⁹ Now why do you cry aloud?
^(A)Is there no king in your midst?
Has your counselor perished?
For ^(B)pangs have seized you like a woman in ^[a]labor.

“Why have they provoked Me to anger
With their carved images—
With foreign idols?”

⁴ “I will give ^(D)children^[c] to be their princes,
And ^[d]babes shall rule over them.
⁵ The people will be oppressed,
Every one by another and every one by his neighbor;
The child will be insolent toward the ^[e]elder,
And the ^[f]base toward the honorable.”

⁶ When a man takes hold of his brother
In the house of his father, saying,
“You have clothing;
You be our ruler,
And let these ruins be under your ^[g]power,”
⁷ In that day he will protest, saying,
“I cannot cure your ills,
For in my house is neither food nor clothing;
Do not make me a ruler of the people.”

³ For now they say,
“We have no king,
Because we did not fear the Lord.
And as for a king, what would he do for us?”

²⁰ The ^(A)breath of our nostrils, the anointed of the Lord,
^(B)Was caught in their pits,
Of whom we said, “Under his shadow
We shall live among the nations.”

⁴³ “The king of Babylon has ^(A)heard the report about them,
And his hands grow feeble;
Anguish has taken hold of him,
Pangs as of a woman in ^(B)childbirth.