Her Comfortless Doom

1 Alas! How lonely the city

Once crowded with people.

She that was great among nations

Is now as a widow.

She that was queen of the provinces

Now is a vassal.

2 Sore, sore she weeps in the night;

There are tears on her cheecks.

Now there is no one to comfort

Of all those that loved her.

All her friends have proved faithless,

And turned to be foes.

3 From sorrow and toil into exile

Hath Judah departed;

And now is her home with the hearthen,

And no rest she findeth.

In the midst of her straits her pursuers

Have all overtaken her.

4 The highways to Zion lie mourning,

For pilgrims are none.

All desolate now are her gates,

And her priest are in sorrow.

Her virgins are dragged away far;

She herself is in bitterness.

5 Supreme her foes are now,

And her enemies triumph.

The Lord hath afflicted her sore

For her manifold sins.

Gone are her little once captive

In front of the foe.

6 The glory is vanished clean

From the daughter of Zion.

Her princes are like unto harts

That can nowhere find pasture;

All feeble they move on their way

With pursuers behind them.

7 Jerusalem calleth to mind

The days of her travail,

When into the hands of the foemen

Her people fell helpless.

The mocking foe feasted his eyes

On her sore desolation.

8 Jerusalem hath grievously sinned,

And so she hath fallen.

All they that honoured despise her

At sight of her nakedness.

She meanwhile groaneth and moaneth

And turneth her backward.

9 Her filthiness clung to her skirts;

She became all abhorrent.

To the future she gave not a thought,

So her fall was appalling.

Behold, O Lord, what I suffer

From the insolent foe.

10 The foeman hath stretched out his hand

To secure all her treasures.

The hearthen she saw enter in

And her temple profane–

Even those Thou forbadest to mix

With Thine own congregation.

11 Her people all groan and moan

In their search after bread.

They have given away their treasures

For food to revive them.

Behold, O Jehovah, and see

How abject am I.

12 All ye that pass by, I appeal to you,

Look ye and see;

Has there ever been sorrow like mine,

Like that dealt out to me,

When the Lord, in His fierce indignation,

Did put me to grief?

13 He hurled down fire from on high;

It hath entered my bones.

A net He hath spread for my feet;

He hath turned me backward.

Faint He hath left me and desolate

All the day long.

14 A watch He hath kept on my sins;

And into a yoke

For my neck with His hands He hath twined them.

Then, crippling my strength,

He hath given me into the hands

Of a foe irresistible.

15 The Lord hath hurled to the ground

All the strong men within me.

He hath summoned a festal assembly

To crush my young (warriors).

The Lord in His wine-press hath trodden

The daughter of Judah.

16 For these things I weep without creasing;

Mine eyes stream with tears;

For none have I now by my side

To refresh me and comfort me.

My children are clean distraught,

For the foe hath prevailed.

17 Zion hath stretched forth her hands;

There is no one to comfort her.

On her neighbours the Lord laid a charge

To be hostile to Jacob;

And now is Jerusalem vile

And abhorrent among them.

18 As for the Lord, He is just;

For the rebel was I.

Ye peoples all, hear, I entreat you,

And look on my sorrow.

Together my maidens and youths

Are gone into captivity.

19 I called upon those that had loved me,

But they have deceived me.

In the city my priest and mine elders

Have perished of hunger.

For the bread they searched in their need,

But their search was in vain.

20 Look, Lord, for distress is upon me,

And ferment within me.

Within me my heart writhes with pain,

That, for playing the rebel,

The sword dealeth death in the streets,

In the houses the pestilence.

21 Listen to these my sighs;

There is no one to comfort me.

My foes have all heard with delight

Of the evil Thou wroughtest me,

Bringing the day Thou proclaimedst

For all of my sins.

22 Let their wickedness all come before Thee;

Let them fare like me;

And do even so unto them

As Thou didst unto me.

For my sighs are many and many,

And sore is my heart.

The Divine Judgment and the Inconsolable Sorrow

2 Alas! How the Lord is beclouding

The daughter of Zion!

From the heaven down to earth He hath hurled

The glory of Israel.

In the day of His wrath He remembers

His foot-stool no more.

2 Without pity the Lord hath engulfed

All the homesteads of Jacob.

