How Lonely Lies the City!

(2 Kings 24:10–17)

1 How [fn] lonely lies the city,

once so full of people!

She who was great among the nations

has become a widow.

The princess of the provinces

has become a slave.

2 She weeps aloud in the night,

with tears upon her cheeks.

Among all her lovers

there is no one to comfort her.

All her friends have betrayed her;

they have become her enemies.

3 Judah has gone into exile

under affliction and harsh slavery;

she dwells among the nations

but finds no place to rest.

All her pursuers have overtaken her

in the midst of her distress.

4 The roads to Zion mourn,

because no one comes to her appointed feasts.

All her gates are deserted;

her priests groan,

her maidens grieve,

and she herself is bitter with anguish.

5 Her foes have become her masters;

her enemies are at ease.

For the LORD has brought her grief

because of her many transgressions.

Her children have gone away

as captives before the enemy.

6 All the splendor has departed

from the Daughter of Zion.

Her princes are like deer

that find no pasture;

they lack the strength to flee

in the face of the hunter.

7 In the days of her affliction and wandering

Jerusalem remembers all the treasures

that were hers in days of old.

When her people fell into enemy hands

she received no help.

Her enemies looked upon her,

laughing at her downfall.

8 Jerusalem has sinned greatly;

therefore she has become an object of scorn.

All who honored her now despise her,

for they have seen her nakedness;[fn]

she herself groans and turns away.

9 Her uncleanness stains her skirts;

she did not consider her end.

Her downfall was astounding;

there was no one to comfort her.

Look, O LORD, on my affliction,

for the enemy has triumphed!

10 The adversary has seized

all her treasures.

For she has seen the nations

enter her sanctuary—

those You had forbidden

to enter Your assembly.

11 All her people groan

as they search for bread.

They have traded their treasures for food

to keep themselves alive.

Look, O LORD, and consider,

for I have become despised.

12 Is this nothing to you, all you who pass by?

Look around and see!

Is there any sorrow like mine,

which was inflicted on me,

which the LORD made me suffer

on the day of His fierce anger?

13 He sent fire from on high,

and it overpowered my bones.

He spread a net for my feet

and turned me back.

He made me desolate,

faint all the day long.

14 My transgressions are bound into a yoke,[fn]

knit together by His hand;

they are draped over my neck,

and the Lord has broken my strength.

He has delivered me into the hands

of those I cannot withstand.

15 The Lord has rejected

all the mighty men in my midst;

He has summoned an army against me [fn]

to crush my young warriors.

Like grapes in a winepress,

the Lord has trampled the Virgin Daughter of Judah.

16 For these things I weep;

my eyes flow with tears.

For there is no one nearby to comfort me,

no one to revive my soul.

My children are destitute

because the enemy has prevailed.

17 Zion stretches out her hands,

but there is no one to comfort her.

The LORD has decreed against Jacob

that his neighbors become his foes.

Jerusalem has become

an unclean thing among them.

18 The LORD is righteous,

for I have rebelled against His command.

Listen, all you people;

look upon my suffering.

My young men and maidens

have gone into captivity.

19 I called out to my lovers,

but they have betrayed me.

My priests and elders

perished in the city

while they searched for food

to keep themselves alive.

20 See, O LORD, how distressed I am!

I am churning within;

my heart is pounding within me,

for I have been most rebellious.

Outside, the sword bereaves;

inside, there is death.

21 People have heard my groaning,

but there is no one to comfort me.

All my enemies have heard of my trouble;

they are glad that You have caused it.

May You bring the day You have announced,

so that they may become like me.

22 Let all their wickedness come before You,

and deal with them

as You have dealt with me

because of all my transgressions.

For my groans are many,

and my heart is faint.

God’s Anger over Jerusalem

2 How [fn] the Lord has covered the Daughter of Zion

with the cloud of His anger!

He has cast the glory of Israel

from heaven to earth.

He has abandoned His footstool

in the day of His anger.

2 Without pity the Lord has swallowed up

all the dwellings of Jacob.

In His wrath He has demolished

the fortified cities of the Daughter of Judah.

He brought to the ground and defiled

her kingdom and its princes.

