Lamentations 2
How has the Lord covered the daughter of Al-Quds with a cloud in his anger!
He has cast down from heaven to the earth the beauty
of Israel,
And has not remembered his footstool in the day of
his anger.
2The Lord has swallowed up all the
dwellings of Yaqub, and has not pitied:
He has thrown down in his wrath the strongholds of
the daughter of Judah;
He has brought them down to the ground; he has
profaned the kingdom and its princes.
3He has cut off in fierce anger all the
horn of Israel;
He has drawn back his right hand from before the
enemy:
He has burned up Yaqub
like a flaming fire, which devours all around.
4He has bent his bow like an enemy, he has
stood with his right hand as an adversary,
Has killed all that were pleasant to the eye:
In the tent of the daughter of Al-Quds he has poured out
his wrath like fire.
5The Lord is become as an enemy, he has
swallowed up Israel;
He has swallowed up all her palaces, he has destroyed
his strongholds;
He has multiplied in the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation.
6He has violently taken away his tent, as
if it were of a garden; he has destroyed his place of assembly:
Allah has caused solemn assembly and Sabbath to be
forgotten in Al-Quds,
Has despised in the indignation of his anger the king
and the priest.
7The Lord has cast off his altar, he has
abhorred his sanctuary;
He has given up into the hand of the enemy the walls
of her palaces:
They have made a noise in the house of Allah, as in
the day of a solemn assembly.
8Allah has purposed to destroy the wall of
the daughter of Al-Quds;
He has stretched out the line, he has not withdrawn
his hand from destroying;
He has made the rampart and wall to lament; they
languish together.
9Her gates are sunk into the ground; he
has destroyed and broken her bars:
Her king and her princes are among the nations where
the Taurat is not;
Yes, her prophets find no vision from Allah.
10The elders of the daughter of Al-Quds
sit on the ground, they keep silence;
They have cast up dust on their heads; they have
girded themselves with sackcloth:
The virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the
ground.
11My eyes do fail with tears, my heart is
troubled;
My liver is poured on the earth, because of the
destruction of the daughter of my people,
Because the young children and the infants swoon in
the streets of the city.
12They tell their mothers, Where is grain
and wine?
When they swoon as the wounded in the streets of the
city,
When their soul is poured out into their mothers' bosom.
13What shall I testify to you? What shall
I liken to you, daughter of Jerusalem?
What shall I compare to you, that I may comfort you,
virgin daughter of Al-Quds?
For your breach is great like the sea: who can heal
you?
14Your prophets have seen for you false
and foolish visions;
They have not uncovered your iniquity, to bring back
your captivity,
But have seen for you false oracles and causes of
banishment.
15All that pass by clap their hands at
you;
They hiss and wag their head at the daughter of
Jerusalem, saying,
Is this the city that men called The perfection of
beauty, The joy of the whole earth?
16All your enemies have opened their mouth
wide against you;
They hiss and gnash the teeth; they say, We have
swallowed her up;
Certainly this is the day that we looked for; we have
found, we have seen it.
17Allah has done that which he purposed;
he has fulfilled his word that he commanded in the days of old;
He has thrown down, and has not pitied:
He has caused the enemy to rejoice over you; he has
exalted the horn of your adversaries.
18Their heart cried to the Lord:
wall of the daughter of Al-Quds, let tears run down
like a river day and night;
Give yourself no respite; do not let the apple of
your eye cease.
19Arise, cry out in the night, at the
beginning of the watches;
Pour out your heart like water before the face of the
Lord:
Lift up your hands toward him for the life of your
young children, that faint for hunger at the head of every street.
20Look, Allah, and see to whom you have
done thus!
Shall the women eat their fruit, the children that
are dandled in the hands?
Shall the priest and the prophet be killed in the
sanctuary of the Lord?
21The youth and the old man lie on the
ground in the streets;
My virgins and my young men are fallen by the sword:
You have killed them in the day of your anger; you
have slaughtered, and not pitied.
22You have called, as in the day of a
solemn assembly, my terrors on every side;
There was none that escaped or remained in the day of
Allah's anger:
Those that I have dandled and brought up has my enemy
consumed.