The LAMENTATIONS
of Jeremiah
-- Literal Translation of the Holy Bible - Copyright © 1976 - 2000 --

Chapter: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |

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Lamentations 1
1 ¶ How alone sits the city that was full of people! She has become like a widow, once great among the nations; a noblewoman among the provinces has become a payer of tribute.
2 She bitterly weeps in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks. She has no comforter among all her lovers. All her friends dealt deceitfully with her; they became enemies to her.
3 Judah went captive from affliction, and from great slavery. She dwells among the nations; she finds no rest. All her pursuers have overtaken her between the straits.
4 The roads of Zion are in mourning without any going to the appointed feasts. All her gates are deserted; her priests sigh, her virgins are afflicted; and she is in bitterness.
5 Her foes have become as chief; her enemies are at ease. For Jehovah has afflicted her for the multitude of her trespasses. Her children have gone, captive before the foe.
6 And from the daughter of Zion all her splendor has departed. Her rulers have become like bucks; they find no pasture; and they have gone without strength before the pursuer.
7 In the days of her affliction and her wandering, Jerusalem remembers all her desirable things from previous days, when her people fell into the hand of the foe; and there is no ally for her. The foes saw her; they laughed at her annihilations.
8 Jerusalem has grievously sinned; on account of this, she has been removed. All the ones knowing her despise her, for they saw her nakedness. Also, she groans and turns backward.
9 Her uncleanness is in her skirts. She did not remember her end and has gone down astoundingly. She had no comforter. O Jehovah, behold my affliction, for the enemy has magnified himself.
10 The enemy has spread out his hand on all her desirable things. Indeed, she has seen the nations enter into her holy place, whom You commanded that they not enter into Your congregation.
11 All her people sigh from seeking bread. They gave their desirable things for food to revive the soul. See, O Jehovah, and look on me, for I have become vile.
12 ¶ Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Behold, and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow which is done to me, with which Jehovah has afflicted me in the day of His burning anger.
13 From on high He has sent fire into my bones and subdued them. He spread a net for my feet; He has turned me back; He gave me desolation. All the days I faint.
14 The yoke of my transgressions is bound by His hand, they intertwine, they rise on my neck. He caused my strength to falter. The Lord gave me into their hands. I am not able to rise up.
15 The Lord has trampled all my mighty ones in my midst. He called a gathering against me to crush my young men. As a winepress, the Lord trod the virgin daughter of Judah.
16 I weep for these; my eye, my eye runs down with water, because a comforter who could be reviving my soul is far from me. My sons are desolated because the enemy prevails.
17 Zion spreads forth her hands; there is not one comforting to her; Jehovah has commanded concerning Jacob that his enemies should be all around him. Jerusalem has become as an impure thing among them.
18 Jehovah is righteous, for I rebelled against His mouth. I beseech you, all peoples, hear and see my sorrow. My virgins and my young men went into exile.
19 I called for my lovers; they deceived me. My priests and my elders expired in the city, while they sought food for them to bring back their life.
20 Behold, O Jehovah, for I am distressed. My inward parts ferment; my heart is overturned within me; for I have grievously rebelled. On the outside the sword bereaves; in the house it is as death.
21 They hear that I sigh; there is no comforter to me. All my enemies have heard my evil; they rejoice that You have done it. You will bring the day that You have called, and they shall be like me.
22 Let all their evil come before You; and do to them as You have done to me for all my transgressions. For my sighs are many, and my heart is faint.