3 In fierce anger He has cut off

every horn [fn] of Israel

and withdrawn His right hand

at the approach of the enemy.

He has burned in Jacob like a flaming fire

that consumes everything around it.

4 He has bent His bow like an enemy;

His right hand is positioned.

Like a foe He has killed

all who were pleasing to the eye;

He has poured out His wrath like fire

on the tent of the Daughter of Zion.

5 The Lord is like an enemy;

He has swallowed up Israel.

He has swallowed up all her palaces

and destroyed her strongholds.

He has multiplied mourning and lamentation

for the Daughter of Judah.

6 He has laid waste His tabernacle like a garden booth;

He has destroyed His place of meeting.

The LORD has made Zion forget

her appointed feasts and Sabbaths.

In His fierce anger

He has despised both king and priest.

7 The Lord has rejected His altar;

He has abandoned His sanctuary;

He has delivered the walls of her palaces

into the hand of the enemy.

They have raised a shout in the house of the LORD

as on the day of an appointed feast.

8 The LORD determined to destroy

the wall of the Daughter of Zion.

He stretched out a measuring line

and did not withdraw His hand from destroying.

He made the ramparts and walls lament;

together they waste away.

9 Her gates have sunk into the ground;

He has destroyed and shattered their bars.

Her king and her princes are exiled among the nations,

the law is no more,

and even her prophets

find no vision from the LORD.

10 The elders of the Daughter of Zion

sit on the ground in silence.

They have thrown dust on their heads

and put on sackcloth.

The young women of Jerusalem

have bowed their heads to the ground.

11 My eyes fail from weeping;

I am churning within.

My heart is poured out in grief

over the destruction of the daughter of my people,

because children and infants faint

in the streets of the city.

12 They cry out to their mothers:

“Where is the grain and wine?”

as they faint like the wounded

in the streets of the city,

as their lives fade away

in the arms of their mothers.

13 What can I say for you?

To what can I compare you,

O Daughter of Jerusalem?

To what can I liken you,

that I may console you,

O Virgin Daughter of Zion?

For your wound is as deep as the sea.

Who can ever heal you?

14 The visions of your prophets

were empty and deceptive;

they did not expose your guilt

to ward off your captivity.

The burdens they envisioned for you

were empty and misleading.

15 All who pass by

clap their hands at you in scorn.

They hiss and shake their heads

at the Daughter of Jerusalem:

“Is this the city that was called

the perfection of beauty,

the joy of all the earth?”

16 All your enemies

open their mouths against you.

They hiss and gnash their teeth,

saying, “We have swallowed her up.

This is the day for which we have waited.

We have lived to see it!”

17 The LORD has done what He planned;

He has accomplished His decree,

which He ordained in days of old;

He has overthrown you without pity.

He has let the enemy gloat over you

and exalted the horn [fn] of your foes.

18 The hearts of the people

cry out to the Lord.[fn]

O wall of the Daughter of Zion,

let your tears run down like a river

day and night.

Give yourself no relief,

and your eyes no rest.

19 Arise, cry out in the night

from the first watch of the night.[fn]

Pour out your heart like water

in the presence of the Lord.

Lift up your hands to Him

for the lives of your children

who are fainting from hunger

on the corner of every street.

20 Look, O LORD, and consider:

Whom have You ever treated like this?

Should women eat their offspring,

the infants they have nurtured?

Should priests and prophets be killed

in the sanctuary of the Lord?

21 Both young and old lie together

in the dust of the streets.

My young men and maidens

have fallen by the sword.

You have slain them in the day of Your anger;

You have slaughtered them without compassion.

22 You summoned my attackers on every side,

as for the day of an appointed feast.

In the day of the LORD’s anger

no one escaped or survived;

my enemy has destroyed

those I nurtured and reared.

The Prophet’s Afflictions

3 I [fn] am the man who has seen affliction

under the rod of God’s wrath.

2 He has driven me away and made me walk

in darkness instead of light.

3 Indeed, He keeps turning His hand

against me all day long.

4 He has worn away my flesh and skin;

He has shattered my bones.

5 He has besieged me and surrounded me

with bitterness and hardship.

