MKJV - Lamentations - 2

2:1  How the Lord has covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in His anger! He cast down the beauty of Israel from the heavens to the earth and remembered not His footstool in the day of His anger.

2:2  The Lord swallowed up all the dwelling-places of Jacob and has not pitied. In His wrath He has thrown down the strongholds of the daughter of Judah; He has brought them down to the ground. He has defiled the kingdom and its rulers.

2:3  He has cut off all the horn of Israel in His fierce anger; He has drawn back His right hand from before the enemy, and He burned against Jacob like flaming fire which devours all around.

2:4  He has bent His bow like an enemy; He stood with His right hand like an adversary, and killed all who were desirable to the eye in the tabernacle of the daughter of Zion. He poured out His fury like fire.

2:5  The LORD was like an enemy; He swallowed up Israel; He has swallowed up all her palaces, and destroyed His strongholds. And He has increased mourning and weeping in the daughter of Judah.

2:6  And He violated His booth like a garden, and destroyed His meeting places. The LORD caused the meeting places and sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion, and He despised the king and the priest in the fury of His anger.

2:7  The LORD has cast off His altar; He rejected His sanctuary; He has given up the walls of her palaces into the hater's hand. They gave a noise in the house of the LORD, as a day of meeting.

2:8  The LORD purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion; He has stretched out a line; He has not withdrawn His hand from swallowing, and He made rampart and wall lament; they languish together.

2:9  Her gates have sunk in the ground; He has destroyed and broken her bars. Her kings and her rulers are among the nations. The law is no more; also her prophets also find no vision from the LORD.

2:10  The elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground and are silent; they send up dust on their heads; they gird on sackclothes. The virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground.

2:11  My eyes fail with tears; my inward parts ferment; my liver is poured on the ground for the ruin of the daughter of my people, in that the children and the babies faint in the streets of the city.

2:12  They say to their mothers, Where are grain and wine? In their fainting they are like the wounded in the streets of the city, in their pouring out their lives to their mothers' bosom.

2:13  What can I testify for you? What thing shall I compare to you, O daughter of Jerusalem? What shall I equal to you, so that I may comfort you, O virgin daughter of Zion? For your break is great like the sea! Who can heal you?

2:14  Your prophets have seen false and foolish things for you, and they have not uncovered your iniquity, to turn away your captivity; but they have seen false oracles and seductions for you.

2:15  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 the whole earth?

2:16  All your enemies have opened their mouth against you; 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.

2:17  The LORD has done what He has purposed; He has fulfilled His word which He commanded from the days of old. He has thrown down and not pitied. And He caused your hater to rejoice over you; He has set up the horn of your foes.

2:18  Their heart cried to the LORD. O wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears run down like a torrent day and night; give yourself no rest. Let not the daughter of your eye cease.

2:19  Arise, cry out in the night. At the beginning of the watches, pour out your heart like water before the face of the LORD. Lift up your hands toward Him for the life of your children who are faint for hunger in the head of every street.

2:20  Behold, O LORD, and consider to whom You have done this. Shall the women eat their fruit, children of tender care? Shall the priest and the prophet be killed in the holy place of the Lord?

2:21  Young and old lie on the ground in the streets; my virgins and my young men have fallen by the sword. You have killed them in the day of Your anger; You have killed and not pitied.

2:22  You have called as in a solemn day my terrors all around, and here was not an escaped one or a survivor in the day of the LORD's anger. Those whom I have nursed and multiplied, my enemy has consumed.