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Lamentations 2
1 ¶ How the Lord has clouded over the daughter of Zion in His anger! He cast the beauty of Israel down from the heavens to the earth, and did not remember His footstool in the day of His wrath.
2 The Lord swallowed up all of Jacob's dwelling-places, and did not pity. In His wrath He has thrown down the strongholds of the daughter of Judah. He made them touch to the earth. He has defiled the kingdom and its rulers.
3 He cut off all the horn of Israel in hot anger. He has turned back His right hand from the face of the enemies, and He burned in Jacob as a flaming fire; it consumes all around.
4 He trod His bow like an enemy, and set His right hand like a foe; and killed all who were desirable 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 his palaces and destroyed his strongholds; and He increased mourning and weeping in the daughter of Judah.
6 And He violated his booth like a garden and destroyed his meeting-places. Jehovah made meeting-places and sabbaths forgotten in Zion, and He rejected king and priest in the fury of His anger.
7 The Lord has cast off His altar; He rejected His holy place. He has delivered the walls of her palaces into the hand of the enemy. They gave a noise in Jehovah's house, as a day of meeting.
8 Jehovah willed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion; He has stretched out a line. He has not withdrawn His hand from swallowing; and He made rampart and wall lament; they languish together.
9 Her gates have sunk in the ground; He has dispersed and shattered her bars. Her kings and her rulers are among the nations. The Law is not. Also her prophets have not found a vision from Jehovah.
10 ¶ They sit on the ground; the elders of Zion's daughters are silent. They make dust go up on their heads, they gird on sack cloths. The virgins of Jerusalem let their heads go down to the ground.
11 And my eyes are at an end with tears, my inward parts ferment; my liver is poured on the ground for the ruin of the daughter of my people; in the fainting of children and sucklings in the city's plazas.
12 They say to their mothers, Where are grain and wine? In their fainting, they are like the wounded in the plazas of the city, in their pouring out their lives to their mothers' bosom.
13 What can I testify for you? To what will I compare you, O daughter of Jerusalem? To what shall I liken you that I may comfort you, O virgin daughter of Zion? For your crushing is great like the sea! Who can heal you?
14 Your prophets have seen false and foolish things for you; and they have not revealed your iniquity in order to turn back your captivity. Yea, they visioned for you burdens of falsehood and seductions.
15 All who pass by clap their hands at you. They hiss and wag their head at the daughter of Jerusalem, saying, Is this the city which they called the perfection of beauty, the joy of all the earth?
16 All your enemies have opened their mouth against you; they hiss and gnash the teeth; they say, We have swallowed up. Surely this is the day for which we waited; we have found; we have seen.
17 Jehovah has done what He purposed; He fulfilled His Word which He commanded from days of antiquity. He has dashed and not pitied. And He made the enemy to rejoice over you; He raised the horn of your foes.
18 Their heart cried to the Lord. O wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears go down like a torrent by day and by night; do not give relief to yourself; let not the daughter of your eye rest.
19 Rise up, cry out in the night at the head of the watches; pour out your heart like waters before the face of the Lord. Lift up your hands to Him for the life of your children faint with hunger at the head of every open place.
20 Behold, O Jehovah, and look! To whom have you done this? Should women eat their fruit, children of tender care? Should priest and prophet be killed in the holy place of the Lord?
21 Young and old lie on the ground of the plazas. My virgins and my young men have fallen by the sword. You have killed in the day of Your anger. You have killed, You have not pitied.
22 You have called my terrors all around, as in a day of appointment; and there was not an escaped one or a survivor in the day of the anger of Jehovah. Those whom I have nursed and multiplied, my enemy has consumed.

