Lamentações 4

¹ How the gold has become dim; the fine gold has changed! The stones of the sanctuary are poured out at the head of every street.

² The precious sons of Zion are weighed against pure gold; how they are counted as earthen vessels, the work of a potter's hand!

³ Even the jackals draw out the breast; they suckle their young ones. The daughter of my people [is] cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness.

⁴ The suckling's tongue cleaves to his palate in thirst; the young children ask bread; there is no breaking to them.

⁵ Those who ate delicacies are desolate in the streets; those reared in scarlet embrace dunghills.

⁶ And the iniquity of the daughter of my people is heaped more than the sin of Sodom, overthrown as [in] a moment, and no hands spun on her.

⁷ Her Nazarites [were] purer than snow, whiter than milk; they [were] redder [of] bone than corals; their cuttings [as] lapis lazuli, [azure blue].

⁸ Their appearance is blacker than soot; they are not recognized in the streets; their skin has shriveled on their bones; it is dried up; it has become like wood.

⁹ Better [are] the ones slain by the sword than the ones slain by hunger; those who pine away, pierced because the fruits of my fields [failed].

¹⁰ The hands of the pitying women have boiled their own children; they became their food in the ruin of the daughter of my people.

¹¹ The LORD has fulfilled His fury; He has poured out His fierce anger, and has kindled a fire in Zion, and it has devoured its foundations.

¹² The kings of the earth, and all the people of the world, would not have believed that the foe and the hater would go into Jerusalem's gates.

¹³ For the sins of her prophets [and] the iniquities of her priests, shedding the blood of the just in her midst,

¹⁴ they reeled blind in the streets; they are defiled with blood, so that not [any] can touch their clothes.

¹⁵ They cried to them, Depart! Unclean! Depart, depart! Touch not! Indeed they fled and reeled; they said among the nations, They will not continue to live [there].

¹⁶ The face of the LORD has shared them out; He will no longer look on them; they did not respect the persons of the priests; they did not favor the elders.

¹⁷ While we are, our eyes fail, for our help is vain; in our watching we have watched for a nation; it does not save.

¹⁸ They hunted our steps from going in our streets; our end was near, our days were fulfilled, for our end has come.

¹⁹ Our pursuers were swifter than the eagles of the heavens; they pursued us on the mountains, they lay in wait for us in the wilderness.

²⁰ The breath of our nostrils, the anointed [of] the LORD, was taken in their pits; of whom we said, In his shadow we shall live among the nations.

²¹ Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom, who lives in the land of Uz. The cup also shall pass through unto you; you shall be drunken and stripped naked.

²² The punishment of your iniquity [is] fulfilled, O daughter of Zion; He will exile you no more. He will visit your iniquity, O daughter of Edom; He will expose your sins.