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Lamentations 2
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1How has the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger!
- He has cast down from heaven to the earth the beauty of Israel,
- And hasn’t remembered his footstool in the day of his anger.
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2The Lord has swallowed up all the habitations of Jacob, and has not pitied:
- He has thrown down in his wrath the strongholds of the daughter of Judah;
- He has brought them down to the ground; he has profaned the kingdom and its princes.
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3He has cut off in fierce anger all the horn of Israel;
- He has drawn back his right hand from before the enemy:
- He has burned up Jacob like a flaming fire, which devours all around.
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4He has bent his bow like an enemy, he has stood with his right hand as an adversary,
- Has killed all that were pleasant to the eye:
- In the tent of the daughter of Zion he has poured out his wrath like fire.
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5The Lord has become as an enemy, he has swallowed up Israel;
- He has swallowed up all her palaces, he has destroyed his strongholds;
- He has multiplied in the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation.
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6He has violently taken away his tabernacle, as if it were of a garden; he has destroyed his place of assembly:
- Yahweh has caused solemn assembly and Sabbath to be forgotten in Zion,
- Has despised in the indignation of his anger the king and the priest.
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7The Lord has cast off his altar, he has abhorred his sanctuary;
- He has given up into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces:
- They have made a noise in the house of Yahweh, as in the day of a solemn assembly.
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8Yahweh has purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion;
- He has stretched out the line, he has not withdrawn his hand from destroying;
- He has made the rampart and wall to lament; they languish together.
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9Her gates are sunk into the ground; he has destroyed and broken her bars:
- Her king and her princes are among the nations where the law is not;
- Yes, her prophets find no vision from Yahweh.
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10The elders of the daughter of Zion sit on the ground, they keep silence;
- They have cast up dust on their heads; they have clothed themselves with sackcloth:
- The virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground.
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11My eyes do fail with tears, my heart is troubled;
- My liver is poured on the earth, because of the destruction of the daughter of my people,
- Because the young children and the infants swoon in the streets of the city.
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12They tell their mothers, Where is grain and wine?
- When they swoon as the wounded in the streets of the city,
- When their soul is poured out into their mothers’ bosom.
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13What shall I testify to you? what shall I liken to you, daughter of Jerusalem?
- What shall I compare to you, that I may comfort you, virgin daughter of Zion?
- For your breach is great like the sea: who can heal you?
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14Your prophets have seen for you false and foolish visions;
- They have not uncovered your iniquity, to bring back your captivity,
- but have seen for you false oracles and causes of banishment.
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15All that pass by clap their hands at you.
- They hiss and wag their head at the daughter of Jerusalem, saying,
- Is this the city that men called The perfection of beauty, The joy of the whole earth?
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16All your enemies have opened their mouth wide against you;
- They hiss and gnash the teeth; they say, We have swallowed her up;
- Certainly this is the day that we looked for; we have found, we have seen it.
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17Yahweh has done that which he purposed; he has fulfilled his word that he commanded in the days of old;
- He has thrown down, and has not pitied:
- He has caused the enemy to rejoice over you; he has exalted the horn of your adversaries.
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18Their heart cried to the Lord:
- wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears run down like a river day and night;
- Give yourself no respite; don’t let the apple of your eye cease.
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19Arise, cry out in the night, at the beginning of the watches;
- Pour out your heart like water before the face of the Lord:
- Lift up your hands toward him for the life of your young children, that faint for hunger at the head of every street.
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20Look, Yahweh, and see to whom you have done thus!
- Shall the women eat their fruit, the children that are dandled in the hands?
- Shall the priest and the prophet be killed in the sanctuary of the Lord?
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21The youth and the old man lie on the ground in the streets;
- My virgins and my young men are fallen by the sword:
- You have killed them in the day of your anger; you have slaughtered, and not pitied.
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22You have called, as in the day of a solemn assembly, my terrors on every side;
- There was none that escaped or remained in the day of Yahweh’s anger:
- Those that I have dandled and brought up has my enemy consumed.
