Jeremiah’s Lament

• 7 You have persuaded me, O Yahweh, and I was persuaded. You have overpowered me, and you have prevailed.
• I have become a laughingstock all day long.
  • Everyone[fn] is mocking me.
  • 8 For as often as[fn] I speak, I must cry out violence and destruction.
• I must shout, for the word of Yahweh has become for me
  • a disgrace and derision all day long.
  • 9 But if I say, “I will not mention him and I will no longer speak in his name,”
• then it becomes in my heart like a fire burning,
  • locked up in my bones,
• and I struggle to contain it,[fn]
  • and I am not able.
  • 10 For I hear the rumor of many, “Terror is from all around, denounce him,[fn]
  • yes, let us denounce him!”
• All my close friends[fn] are watchers of my stumbling,
  • saying, “perhaps he can be persuaded,
• and we can prevail over him,
  • and we can take our revenge on him.”
  • 11 But Yahweh is with me like a powerful warrior. Therefore[fn] my persecutors will stumble and will not prevail.
• They will be very ashamed, for they will not achieve success.
  • Their everlasting insult[fn] will not be forgotten.
  • 12 Yet, O Yahweh of hosts, who tests the righteous, who sees the heart[fn] and the mind ,[fn]
• let me see your retribution upon them,
  • for to you I have revealed my legal case.
  • 13 Sing to Yahweh, praise Yahweh, for he has delivered the life of the poor from the hand of evildoers.
  • 14 Cursed be the day on which I was born, let not the day on which my mother gave birth to me be blessed.
  • 15 Cursed be the man who brought the news to my father, saying ,[fn] “A child is born to you, a son!”
  • and he made him very glad.
  • 16 And let that man be like the cities that Yahweh demolished without regret,
• and let him hear a cry for help in the morning,
  • and an alarm at the time of noon.
  • 17 Because he did not kill me in the womb, so that my mother would have been for me my grave,
  • and her womb would be pregnant forever.
  • 18 Why[fn] did I come out from the womb, to see toil, and sorrow, and to end my days in shame ?[fn]