18 My sorrow is beyond comfort.

≈ My heart is faint within me.

19 Listen, it’s the sound of a cry for help from my people’s daughter from a far away land.

Isn’t Yahweh in Tsiyon (Zion)?

Is its king no longer there?

Why have they provoked me to anger with their idols and with useless foreign gods?

20 The harvest has passed, summer has ended,

and we haven’t been rescued.

21 I’m broken because of the brokenness of my people’s daughter.

≈ I’m in mourning and overwhelmed by depression.

22 Is there no medicine in Gilead?

≈ Isn’t there a doctor there?

Why isn’t my people’s daughter getting healed?

9 If only my head was water, and my eyes were a fountain of tears,

→ then I’d weep day and night for my people’s slain daughter.

2 Who will give me a lodging place for travellers in the desert?

Then I would leave my people and walk away from them,

because all of them are adulterers—

≈ a treacherous group of people.

3 They bend their tongues like bows—

chasing lies rather than faithfulness.

They grow strong in the land

because they go from evil to evil and they don’t know me.

That’s Yahweh’s declaration.

4 Let each person beware of his neighbour,

≈ and don’t rely on any relative,

because brothers consistently betray,

≈ and neighbours go around slandering.

5 Every one will deceive their neighbour,

≈ and they won’t tell the truth—

≈ they teach their tongues to tell lies.

→ They wear themselves out being disobedient.

6 Your residence is in the middle of deceit—

because of deceit they refuse to know me.

That’s Yahweh’s declaration.

7 Because of that, Commander-in-chief Yahweh says,

I’m about to refine them and test them,

because how else should I act towards my people’s daughter.

8 Their tongue is a deadly arrow—

it speaks out deceit.

With his mouth, a man speaks peace with his neighbours,

while in his mind, he’s planning his ambush.

9 Shouldn’t I punish them for those things? Yahweh says.

≈ Shouldn’t I avenge myself against a nation like that?

10 On the mountains I’ll take up weeping and wailing,

≈ and a funeral song out in the wilderness pastures,

because they’re left desolate as no one passes through there.

They don’t hear the sound of cattle or birds or wild animals—

they’ve fled and gone away.

11 Then I’ll make Yerushalem (Jerusalem) into piles of ruins—

a place for jackals to live in—

and I’ll make Yehudah’s (Judah’s) cities into uninhabited wastelands.

12 Who is the person that’s wise and understands this?

Who has Yahweh’s mouth spoken to so that they can declare it—

concerning why the nation has perished and been destroyed

like the wilderness with no one passing through it?

13 Then Yahweh said, “Because they abandoned my instructions that I gave to them,

≈ and they don’t listen to my voice or follow what say,

14 and they’re guided by their own stubborn minds,

≈ and follow after the Ba’al that their ancestors taught them about,

15 then Commander-in-chief Yahweh says this:

Listen, I’m about to feed them bitter food

≈ and give them poison water to drink.

16 Then I’ll scatter them among nations that neither they nor their ancestors knew anything about,

and I’ll send an army after them until I’ve finished them off.