In His wrath He hath torn clean down

All the strongholds of Judah,

Hath hurled to the ground in dishonour

Her king and her princes.

3 He hath hewn in the glow of His anger

All Israel’s horn.

He hath drawn His right hand back

From the face of the foe.

Like a fire He is blazing in Jacob,

Devouring around.

4 His bow He hath bent like a foeman;

He stands as for siege.

All the lovely He slays in the tent

Of the daughter of Zion.

He hath poured forth His anger like fire.

5 The Lord hath become like a foe;

He hath swallowed up Israel,

Swallowed her palaces all–

He hath ruined her strongholds,

And heaped on the daughter of Zion

Lamenting and woe.

6 His booth like His vine He hath ravaged;

He hath ruined His trysting-place.

Jehovah hath blotted from Zion

The feast and the sabbath.

The king and the priest He hath spurned

In the heat of His anger.

7 The Lord hath rejected His altar

And cast off His holy place,

Given to the hands of the foemen

The walls of her palaces.

In the house of the Lord there were shouts

Like the shouts of a feast-day.

8 For the walls of the daughter of Zion

The Lord hath planned ruin.

He stretched out the line, and withdrew not

His ravaging hand.

Wall and rampart He plunged into mourning–

Together they languish.

9 Sunk in the dust are her gates,

And her bars He hath shivered.

Her king and her princes are exiles

And guidance is none.

Yea, and no vision hath come

From the Lord to His prophets.

10 Speechless they sit on the ground,

Even the elders of Zion–

With dust cast up on their heads,

And with girdles of sack-cloth.

The maids of Jerusalem bow

With their heads to the ground.

11 Mine eyes are wasted with weeping,

My bowels are troubled.

My heart is poured out on the ground

For the wreck of my people.

The babe and the suckling lie faint

On the streets of the city.

12 To their mothers they keep on saying,

"O where is our bread?"

Like the wounded they lie in a swoon

On the streets of the city,

As they pour out their lives (to the death)

On the breasts of their mothers.

13 With what shall I rank or compare thee,

O daughter of Jerusalem?

Where is thy like, that I comfort thee,

Virgin of Zion?

For vast as the sea is thy ruin;

(Alas!) who can heal thee?

14 The visions thy prophets have brought thee

Are false and dishonest.

They did not uncover thy guilt,

And so save thee from exile.

The visions they uttered for thee

Were deceptive and false.

15 They clapped their hand over thee–

All they that passed by.

They hissed and they wagged their heads

At Jerusalem’s daughter.

" Is this the city men called

The Perfection of Beauty?"

16 Against thee thine enemies all

Opened wide their mouths,

They hissed and they wagged their heads

At Jerusalem’s daughter.

"Is this the city men called

The Perfection of Beauty?"

16b Against thee thine enemies all

Opened wide their mouths.

They hissed and they gnashed their teeth:

"We have swallowed her up.

Yes, this is the day that we looked for:

We have it, we see it."

17 Jehovah hath done what He planned,

Hath accomplished His word:

As in days long ago He enjoined,

He hath wrecked without pity,

Hath made thee the sport of thy foes

And exalted thine enemies.

18 Cry thou aloud to the Lord,

O virgin of Zion.

Pour down thy tears like a torrent

By day and by night,

Give thyself no respite,

No rest to thine eyes.

19 Arise, pierce the night with thy cries,

As each night-watch beginneth.

Pour out like water thy heart

In the face of the Lord.

Lift up thy hands unto Him

For the life of thy littles ones,

20 Behold, O Lord, and consider

Whom thus Thou maltreatest.

Shall women devour their own offspring,

The babes that they dandled?

Shall the priest and the prophet be slain

In the Lord’s holy place?

21 In the streets on the ground they are lying–

The young and the old.

My maidens and young men together

Are fallen by the sword.

In the day of Thy wrath Thou hast slaughtered

And slain without pity.

22 Thou didst summon, as though ’twere a feast-day,

The villages round.

But not one in the day of Thine anger

Escaped or was left;

The children I brought up and fondled

Were slain by the foe.

The Fate of the People and their Leaders

4 Alas! How bedimmed is the gold,

The most pure gold.

The jewels, so sacred, lie scattered

At every street corner.

