The Daily Audio Bible

² Bawling, she weeps without constraint every night,
    cries herself to sleep, bitter tears streaming down her cheeks.
Her former friends ignore her;
    there is no one there to share her sorrow;
Companions contend and have betrayed her;
    friends have been unfaithful and turned against her as enemies.

³ Carried off to a foreign place, Judah is exiled in misery
    and debased by affliction and hard labor;
She cannot find rest living among the pagan nations.
    She tried to run and hide, but in her distress pursuers have overcome her.

⁴ Despair permeates the very dust of Zion’s roads.
    Nobody walks them in anticipation of celebration and worship.
No one enters the city’s desolate gates bringing offerings or sacrifices to God.
    The religious leaders are heavyhearted,
And the virgin women despair.
    It’s so bitter for dear Zion!

⁵ Enemies of Jerusalem have gained the upper hand.
    Her foes prosper against her.
The Eternal One has caused her sorrow because of her rebellions,
    for she acted against Him, willfully, again and again.
Even her little ones are taken away at the whim of her foes.

⁶ Faded beauty, this daughter Zion.
    Her princely young men, like stags,
They have no place to graze, no strength to fight;
    they fled to the woods,
Pursued mercilessly by hunters.

⁷ Gone are the days that she remembers, happy and precious;
    Jerusalem wanders aimlessly and remembers what precious things she has lost—
Things from the old days of David, Solomon, and Josiah.
    But now her people have fallen to her enemies,
And in this defeat by her enemies, no one ran to her aid,
    and her enemies now snicker and gloat at her downfall.

⁸ Hideous must be Jerusalem’s crimes
    that the city itself is now morally and ritually impure.
Those who once admired her now hate her.
    They strip her naked and laugh.
All she can do is groan
    and shrink back, ashamed.

⁹ Impurity clung to her inside the cover of her clothes.
    She refused to consider anything but the present,
Never expecting her impurity would be revealed.
    Nobody came forward with comfort—no one.

Lady Jerusalem: See, Eternal One, how badly I suffer
        and how my enemies swell with pride.

¹⁰ Jabbing and fondling,
    mauling all her treasures, the enemy takes stock.
Foreign nations enter even her holy place,
    claiming what You decided was off-limits
And forbidden to them—Your temple.^[b]

¹¹ Kept in hunger,
    her people are desperate for food.
Once prosperous, they trade her treasures
    for nourishment of any kind.

Lady Jerusalem: Look, Eternal One—
        really see how hated I’ve become.

¹²     Look around, you who pass by and go about your business.
        Is there any sorrow as great as mine?
    Any pain as great as that which has been forced on me?
        No. Because my pain comes from the Eternal.
    It is His judgment, rendered on the day of His intense anger.

¹³     My bones burn with the wrath of God,
        the fire sent from on high.
    He laid a trap, then left me,
        turned me back to the destruction,
    With the shakes, constantly sick and faint.

¹⁴     Now the burden of all my wrongs is a yoke.
        God has laid them upon my shoulders,
    Bound them around my neck.
        He has made sure I’m too weak to support them.
    The Lord gave me into the hand of an enemy.
        I could not resist.

¹⁵     Overwhelmed by none other than God,
        the Lord has determined that all my warriors are worthless.
    He has summoned a meeting of those who are against me
        to crush the young men who would protect me,
    And He has stomped lovely Judah, virgin daughter,
        like grapes in a winepress.

¹⁶     Pity, my eyes won’t stop their crying; I can’t stop.
        There is no one nearby to comfort me or revive my spirit,
    No one to pull me up.
        My children know it—they’re left empty,
    The enemy has won.

¹⁷ Quietly, Zion spreads out her hands, pleading for comfort.
    But no one comes. The Lord forbids it.
God has commanded Jacob’s enemies
    to surround her.
Jerusalem has become their foe;
    she is an impurity among them.

¹⁸ Lady Jerusalem: Right and true is the Eternal One.
        I am the one in the wrong: I have rebelled against His law.
    Listen all of you peoples.
        See how much I have suffered;
    My handsome men and my gentle women, unmarried and unprotected,
        have marched away into captivity.

¹⁹     Summoning my lovers brings nothing—
        nothing but pain in their betrayal.
    The old guard, religious and political leaders,
        have died starving here in the city;
    Their search for sustenance failed.

²⁰     Take account, Eternal One, of me; how miserable I am.
        My belly growls and turns;
    My heart is wrung out like a rag; my faults and failings are to blame
        because I have been rebellious.
    Death is everywhere in the homes;
        the sword makes women childless in the streets.

²¹     Uncaring, with no compassion from others,
        they know how badly I suffer.
    O how alone I am.
        My enemies gloat, and You have brought about my misery,
    So happy to know I’m in pain.
        But You, O God, will make them as bad off as I.

²²     Vindicate me and judge their evil actions
        and make them suffer,
    As You’ve made me suffer
        for all my wrongdoings.
    I’m a wreck, and I groan with a faint heart.

2 Aaghh! How could the Lord surround Zion in a cloud of His anger
    as if He has cast the beauty of Israel down from heaven to earth?
Majestic Israel, God’s footstool,
    is debased by God’s anger in a moment of wrath.

² Buried beneath the dust,
    Jacob’s houses have been swallowed.
The Lord did this without mercy,
    shattering her fortresses.
God brought down to the ground daughter Judah,
    and defiled her kingdom and her leaders.