6 He has made me dwell in darkness

like those dead for ages.

7 He has walled me in so I cannot escape;

He has weighed me down with chains.

8 Even when I cry out and plead for help,

He shuts out my prayer.

9 He has barred my ways with cut stones;

He has made my paths crooked.

10 He is a bear lying in wait,

a lion hiding in ambush.

11 He forced me off my path and tore me to pieces;

He left me without help.

12 He bent His bow

and set me as the target for His arrow.

13 He pierced my kidneys

with His arrows.

14 I am a laughingstock to all my people;

they mock me in song all day long.

15 He has filled me with bitterness;

He has intoxicated me with wormwood.

16 He has ground my teeth with gravel

and trampled me in the dust.

17 My soul has been deprived of peace;

I have forgotten what prosperity is.

18 So I say, “My strength has perished,

along with my hope from the LORD.”

The Prophet’s Hope

19 Remember my affliction and wandering,

the wormwood and the gall.

20 Surely my soul remembers

and is humbled within me.

21 Yet I call this to mind,

and therefore I have hope:

22 Because of the loving devotion [fn] of the LORD we are not consumed,

for His mercies never fail.

23 They are new every morning;

great is Your faithfulness!

24 “The LORD is my portion,” says my soul,

“therefore I will hope in Him.”

25 The LORD is good to those who wait for Him,

to the soul who seeks Him.

26 It is good to wait quietly

for the salvation of the LORD.

27 It is good for a man to bear the yoke

while he is still young.

28 Let him sit alone in silence,

for God has disciplined him.

29 Let him bury his face in the dust—

perhaps there is still hope.

30 Let him offer his cheek to the one who would strike him;

let him be filled with reproach.

31 For the Lord will not

cast us off forever.

32 Even if He causes grief, He will show compassion

according to His abundant loving devotion.

33 For He does not willingly afflict

or grieve the sons of men.

34 To crush underfoot

all the prisoners of the land,

35 to deny a man justice

before the Most High,

36 to subvert a man in his lawsuit—

of these the Lord does not approve.

God’s Justice

37 Who has spoken and it came to pass,

unless the Lord has ordained it?

38 Do not both adversity and good

come from the mouth of the Most High?

39 Why should any mortal man complain,

in view of his sins?

40 Let us examine and test our ways,

and turn back to the LORD.

41 Let us lift up our hearts and hands

to God in heaven:

42 “We have sinned and rebelled;

You have not forgiven.”

43 You have covered Yourself in anger and pursued us;

You have killed without pity.

44 You have covered Yourself with a cloud

that no prayer can pass through.

45 You have made us scum and refuse

among the nations.

46 All our enemies

open their mouths against us.

47 Panic and pitfall have come upon us—

devastation and destruction.

48 Streams of tears flow from my eyes

over the destruction of the daughter of my people.

49 My eyes overflow unceasingly,

without relief,

50 until the LORD

looks down from heaven and sees.

51 My eyes bring grief to my soul

because of all the daughters of my city.

52 Without cause my enemies

hunted me like a bird.

53 They dropped me alive into a pit

and cast stones upon me.

54 The waters flowed over my head,

and I thought I was going to die.

55 I called on Your name, O LORD,

out of the depths of the Pit.

56 You heard my plea:

“Do not ignore my cry for relief.”

57 You drew near when I called on You;

You said, “Do not be afraid.”

58 You defend my cause, O Lord;

You redeem my life.

59 You have seen, O LORD, the wrong done to me;

vindicate my cause!

60 You have seen all their malice,

all their plots against me.

61 O LORD, You have heard their insults,

all their plots against me—

62 the slander and murmuring of my assailants

against me all day long.

63 When they sit and when they rise,

see how they mock me in song.

64 You will pay them back what they deserve, O LORD,

according to the work of their hands.

65 Put a veil of anguish over their hearts;

may Your curse be upon them!

66 You will pursue them in anger and exterminate them

from under Your heavens, O LORD.

The Distress of Zion

4 How [fn] the gold has become tarnished,

the pure gold has become dull!

The gems of the temple lie scattered

on every street corner.

2 How the precious sons of Zion,

once worth their weight in pure gold,

are now esteemed as jars of clay,

the work of a potter’s hands!