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Lamentations 3
1 ¶ I, the man, have seen affliction by the rod of His wrath.
2 He led me and made me go in darkness and not light.
3 Surely He turned against me; He turns His hand all the day.
4 He has wasted my flesh and my skin. He has shattered my bones.
5 He built against me and has put around me bitterness and hardship.
6 He has made me live in dark places like the dead of old.
7 He walled around me and I cannot go out; He has made heavy my bronze chain.
8 Also, when I cry out and shout for help, He shuts out my prayer.
9 He walled up my ways with cut stone; my paths are crooked.
10 He was a bear lying in wait for me, a lion in secret places.
11 He has deflected my ways and torn me to pieces; He made me desolate.
12 He has trod His bow and set me up as a mark for the arrow.
13 He caused the sons of His quiver to enter into my inward parts.
14 I was a mockery to all my people, their song all the day.
15 He has filled me with bitterness and made me drunk with wormwood.
16 And He broke my teeth with gravel; He has covered me in the ashes.
17 And You cast off my soul from peace; I have forgotten goodness.
18 And I said, My strength and my hope have perished from Jehovah.
19 Remember my affliction and my roaming, as wormwood and bitterness.
20 My soul vividly remembers and bows down on me.
21 ¶ I bring back this to my heart. On account of this I hope.
22 It is by the kindnesses of Jehovah that we are not consumed, for His mercies are not ended.
23 They are new by mornings; great is Your faithfulness.
24 Jehovah is my portion, says my soul. On account of this I shall hope to Him.
25 Jehovah is good to those waiting on Him, to the soul seeking Him.
26 It is good that a man hopes for the salvation of Jehovah, even in silence.
27 It is good for a man that he bear a yoke in his youth.
28 He sits alone and is silent, for He laid it on him.
29 He puts his mouth in the dust, if perhaps there is hope.
30 He gives his cheek to Him who strikes him; he is filled with reproach.
31 For the Lord will not cast off forever.
32 For though He causes grief, He will have pity according to His many kindnesses.
33 For He does not afflict from His heart, nor does He grieve the sons of man,
34 to crush all the prisoners of earth under His feet,
35 to turn aside the justice of a man before the face of the Most High,
36 to wrong a man in his cause. This, the Lord does not see.
37 ¶ Who is this speaking, and it happens when the Lord does not command it?
38 Both the evil and the good do not go out from the mouth of the Most High.
39 What? Should mankind complain, living man because of his sins?
40 Let us search and examine our ways, and turn again to Jehovah.
41 Let us lift up our heart and palms to God in Heaven.
42 ¶ We have transgressed and rebelled; You, You have not forgiven.
43 You have wrapped Yourself with anger and pursued us; You have slain; You have not pitied.
44 You have covered for You with a cloud, from any prayer passing through.
45 You have made us sweepings and garbage in the midst of the peoples.
46 All our enemies have opened their mouths against us.
47 Dread and a pit is ours, devastation and ruin.
48 Streams of water go down from my eye for the ruin of the daughter of my people.
49 My eye flows out and does not cease, from there not being any relaxing,
50 until Jehovah shall look down and see from Heaven.
51 My eye deals severely with my soul, from all the daughters of my city.
52 My enemies have hunted me like a bird without cause.
53 They have cut off my life in the pit, and they threw a stone at me.
54 Waters flowed over on my head; I said, I am cut off.
55 ¶ I called on Your name, O Jehovah, from the lowest pit.
56 You have heard my voice; do not hide Your ear at my relief, at my cry for help.
57 You came near in the day I called You; You said, Do not fear!
58 O Lord, You contended for the causes of my soul; You redeemed my life.
59 You have seen my wrong, O Jehovah; judge my cause.
60 You have seen all their vengeance, all their plots against me.
61 You have heard their reproach, O Jehovah, all their plots against me,
62 the lips of those rising up against me, and their scheming against me all the day.
63 Look at their sitting and their rising up. I am their song.
64 You will give back a recompense to them, O Jehovah, according to the work of their hands.
65 You will give them insolence of heart as Your curse to them.
66 Pursue and destroy them in anger from under the heavens of Jehovah.

