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30 What are you doing,
    you who have been plundered?
Why do you dress up in beautiful clothing
    and put on gold jewelry?
Why do you brighten your eyes with mascara?
    Your primping will do you no good!
The allies who were your lovers
    despise you and seek to kill you.

31 I hear a cry, like that of a woman in labor,
    the groans of a woman giving birth to her first child.
It is beautiful Jerusalem[a]
    gasping for breath and crying out,
    “Help! I’m being murdered!”

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Footnotes

  1. 4:31 Hebrew the daughter of Zion.

30 And you, O devastated one, (A)what will you do?
Although you dress in scarlet,
Although you decorate yourself with ornaments of gold,
Although you (B)enlarge your eyes with paint,
In vain you make yourself beautiful.
Your [a](C)lovers despise you;
They seek your life.
31 For I heard a sound as of a woman in labor pains,
The distress as of one giving birth to her first child,
The sound of the daughter of Zion (D)gasping for breath,
(E)Stretching out her [b]hands, saying,
“Ah, woe is me, for my soul faints before murderers.”

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Footnotes

  1. Jeremiah 4:30 Lit paramours
  2. Jeremiah 4:31 Lit palms