2 The children of Zion, the precious,

Whose worth is as gold,

Count, alas! but as earthenware pitchers,

The work of the potter.

3 Even the monsters give breast

And they suckle their young;

But the daughters of my people are cruel

As ostriches wild.

4 The tongue of the sucking child cleaves

To his palate for thirst.

The children are craving for bread;

There is none to dispose it.

5 Those that had feasted on dainties

Now waste on the streets.

Those that were nurtured in scarlet

Lie huddled on ash-heaps.

6 The guilt of my people surpassed

The transgressions of Sodom,

Whose overthrow came in a flash

Ere a hand could be wrung.

7 Her princes were purer than snow,

They were whiter than milk,

With a skin more ruddy than coral

And veins like the sapphire.

8 Now blacker than darkness their form–

On the streets no one knows them:

Their skin is drawn tight on their bones;

It is dry as a stick.

9 Better they that are slain with the sword

Than that perish with hunger,

Pinning away for the lack

Of the fruits of the field.

10 The hands of compassionate women

Have sodden their children.

Yea, these have served them for food

In the wreck of my people.

11 The Lord hath accomplised His wrath,

Hath poured out His hot anger,

And kindled in Zion a fire

Which devoured her foundations.

12 No kings of the earth had believed,

And no folk in the world,

That assailant or foeman could enter

The gates of Jerusalem.

13 It was all for the sins of her prophets,

The crimes of her priests,

Who have shed in the midst of the city

The blood of the righteous.

14 With the blood-stains upon them they reel

Like the blind through the streets,

And they touch with their robes those whom erstwhile

They could not endure.

15 "Away, ye unclean!" – men adjure them–

"Away, touch us not!"

So they stagger and wander around

With no resting for ever.

16 Jehovah Himself hath dispersed them–

He careth no more.

For the priest Ha hath shown no regard,

For the prophets no pity.

17 How long did our weary eyes watch

For the help that was vain!

Yea, on our watch-tower we watched

For the nation that saved not.

18 They hunted our steps, that we dared not

Appear in out streets.

Our days were cut short and completed;

Our end was now come.

19 Swifter were they that pursued us

Than eagles of heaven.

Over the mountains they chased us;

They ambushed the desert.

20 The breath of our life, God’s anointed,

Was trapped in their toils–

He of whom we had said, "’Neath his shade

We shall live as a nation."

21 Be glad and rejoice in thy home-land,

O daughter of Edom.

To thee, too, the cup shall come round;

Thou’lt be drunken and naked.

22 O Zion, thy guilt is now blotted:

Of exile no more!

But thy guilt He shall visit, O Edom;

Thy sins are laid bare.

Her Sorrows

5 Bethink thee, O Lord, of our plight;

Look and see how Thy folk are insulted.

2 Our home-land is turned unto strangers;

Our houses are passed unto foreigners.

3 Fatherless orphans are we,

And our mothers are like unto widows.

4 The water we drink we must buy,

And our wood becomes our at a price.

5 The yoke presses hard on our necks;

We are weary and never find rest.

6 We have stretched out our hands unto Egypt;

To Assyria also, for bread.

7 Our fathers, who sinned are no more;

And their guilt has been borne by us.

8 Servants are now our lords;

From their hand there is no one to save us.

9 We win bread at the risk of our lives

From the murderous bands of the desert.

10 Like an oven our skin is aglow

With the fierce fever-heat of famine.

11 The matrons they ravished in Zion,

The maids in the cities of Judah:

12 Princes were hanged by their hands,

And the faces of elders dishonoured.

13 Young men had to carry the mill;

Youths fell beneath loads of wood.

14 The elders have from the gate

And the youths given over their music.

15 The joy of our heart is vanished;

Our dancing is turned into mourning.

16 The crown is fallen from our head;

Woe, woe unto us! We have sinned.

17 For this is our heart turned faint,

For these things our eyes are grown dim–

18 For the mountains of Zion, now waste,

Over which the jackals roam.

Prayer for Deliverance

19 But thou, Lord, art seated for ever,

From age to age, on Thy throne.

20 O why then forget us for ever,

And leave us for long, long days?

21 Bring us back to Thee, Lord, let us turn,

And renew our days as of old;

22 Unless Thou hast utterly spurned us

And Thine anger is all too sore.