Lamentations 2:1-10

New King James Version

God’s Anger with Jerusalem

2 How the Lord has covered the daughter of Zion
With a ^(A)cloud in His anger!
^(B)He cast down from heaven to the earth
^(C)The beauty of Israel,
And did not remember ^(D)His footstool
In the day of His anger.

²The Lord has swallowed up and has ^(E)not pitied
All the dwelling places of Jacob.
He has thrown down in His wrath
The strongholds of the daughter of Judah;
He has brought them down to the ground;
^(F)He has profaned the kingdom and its princes.

³He has cut off in fierce anger
Every ^[a]horn of Israel;
^(G)He has drawn back His right hand
From before the enemy.
^(H)He has blazed against Jacob like a flaming fire
Devouring all around.

⁴^(I)Standing like an enemy, He has bent His bow;
With His right hand, like an adversary,
He has slain ^(J)all who were pleasing to His eye;
On the tent of the daughter of Zion,
He has poured out His fury like fire.

⁵^(K)The Lord was like an enemy.
He has swallowed up Israel,
He has swallowed up all her palaces;
^(L)He has destroyed her strongholds,
And has increased mourning and lamentation
In the daughter of Judah.

⁶He has done violence ^(M)to His ^[b]tabernacle,
^(N)As if it were a garden;
He has destroyed His place of assembly;
The Lord has caused
The appointed feasts and Sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion.
In His burning indignation He has ^(O)spurned the king and the priest.

⁷The Lord has spurned His altar,
He has ^(P)abandoned His sanctuary;
He has ^[c]given up the walls of her palaces
Into the hand of the enemy.
^(Q)They have made a noise in the house of the Lord
As on the day of a set feast.

⁸The Lord has ^[d]purposed to destroy
The ^(R)wall of the daughter of Zion.
^(S)He has stretched out a line;
He has not withdrawn His hand from destroying;
Therefore He has caused the rampart and wall to lament;
They languished together.

⁹Her gates have sunk into the ground;
He has destroyed and ^(T)broken her bars.
^(U)Her king and her princes are among the ^[e]nations;
^(V)The Law is no more,
And her ^(W)prophets find no ^[f]vision from the Lord.

¹⁰The elders of the daughter of Zion
^(X)Sit on the ground and keep silence;
^[g]They ^(Y)throw dust on their heads
And ^(Z)gird themselves with sackcloth.
The virgins of Jerusalem
Bow their heads to the ground.