3 Even jackals [fn] offer their breasts

to nurse their young,

but the daughter of my people has become cruel,

like an ostrich in the wilderness.

4 The nursing infant’s tongue

clings in thirst to the roof of his mouth.

Little children beg for bread,

but no one gives them any.

5 Those who once ate delicacies

are destitute in the streets;

those brought up in crimson

huddle in ash heaps.

6 The punishment [fn] of the daughter of my people

is greater than that of Sodom,

which was overthrown in an instant

without a hand turned to help her.

7 Her dignitaries were brighter than snow,

whiter than milk;

their bodies were more ruddy than rubies,

their appearance [fn] like sapphires.[fn]

8 But now their appearance is blacker than soot;

they are not recognized in the streets.

Their skin has shriveled on their bones;

it has become as dry as a stick.

9 Those slain by the sword are better off

than those who die of hunger,

who waste away, pierced with pain

because the fields lack produce.

10 The hands of compassionate women

have cooked their own children,

who became their food

in the destruction of the daughter of my people.

11 The LORD has exhausted His wrath;

He has poured out His fierce anger;

He has kindled a fire in Zion,

and it has consumed her foundations.

12 The kings of the earth did not believe,

nor any people of the world,

that an enemy or a foe

could enter the gates of Jerusalem.

13 But this was for the sins of her prophets

and the guilt of her priests,

who shed the blood of the righteous

in her midst.

14 They wandered blind in the streets,

defiled by this blood,

so that no one dared

to touch their garments.

15 “Go away! Unclean!”

men shouted at them.

“Away, away! Do not touch us!”

So they fled and wandered.

Among the nations it was said,

“They can stay here no longer.”

16 The presence of the LORD has scattered them;

He regards them no more.

The priests are shown no honor;

the elders find no favor.

17 All the while our eyes were failing

as we looked in vain for help.

We watched from our towers

for a nation that could not save us.

18 They stalked our every step,

so that we could not walk in our streets.

Our end drew near, our time ran out,

for our end had come!

19 Those who chased us were swifter

than the eagles in the sky;

they pursued us over the mountains

and ambushed us in the wilderness.

20 The LORD’s anointed, the breath of our life,

was captured in their pits.

We had said of him,

“Under his shadow we will live among the nations.”

21 So rejoice and be glad, O Daughter of Edom,

you who dwell in the land of Uz.

Yet the cup will pass to you as well;

you will get drunk and expose yourself.

22 O Daughter of Zion, your punishment is complete;

He will not prolong your exile.[fn]

But He will punish your iniquity, O Daughter of Edom;

He will expose your sins.

A Prayer for Restoration

5 Remember, O LORD, what has happened to us.

Look and see our disgrace!

2 Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers,

our houses to foreigners.

3 We have become fatherless orphans;

our mothers are widows.

4 We must buy the water we drink;

our wood comes at a price.

5 We are closely pursued;

we are weary and find no rest.

6 We submitted to Egypt and Assyria

to get enough bread.

7 Our fathers sinned and are no more,

but we bear their punishment.

8 Slaves rule over us;

there is no one to deliver us from their hands.

9 We get our bread at the risk of our lives

because of the sword in the wilderness.

10 Our skin is as hot as an oven

with fever from our hunger.

11 Women have been ravished in Zion,

virgins in the cities of Judah.

12 Princes have been hung up by their hands;

elders receive no respect.

13 Young men toil at millstones;

boys stagger under loads of wood.

14 The elders have left the city gate;

the young men have stopped their music.

15 Joy has left our hearts;

our dancing has turned to mourning.

16 The crown has fallen from our head.

Woe to us, for we have sinned!

17 Because of this, our hearts are faint;

because of these, our eyes grow dim—

18 because of Mount Zion, which lies desolate,

patrolled by foxes.

19 You, O LORD, reign forever;

Your throne endures from generation to generation.

20 Why have You forgotten us forever?

Why have You forsaken us for so long?

21 Restore us to Yourself, O LORD, so we may return;

renew our days as of old,

22 unless You have utterly rejected us

and remain angry with us beyond measure.