Lamentations 2

The Anger of Yahweh

Aleph

1How the Lord has covered the daughter of Zion
With a cloud in His anger!
He has cast from heaven to earth
The beauty of Israel,
And has not remembered the footstool of His feet
In the day of His anger.
Beth

2The Lord has swallowed up; He has not spared
All the habitations of Jacob.
In His wrath He has pulled down
The strongholds of the daughter of Judah;
He has brought them down to the ground;
He has profaned the kingdom and its princes.
Gimel

3In ▼

▼Lit burning

hot anger He has cut in pieces
▼

▼ Lit Every horn

All the strength of Israel;
He has turned back His right hand
From before the enemy.
And He has burned in Jacob like a flaming fire
Devouring round about.
Daleth

4He has bent His bow like an enemy;
He has set His right hand like an adversary
And killed all that were desirable to the eye;
In the tent of the daughter of Zion
He has poured out His wrath like fire.
He

5The Lord has become like an enemy.
He has swallowed up Israel;
He has swallowed up all its palaces;
He has brought its strongholds to ruin
And multiplied in the daughter of Judah
Mourning and moaning.
Vav

6And He has violently treated His ▼

▼Lit booth

tabernacle like a garden booth;
He has brought His appointed ▼

▼Or time, cf. 2:6b, 7

meeting place to ruin.
Yahweh has caused to be forgotten
The appointed time and sabbath in Zion,
And He has spurned king and priest
In the indignation of His anger.
Zayin

7The Lord has rejected His altar;
He has abandoned His sanctuary;
He has delivered into the hand of the enemy
The walls of her palaces.
They have made a noise in the house of Yahweh
As in the day of an appointed time.
Heth

8Yahweh ▼

▼Lit thought

determined to bring to ruin
The wall of the daughter of Zion.
He has stretched out a line;
He has not turned His hand back from swallowing up,
And He has caused rampart and wall to mourn;
They have languished together.
Teth

9Her gates have sunk into the ground;
He has destroyed and broken her bars.
Her king and her princes are among the nations;
The law is no more.
Also, her prophets find
No vision from Yahweh.
Yodh

10The elders of the daughter of Zion
Sit on the ground; they are silent.
They have thrown dust up on their heads;
They have girded themselves with sackcloth.
The virgins of Jerusalem
Have bowed their heads down to the ground.
Kaph

11My eyes fail because of tears;
My ▼

▼Lit inward parts are in ferment

inmost being is greatly disturbed;
My ▼

▼Lit liver

heart is poured out on the earth
Because of the ▼

▼Lit breaking

destruction of the daughter of my people,
When infants and nursing babies faint
In the open squares of the city.
Lamedh

12They say to their mothers,
“Where is grain and wine?”
As they faint like a wounded man
In the open squares of the city,
As their life is poured out
On their mothers’ bosom.
Mem

13What shall I testify about you?
To what shall I equate you,
O daughter of Jerusalem?
To what shall I liken you as I comfort you,
O virgin daughter of Zion?
For your ▼

▼Lit breaking

destruction is as vast as the sea;
Who can heal you?
Nun

14Your prophets have beheld for you
Worthless and ineffective visions;
And they have not uncovered your iniquity
So as to ▼

▼Or restore

return you from captivity,
But they have beheld for you worthless and misleading ▼

▼Lit burdens

oracles.
Samekh

15All who pass along the way
Clap their hands in derision at you;
They hiss and shake their heads
At the daughter of Jerusalem,
“Is this the city of which they said,
‘The perfection of beauty,
The joy of the whole earth’?”
Pe

16All your enemies
Have opened their mouths wide against you;
They hiss and gnash their teeth.
They say, “We have swallowed her up!
Surely this is the day for which we have hoped;
We have found it, we have seen it.”
Ayin

17Yahweh has done what He purposed;
He has completed His word
Which He commanded from days of old.
He has pulled down without sparing,
And He has caused the enemy to be glad over you;
He has exalted the ▼

▼Lit horn

might of your adversaries.
Tsadhe

18Their heart cried out to the Lord,
“O wall of the daughter of Zion,
Let your tears run down like a river day and night;
Give yourself no relief;
Let ▼

▼Lit the daughter of your eye

your eyes not be still.
Qoph

19“Arise, cry aloud in the night
At the head of the night watches;
Pour out your heart like water
Before the presence of the Lord;
Lift up your hands to Him
For the life of your infants
Who are faint because of hunger
At the head of every street.”
Resh

20See, O Yahweh, and look!
With whom have You dealt thus?
Should women eat their ▼

▼Lit fruit

offspring,
The infants who were ▼

▼Or tenderly cared for

born healthy?
Should priest and prophet be killed
In the sanctuary of the Lord?
Shin

21On the ground in the streets
Lie young and old;
My virgins and my young men
Have fallen by the sword.
You have killed them in the day of Your anger;
You have slaughtered, not sparing.
Tav

22You called as in the day of an appointed time
My terrors on every side;
And there was no one who escaped or survived
In the day of Yahweh’s anger.
Those whom I ▼

▼Lit bore healthy, tenderly cared for

gave birth to and reared,
My enemy consumed them.