Lamentations

But thou hast utterly rejected us; thou art very wroth against us.

Turn thou us unto thee, O LORD, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old.

Wherefore dost thou forget us for ever, and forsake us so long time?

Thou, O LORD, remainest for ever; thy throne from generation to generation.

Because of the mountain of Zion, which is desolate, the foxes walk upon it.

For this our heart is faint; for these things our eyes are dim.

The crown is fallen from our head: woe unto us, that we have sinned!

The joy of our heart is ceased; our dance is turned into mourning.

The elders have ceased from the gate, the young men from their musick.

They took the young men to grind, and the children fell under the wood.

Princes are hanged up by their hand: the faces of elders were not honoured.

They ravished the women in Zion, and the maids in the cities of Judah.

Our skin was black like an oven because of the terrible famine.

We gat our bread with the peril of our lives because of the sword of the wilderness.

Servants have ruled over us: there is none that doth deliver us out of their hand.

Our fathers have sinned, and are not; and we have borne their iniquities.

We have given the hand to the Egyptians, and to the Assyrians, to be satisfied with bread.

Our necks are under persecution: we labour, and have no rest.

We have drunken our water for money; our wood is sold unto us.

We are orphans and fatherless, our mothers are as widows.

Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens.

Remember, O LORD, what is come upon us: consider, and behold our reproach.

The punishment of thine iniquity is accomplished, O daughter of Zion; he will no more carry thee away into captivity: he will visit thine iniquity, O daughter of Edom; he will discover thy sins.

Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom, that dwellest in the land of Uz; the cup also shall pass through unto thee: thou shalt be drunken, and shalt make thyself naked.

The breath of our nostrils, the anointed of the LORD, was taken in their pits, of whom we said, Under his shadow we shall live among the heathen.

Our persecutors are swifter than the eagles of the heaven: they pursued us upon the mountains, they laid wait for us in the wilderness.

They hunt our steps, that we cannot go in our streets: our end is near, our days are fulfilled; for our end is come.

As for us, our eyes as yet failed for our vain help: in our watching we have watched for a nation that could not save us.

The anger of the LORD hath divided them; he will no more regard them: they respected not the persons of the priests, they favoured not the elders.

They cried unto them, Depart ye; it is unclean; depart, depart, touch not: when they fled away and wandered, they said among the heathen, They shall no more sojourn there.