³ Cut down by God’s anger,
    the pride and strength of Israel falls;
He withdrew His right hand and stood back and allowed Israel’s enemies
    to wreak havoc in the land.
God has burned and consumed Jacob
    in an insatiable fire.

⁴ Deployed like an enemy, God stood poised against Judah—
    bow bent, right hand clinched—crashing down
On everything that we admired
    among daughter Zion’s tents.
The anger of the Lord whipped like flickering flames to reduce it to ashes.

⁵ Enemy of ours—our God—who would have thought?
    Yet the Lord chewed up Israel,
Swallowed its mighty palaces;
    He spit out fortresses and reduced them to dust.
God increased suffering and sorrow
    to a fever pitch in daughter Judah.

⁶ Felling His own dwelling like a garden hut,
    God destroyed His meeting place;
He did away with the sacred festivals and Sabbaths in Zion,
    and in fierce anger
He ignored and spurned our leaders—
    our king and priests alike.

⁷ God disdained the most sacred religious spots—
    His altar, His sanctuary, the centerpiece of our tradition.
The Lord gave our enemy full charge of the city,
    palaces and all.
And in the temple itself, the Eternal’s house,
    they hoot and holler as if it’s one of our sacred festivals.

⁸ Hesitating not for one moment,
    the Eternal measured across the city of daughter Zion;
Unrelenting, He was determined to destroy,
    to bring the city down with rampart and wall
To its knees in rubble and grief.

⁹ Into the earth, Jerusalem’s defenses, the bars and gates, are sunk—
    her leaders, both king and prince, scattered among surrounding nations,
Gone to foreign places.
    Now there is no law, no wise instruction;
The prophets receive no divine visions;
    who can see the Eternal’s way?

¹⁰ Jerusalem elders of daughter Zion are mute,
    dispensing no precious wisdom.
They sit on the ground distraught, clad in sackcloth;
    they hurl dust on their heads.
The young maidens of Jerusalem hang their heads
    down to the ground.

¹¹ Knowing the fate of Zion, my insides are in turmoil and pour out
    for Jerusalem, the devastation of the daughter of my people.
I can’t see because of the tears for the children in the streets—
    I can’t stop crying for infants and toddlers too weak to wail.
My people are destroyed.

¹² Little Children: Mother, grain and wine—where is it?

Like the wounded,
    collapsing in the city streets,
They pine and die
    on their mother’s breast.

¹³ My dear daughter Jerusalem,
    how can I tell your tragedy?
To what can I liken this disgrace?
    O virgin daughter Zion, would that I could comfort you.
Who can heal your massive injury
    that is as deep and wide as the sea?

¹⁴ Nothing but vanity from your prophets—
    nothing but worthlessness from them;
They never warned and exposed you to correct your wicked ways
    so that things would go well again with no captivity.
Instead, they told divine oracles of lies and deceit,
    that everything was fine.

¹⁵ On your head, now, passersby heap scorn;
    they wag their fingers, shake their heads at daughter Jerusalem.

Passersby: Is this the city everyone thought was so great—
        a city of perfect beauty and
    Earth’s pride and joy?

Enemies: Ha! Would the day ever come? We’ve got her now!
        Look, we’ve swallowed her whole, destroyed her.
    We waited anxiously for today,
        and we made it happen!

¹⁷ Question the Eternal One about what He has done.
    He determined—punished according to the term and tenets
He laid down so long ago.
    He executed fierce destruction without pity
And made your enemy glad.
    He has made them prevail with might.

¹⁸ Raise your cry to the Lord with all your might!
    Take no relief; be ceaseless in grief.

Lady Jerusalem: Oh walls, may your stones cry out,
        cry out for daughter Zion;
    Make rivers with tears of sorrow, rushing.
        Do not cease from your weeping.

¹⁹     Stand up and yell in the night with all your heart;
        call to God even while the city sleeps during the night watch;
    Pour out your heart like water in the presence of the Lord!
        Lift your hands and plead to Him for the lives of your children,
    For the babies weak with hunger
        dying on every street corner.

²⁰     Take heed, Eternal One!
        Look what You’ve done and to whom you have done this.
    Can it be—women eat their offspring, even their tender newborns;
        and in the most sacred places of the Eternal,
    Priests and prophets are slaughtered?

²¹     Unable to go on, young and old fall,
        lying in the dusty streets.
    My strong young men and women, all unmarried,
        are attacked and killed by Your sword in Your anger.
    You are responsible for this mayhem and misery.
        You, God, slew without pity.

²²     Victims all, You summoned those terrors surrounding me
        as if You were calling together a sacred festival.
    On the day of Your divine wrath there was no escapee,
        not even one survivor.
    The ones whom I raised up and made numerous,
        my enemy made a complete end of them.

I will walk in my house
    with an honest and true heart.
³ I will refuse to look
    on any sordid thing;

I detest the worthless deeds of those who stray;
    evil will not get a hold on me.
⁴ I will rid my heart of all perversion;
    I will not flirt with any evil.

⁵ Whoever secretly slanders his neighbor,
    I will silence;
I will not tolerate
    a condescending smirk, an arrogant heart.
⁶ I will look for those who are loyal in the land
    so that they may live with me and know my pleasure.
Whoever walks with integrity
    will enter my service.

⁷ The one who makes a habit of deceit
    will not be welcome in my house;
The one who lies
    will not remain in my presence for long.

⁸ Every morning I will purge
    all the wicked from the land
So as to rid the city of the Eternal
    of those who practice evil.

²⁰ When there is no wood, the fire goes out;
    when there is no one to spread gossip, arguing stops.