Study Desk

How the Lord has clouded over the daughter of Zion in His anger! He cast the beauty of Israel down from the heavens to the earth, and did not remember His footstool in the day of His wrath.

The Lord swallowed up all of Jacob's dwelling-places, and did not pity. In His wrath He has thrown down the strongholds of the daughter of Judah. He made them touch to the earth. He has defiled the kingdom and its rulers.

He cut off all the horn of Israel in hot anger. He has turned back His right hand from the face of the enemies, and He burned in Jacob as a flaming fire; it consumes all around.

He trod His bow like an enemy, and set His right hand like a foe; and killed all who were desirable to the eye in the tent of the daughter of Zion. He poured out His fury like fire.

The Lord was like an enemy; He swallowed up Israel; He swallowed up all his palaces and destroyed his strongholds; and He increased mourning and weeping in the daughter of Judah.

And He violated his booth like a garden and destroyed his meeting-places. Jehovah made meeting-places and sabbaths forgotten in Zion, and He rejected king and priest in the fury of His anger.

The Lord has cast off His altar; He rejected His holy place. He has delivered the walls of her palaces into the hand of the enemy. They gave a noise in Jehovah's house, as a day of meeting.

Jehovah willed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion; He has stretched out a line. He has not withdrawn His hand from swallowing; and He made rampart and wall lament; they languish together.

Her gates have sunk in the ground; He has dispersed and shattered her bars. Her kings and her rulers are among the nations. The Law is not. Also her prophets have not found a vision from Jehovah.

They sit on the ground; the elders of Zion's daughters are silent. They make dust go up on their heads, they gird on sack cloths. The virgins of Jerusalem let their heads go down to the ground.

And my eyes are at an end with tears, my inward parts ferment; my liver is poured on the ground for the ruin of the daughter of my people; in the fainting of children and sucklings in the city's plazas.

They say to their mothers, Where are grain and wine? In their fainting, they are like the wounded in the plazas of the city, in their pouring out their lives to their mothers' bosom.

What can I testify for you? To what will I compare you, O daughter of Jerusalem? To what shall I liken you that I may comfort you, O virgin daughter of Zion? For your crushing is great like the sea! Who can heal you?

Your prophets have seen false and foolish things for you; and they have not revealed your iniquity in order to turn back your captivity. Yea, they visioned for you burdens of falsehood and seductions.

All who pass by clap their hands at you. They hiss and wag their head at the daughter of Jerusalem, saying, Is this the city which they called the perfection of beauty, the joy of all the earth?

All your enemies have opened their mouth against you; they hiss and gnash the teeth; they say, We have swallowed up. Surely this is the day for which we waited; we have found; we have seen.

Jehovah has done what He purposed; He fulfilled His Word which He commanded from days of antiquity. He has dashed and not pitied. And He made the enemy to rejoice over you; He raised the horn of your foes.

Their heart cried to the Lord. O wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears go down like a torrent by day and by night; do not give relief to yourself; let not the daughter of your eye rest.

Rise up, cry out in the night at the head of the watches; pour out your heart like waters before the face of the Lord. Lift up your hands to Him for the life of your children faint with hunger at the head of every open place.