Add parallel Print Page Options

The roads to Zion mourn,
    for no one comes to the festivals;
all her gates are desolate;
    her priests groan;
her young girls grieve,[a]
    and her lot is bitter.(A)

Read full chapter

Footnotes

  1. 1.4 Meaning of Heb uncertain

Lament like a virgin dressed in sackcloth
    for the husband of her youth.(A)
The grain offering and the drink offering are cut off
    from the house of the Lord.
The priests mourn,
    the ministers of the Lord.(B)
10 The fields are devastated,
    the ground mourns,
for the grain is destroyed,
    the wine dries up,
    the oil fails.(C)

11 Be dismayed, you farmers;
    wail, you vinedressers,
over the wheat and the barley,
    for the crops of the field are ruined.(D)
12 The vine withers;
    the fig tree droops.
Pomegranate, palm, and apple—
    all the trees of the field are dried up;
surely, joy withers away
    among the people.(E)

A Call to Repentance and Prayer

13 Put on sackcloth and lament, you priests;
    wail, you ministers of the altar.
Come, pass the night in sackcloth,
    you ministers of my God!
Grain offering and drink offering
    are withheld from the house of your God.(F)

Read full chapter

11 I will make Jerusalem a heap of ruins,
    a lair of jackals,
and I will make the towns of Judah a desolation,
    without inhabitant.(A)

Read full chapter

He has broken down his booth like a garden;
    he has destroyed his tabernacle;
the Lord has abolished in Zion
    festival and Sabbath
and in his fierce indignation has spurned
    king and priest.(A)

The Lord has scorned his altar,
    disowned his sanctuary;
he has delivered into the hand of the enemy
    the walls of her palaces;
a clamor was raised in the house of the Lord
    as on a day of festival.(B)

Read full chapter

Judah mourns,
    and her gates languish;
they lie in gloom on the ground,
    and the cry of Jerusalem goes up.(A)

Read full chapter

22 Hear, a noise! Listen, it is coming—
    a great commotion from the land of the north
to make the cities of Judah a desolation,
    a lair of jackals.(A)

Read full chapter

The earth dries up and withers;
    the world languishes and withers;
    the heavens languish together with the earth.
The earth lies polluted
    under its inhabitants,
for they have transgressed laws,
    violated the statutes,
    broken the everlasting covenant.(A)
Therefore a curse devours the earth,
    and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt;
therefore the inhabitants of the earth dwindled,
    and few people are left.(B)

Read full chapter

12 Therefore because of you
    Zion shall be plowed as a field;
Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins,
    and the mountain of the temple a wooded height.(A)

Read full chapter

13 Young men are compelled to grind,
    and boys stagger under loads of wood.(A)

Read full chapter

19 Arise, cry out in the night,
    at the beginning of the watches!
Pour out your heart like water
    before the presence of the Lord!
Lift your hands to him
    for the lives of your children,
who faint for hunger
    at the head of every street.(A)

20 Look, O Lord, and consider!
    To whom have you done this?
Should women eat their offspring,
    the children they have borne?
Should priest and prophet be killed
    in the sanctuary of the Lord?(B)

21 The young and the old are lying
    on the ground in the streets;
my young women and my young men
    have fallen by the sword;
in the day of your anger you have killed them,
    slaughtering without mercy.(C)

Read full chapter

Her gates have sunk into the ground;
    he has ruined and broken her bars;
her king and princes are among the nations;
    guidance is no more,
and her prophets obtain
    no vision from the Lord.(A)

10 The elders of daughter Zion
    sit on the ground in silence;
they have thrown dust on their heads;
    they put on sackcloth;
the young women of Jerusalem
    have bowed their heads to the ground.(B)

11 My eyes are spent with weeping;
    my stomach churns;
my bile is poured out on the ground
    because of the destruction of my people,[a]
because infants and babes faint
    in the streets of the city.(C)

Read full chapter

Footnotes

  1. 2.11 Heb the daughter of my people

18 The Lord is in the right,
    for I have rebelled against his word;
but hear, all you peoples,
    and behold my suffering;
my young women and young men
    have gone into captivity.(A)

19 I called to my lovers,
    but they deceived me;
my priests and elders
    perished in the city
while seeking food
    to revive their lives.(B)

20 Look, O Lord, at how distressed I am;
    my stomach churns;
my heart is wrung within me
    because I have been very rebellious.
In the street the sword bereaves;
    in the house it is like death.(C)

Read full chapter

11 All her people groan
    as they search for bread;
they trade their treasures for food
    to revive their lives.
Look, O Lord, and see
    how worthless I have become.(A)

12 Is it nothing to you,[a] all you who pass by?
    Look and see
if there is any sorrow like my sorrow,
    which was brought upon me,
which the Lord inflicted
    on the day of his fierce anger.(B)

Read full chapter

Footnotes

  1. 1.12 Meaning of Heb uncertain

10 Thus says the Lord: In this place of which you say, “It is a waste without humans or animals,” in the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem that are desolate, without inhabitants, human or animal, there shall once more be heard 11 the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the voices of those who sing as they bring thank offerings to the house of the Lord:

“Give thanks to the Lord of hosts,
    for the Lord is good,
    for his steadfast love endures forever!”

For I will restore the fortunes of the land as at first, says the Lord.(A)

12 Thus says the Lord of hosts: In this place that is waste, without humans or animals, and in all its towns there shall again be pasture for shepherds resting their flocks.(B)

Read full chapter

Complacent Women Warned of Disaster

Rise up, you women who are at ease, hear my voice;
    you complacent daughters, listen to my speech.(A)
10 In little more than a year
    you will shudder, you complacent ones,
for the vintage will fail;
    the fruit harvest will not come.(B)
11 Tremble, you women who are at ease;
    shudder, you complacent ones;
strip and make yourselves bare,
    and put sackcloth on your loins.(C)
12 Beat your breasts for the pleasant fields,[a]
    for the fruitful vine,(D)
13 for the soil of my people
    growing up in thorns and briers,
yes, for all the joyous houses
    in the jubilant city.(E)
14 For the palace will be forsaken,
    the populous city deserted;
the hill and the watchtower
    will become dens forever,
the joy of wild asses,
    a pasture for flocks;(F)

Read full chapter

Footnotes

  1. 32.12 Gk: Heb on the lamenting breasts