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Lamentations 4
1 ¶ How the gold dims, the good gold is changed! The stones of the sanctuary are poured out at the head of every street.
2 The precious sons of Zion are weighed against pure gold. How they are counted as earthen vessels, the work of a potter's hand!
3 Even the jackals draw out the breast; they suckle their young. But the daughter of my people is cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness.
4 The tongue of the nursling cleaves to his palate in thirst. The young children ask bread, but there is no breaking for them.
5 Those who ate delicacies are desolate in the streets; those reared on scarlet embrace dunghills.
6 And the iniquity of the daughter of my people is heaped more than the sin of Sodom, which was overthrown as in a moment, and no hands were whirled on her.
7 Her Nazarites were purer than snow, whiter than milk; they were redder of bone than corals; their cuttings as azure-blue, as lapis lazuli.
8 Their appearance is darker than soot; they are not recognized in the open places. Their skin has shriveled on their bones; it is dried up, it has become like wood.
9 Better are the ones slain by the sword than the ones slain by famine, those who flow away, pierced because the produce of my fields failed.
10 The hands of the compassionate women have boiled their own children; they became food to them in the ruin of the daughter of my people.
11 Jehovah has fulfilled His fury; He has poured out His fierce anger and has kindled a fire in Zion; and it has devoured its foundations.
12 The kings of the earth and all those living in the world would not have believed that the foe and the hater would go into the gates of Jerusalem.
13 ¶ Because of the sins of her prophets and the iniquities of her priests, pouring out the blood of the righteous in her midst,
14 they reeled blind in the open places. They are defiled with blood, so that not any are able to touch their garments.
15 They cried out to them, Depart! Unclean! Depart, depart! Touch not! Indeed they fled and reeled. They said among the nations, They will not continue to live there.
16 The face of Jehovah has divided them out; He will not continue to look on them. They did not lift up the face of the priests, they did not favor the elders.
17 While here we are, our eyes fail for our vain help. In our watching, we have watched for a nation; it does not save.
18 They hunted our steps from going in our open places. Our end came near, our days were fulfilled, for our end had come.
19 Our pursuers were swifter than the eagles of the heavens; they hotly pursued us on the mountains; they lay in wait for us in the wilderness.
20 The breath of our nostrils, the anointed of Jehovah, was captured in their pits; of whom we said, In His shadow we will live among the nations.
21 ¶ Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom, living in the land of Uz. The cup also shall pass through to you; you shall be drunken and stripped naked.
22 Your perversity is complete, daughter of Zion; He will not continue to exile you. He will visit your perversity, daughter of Edom; He will expose your sins.

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Lamentations 5
1 ¶ O Jehovah, remember what has been to us; look upon and see our reproach.
2 Our inheritance has been turned to aliens, our houses to foreigners.
3 We are orphans. There is no father; our mothers are like widows.
4 We have drunk our water for silver; our wood comes for a price.
5 We are pursued; we grow weary; rest is not given to us.
6 We have given the hand to the Egyptians, to the Assyrian, in order to be satisfied with bread.
7 Our fathers have sinned, and are not; we have borne their iniquities.
8 Slaves rule over us; there is no rescuer from their hand.
9 We bring in our bread with our souls, from the face of the sword of the wilderness.
10 Our skin is burned black like an oven, because of the fever heat of famine.
11 They raped the women in Zion, virgins in the cities of Judah.
12 Rulers were hanged by their hands; the faces of the elders were not honored.
13 They lifted the young men to the hand mill, and the youths stumbled at the wood.
14 The elders have ceased from the gate, the young men from their music.
15 The joy of our heart has ceased; our dance has turned to mourning.
16 The crown has fallen from our head. Woe now to us, for we have sinned!
17 ¶ For this our heart is faint; our eyes are dim for these things.
18 Zion is laid waste on the mountain; foxes walk about on it.
19 O Jehovah, You remain forever; Your throne to generation and generation.
20 Why do You forget us forever, forsake us the length of days?
21 Return us to You, O Jehovah, and we shall return. Renew our days as of old,
22 for You have utterly rejected us; You are exceedingly angry against us.

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Scripture taken from the Literal Translation of the Holy Bible
Copyright © 1976 - 2000
By Jay P. Green, Sr.
Used by permission of the copyright holder

[Policy for Reprint & Quoting from the Literal Translation]