La 2:1 How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his
anger, and cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel, and
remembered not his footstool in the day of his anger!
La 2:2 The Lord hath swallowed up all the habitations of Jacob, and hath not
pitied: he hath thrown down in his wrath the strong holds of the daughter of
Judah; he hath brought them down to the ground: he hath polluted the kingdom and
the princes thereof.
La 2:3 He hath cut off in his fierce anger all the horn of Israel: he hath drawn
back his right hand from before the enemy, and he burned against Jacob like a
flaming fire, which devoureth round about.
La 2:4 He hath bent his bow like an enemy: he stood with his right hand as an
adversary, and slew all that were pleasant to the eye in the tabernacle of the
daughter of Zion: he poured out his fury like fire.
La 2:5 The Lord was as an enemy: he hath swallowed up Israel, he hath swallowed
up all her palaces: he hath destroyed his strong holds, and hath increased in
the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation.
La 2:6 And he hath violently taken away his tabernacle, as if it were of a
garden: he hath destroyed his places of the assembly: the Lord hath caused the
solemn feasts and sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion, and hath despised in the
indignation of his anger the king and the priest.
La 2:7 The Lord hath cast off his altar, he hath abhorred his sanctuary, he hath
given up into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces; they have made a
noise in the house of the Lord, as in the day of a solemn feast.
La 2:8 The Lord hath purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion: he
hath stretched out a line, he hath not withdrawn his hand from destroying:
therefore he made the rampart and the wall to lament; they languished together.
La 2:9 Her gates are sunk into the ground; he hath destroyed and broken her
bars: her king and her princes are among the Gentiles: the law is no more; her
prophets also find no vision from the Lord.
La 2:10 The elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground, and keep
silence: they have cast up dust upon their heads; they have girded themselves
with sackcloth: the virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground.
La 2:11 Mine eyes do fail with tears, my bowels are troubled, my liver is poured
upon the earth, for the destruction of the daughter of my people; because the
children and the sucklings swoon in the streets of the city.
La 2:12 They say to their mothers, Where is corn and wine? when they swooned as
the wounded in the streets of the city, when their soul was poured out into
their mothers' bosom.
La 2:13 What thing shall I take to witness for thee? what thing shall I liken to
thee, O daughter of Jerusalem? what shall I equal to thee, that I may comfort
thee, O virgin daughter of Zion? for thy breach is great like the sea: who can
heal thee?
La 2:14 Thy prophets have seen vain and foolish things for thee: and they have
not discovered thine iniquity, to turn away thy captivity; but have seen for
thee false burdens and causes of banishment.
La 2:15 All that pass by clap their hands at thee; they hiss and wag their head
at the daughter of Jerusalem, saying, Is this the city that men call The
perfection of beauty, The joy of the whole earth?
La 2:16 All thine enemies have opened their mouth against thee: 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.
La 2:17 The Lord hath done that which he had devised; he hath fulfilled his word
that he had commanded in the days of old: he hath thrown down, and hath not
pitied: and he hath caused thine enemy to rejoice over thee, he hath set up the
horn of thine adversaries.
La 2:18 Their heart cried unto the Lord, O wall of the daughter of Zion, let
tears run down like a river day and night: give thyself no rest; let not the
apple of thine eye cease.
La 2:19 Arise, cry out in the night: in the beginning of the watches pour out
thine heart like water before the face of the Lord: lift up thy hands toward him
for the life of thy young children, that faint for hunger in the top of every
street.
La 2:20 Behold, O Lord, and consider to whom thou has done this. Shall the women
eat their fruit, and children of a span long? shall the priest and the prophet
be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord?
La 2:21 The young and the old lie on the ground in the streets: my virgins and
my young men are fallen by the sword; thou hast slain them in the day of thine
anger; thou hast killed, and not pitied.
La 2:22 Thou hast called as in a solemn day my terrors round about, so that in
the day of the Lord's anger none escaped nor remained: those that I have
swaddled and brought up hath mine enemy consumed.