“Consider, and call for the mourning women, that they may come.
    Send for the skillful women, that they may come.
¹⁸ Let them make haste
    and take up a wailing for us,
that our eyes may run down with tears
    and our eyelids gush out with waters.
¹⁹ For a voice of wailing is heard out of Zion,
    ‘How we are ruined!
We are greatly confounded
    because we have forsaken the land,
    because they have cast down our dwellings.’”

²⁰ Yet hear Yahweh’s word, you women.
    Let your ear receive the word of his mouth.
Teach your daughters wailing.
    Everyone teach her neighbor a lamentation.
²¹ For death has come up into our windows.
    It has entered into our palaces
to cut off the children from outside,
    and the young men from the streets.

“‘The dead bodies of men will fall as dung on the open field,
    and as the handful after the harvester.
    No one will gather them.’”