Consider, and summon the women who mourn;^(A)
send for the skillful women.
¹⁸ Let them come quickly to raise a lament over us
so that our eyes may overflow with tears,
our eyelids soaked with weeping.
¹⁹ For a sound of lamentation is heard from Zion:
How devastated we are.
We are greatly ashamed,^(B)
for we have abandoned the land;
our dwellings have been torn down.

²⁰ Now hear the word of the Lord, you women.
Pay attention to^[a] the word of His mouth.
Teach your daughters a lament
and one another a dirge,
²¹ for Death^(C) has climbed through our windows;
it has entered our fortresses,
cutting off children from the streets,
young men from the squares.

Human corpses will fall
like manure on the surface of the field,
like newly cut grain^(D) after the reaper
with no one to gather it.