Chapter 1
1How the city sits solitary,
2She weeps bitterly in the night.
3Judah has gone into captivity because of affliction
4The roads to Zion mourn,
5Her adversaries have become the head.
6All majesty has departed from the daughter of Zion.
7Jerusalem remembers in the days of her affliction and of her miseries
8Jerusalem has grievously sinned.
9Her filthiness was in her skirts.
10The adversary has spread out his hand on all her pleasant things;
11All her people sigh.
12“Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?
13“From on high has he sent fire into my bones,
14“The yoke of my transgressions is bound by his hand.
15“The Lord has set at nothing all my mighty men within me.
16“For these things I weep.
17Zion spreads out her hands.
18“Yahweh is righteous,
19“I called for my lovers,
20“Look, Yahweh; for I am in distress.
21“They have heard that I sigh.
22“Let all their wickedness come before you.
Chapter 2
1How has the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger!
2The Lord has swallowed up all the dwellings of Jacob
3He has cut off all the horn of Israel in fierce anger.
4He has bent his bow like an enemy.
5The Lord has become as an enemy.
6He has violently taken away his tabernacle,
7The Lord has cast off his altar.
8Yahweh has purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion.
9Her gates have sunk into the ground.
10The elders of the daughter of Zion sit on the ground.
11My eyes fail with tears.
12They ask their mothers,
13What shall I testify to you?
14Your prophets have seen false and foolish visions for you.
15All that pass by clap their hands at you.
16All your enemies have opened their mouth wide against you.
17Yahweh has done that which he planned.
18Their heart cried to the Lord.
19Arise, cry out in the night,
20“Look, Yahweh, and see to whom you have done thus!
21“The youth and the old man lie on the ground in the streets.
22“You have called, as in the day of a solemn assembly, my terrors on every side.
Chapter 3
1I am the man who has seen affliction
2He has led me and caused me to walk in darkness,
3Surely he turns his hand against me
4He has made my flesh and my skin old.
5He has built against me,
6He has made me dwell in dark places,
7He has walled me about, so that I can’t go out.
8Yes, when I cry, and call for help,
9He has walled up my ways with cut stone.
10He is to me as a bear lying in wait,
11He has turned away my path,
12He has bent his bow,
13He has caused the shafts of his quiver to enter into my kidneys.
14I have become a derision to all my people,
15He has filled me with bitterness.
16He has also broken my teeth with gravel.
17You have removed my soul far away from peace.
18I said, “My strength has perished,
19Remember my affliction and my misery,
20My soul still remembers them,
21This I recall to my mind;
22It is because of Yahweh’s loving kindnesses that we are not consumed,
23They are new every morning.
24“Yahweh is my portion,” says my soul.
25Yahweh is good to those who wait for him,
26It is good that a man should hope
27It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.
28Let him sit alone and keep silence,
29Let him put his mouth in the dust,
30Let him give his cheek to him who strikes him.
31For the Lord will not cast off forever.
32For though he causes grief,
33For he does not afflict willingly,
34To crush under foot all the prisoners of the earth,
35to turn away the right of a man before the face of the Most High,
36to subvert a man in his cause, the Lord doesn’t approve.
37Who is he who says, and it comes to pass,
38Doesn’t evil and good come out of the mouth of the Most High?
39Why should a living man complain,
40Let us search and try our ways,
41Let’s lift up our heart with our hands to God in the heavens.
42“We have transgressed and have rebelled.
43“You have covered us with anger and pursued us.
44You have covered yourself with a cloud,
45You have made us an off-scouring and refuse
46“All our enemies have opened their mouth wide against us.
47Terror and the pit have come on us,
48My eye runs down with streams of water,
49My eye pours down
50until Yahweh looks down,
51My eye affects my soul,
52They have chased me relentlessly like a bird,
53They have cut off my life in the dungeon,
54Waters flowed over my head.
55I called on your name, Yahweh,
56You heard my voice:
57You came near in the day that I called on you.
58Lord, you have pleaded the causes of my soul.
59Yahweh, you have seen my wrong.
60You have seen all their vengeance
61You have heard their reproach, Yahweh,
62the lips of those that rose up against me,
63You see their sitting down and their rising up.
64You will pay them back, Yahweh,
65You will give them hardness of heart,
66You will pursue them in anger,
Chapter 4
1How the gold has become dim!
2The precious sons of Zion,
3Even the jackals offer their breast.
4The tongue of the nursing child clings to the roof of his mouth for thirst.
5Those who ate delicacies are desolate in the streets.
6For the iniquity of the daughter of my people is greater than the sin of Sodom,
7Her nobles were purer than snow.
8Their appearance is blacker than a coal.
9Those who are killed with the sword are better than those who are killed with hunger;
10The hands of the pitiful women have boiled their own children.
11Yahweh has accomplished his wrath.
12The kings of the earth didn’t believe,
13It is because of the sins of her prophets
14They wander as blind men in the streets.
15“Go away!” they cried to them.
16Yahweh’s anger has scattered them.
17Our eyes still fail,
18They hunt our steps,
19Our pursuers were swifter than the eagles of the sky.
20The breath of our nostrils,
21Rejoice and be glad, daughter of Edom,
22The punishment of your iniquity is accomplished, daughter of Zion.
Chapter 5
1Remember, Yahweh, what has come on us.
2Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers,
3We are orphans and fatherless.
4We must pay for water to drink.
5Our pursuers are on our necks.
6We have given our hands to the Egyptians,
7Our fathers sinned, and are no more.
8Servants rule over us.
9We get our bread at the peril of our lives,
10Our skin is black like an oven,
11They ravished the women in Zion,
12Princes were hanged up by their hands.
13The young men carry millstones.
14The elders have ceased from the gate,
15The joy of our heart has ceased.
16The crown has fallen from our head.
17For this our heart is faint.
18for the mountain of Zion, which is desolate.
19You, Yahweh, remain forever.
20Why do you forget us forever,
21Turn us to yourself, Yahweh, and we will be turned.
22But you have utterly rejected us.