Children asked for bread, had nobody that handed it to them.
5* Those who had been eating with dainties were starving about the streets.
Those who had been laid on scarlet hugged rubbish on the dumps.
6 And the guilt of the daughter of my people showed greater than the sin of Sodom
that was overthrown all at once and hands were not busy on her.
7*** Her devotees were more stainless than snow, more white than milk,
redder-limbed than coral, their tattooing lapis lazuli.
8 Their figures turned darker than charcoal, they were not to be recognized on the street;
their skins shrank over their bones, dried out, became like wood.
9** Those who were struck down by swords were better off than those who were struck down by starvation,
inasmuch as those, stabbed through, would flow out in field crops.
10 The hands of tenderhearted women cooked their own children,
they served as mourning-dinner for them at the catastrophe
of the daughter of my people.
11 Jehovah wreaked his ire, poured out his anger,
and kindled a fire in Sion which consumed her foundations.
12 The kings of earth, and all the inhabitants of the world, had not believed
that foe and enemy would come in at Jerusalem’s gates.
13 For the sins of her prophets, the guilts of her priests,
who shed honest men’s blood within her,
14 They wandered blind in the streets, polluted with blood,
with what they could not touch with their clothes;
15 “Away! unclean!” they called out, “away! away! do not touch!” because they had taken wing, were on the move; they said among
the nations “They shall not be harbored any longer”;
16 Jehovah personally divided them, will no longer look at them. They had no respect for priests, no grace for old men.
17 Our eyes are still exhausting themselves looking toward our imaginary help;
on our lookout we watched for a nation that does not save.
18 They spied our steps too closely for walking in our squares;
our end had come near; our time was up; yes, our end had come.
19 Our pursuers were swifter than vultures in the sky;
on the mountains they ran us down, in the wilderness they lay in ambush for us.
20 The breath of our nostrils, Jehovah’s anointed, was caught in their pitfalls,
he of whom we thought “In his shadow we shall remain alive among the nations.”
21* Be joyous and glad, daughter of Edom, you that live in the country of ʽUs:
to you too will pass such a cup that you will get drunk and show your nakedness.
22 Your guilt is all done with, daughter of Sion; no more will he have you deported.
He has paid attention to your guilt, daughter of Edom; he has exposed your sins.