How lonely sits the city
        that was full of people!
    How like a widow has she become,
        she who was great among the nations!
    She who was a princess among the provinces
        has become a slave.
    
    
    She weeps bitterly in the night,
        with tears on her cheeks;
    among all her lovers
        she has none to comfort her;
    all her friends have dealt treacherously with her;
        they have become her enemies.
    
    
    Judah has gone into exile because of affliction
        and hard servitude;
    she dwells now among the nations,
        but finds no resting place;
    her pursuers have all overtaken her
        in the midst of her distress.
    
    
    The roads to Zion mourn,
        for none come to the festival;
    all her gates are desolate;
        her priests groan;
    her virgins have been afflicted,
        and she herself suffers bitterly.
    
    
    Her foes have become the head;
        her enemies prosper,
    because the LORD has afflicted her
        for the multitude of her transgressions;
    her children have gone away,
        captives before the foe.
    
    
    From the daughter of Zion
        all her majesty has departed.
    Her princes have become like deer
        that find no pasture;
    they fled without strength
        before the pursuer.
    
    
    Jerusalem remembers
        in the days of her affliction and wandering
    all the precious things
        that were hers from days of old.
    When her people fell into the hand of the foe,
        and there was none to help her,
    her foes gloated over her;
        they mocked at her downfall.
    
    
    Jerusalem sinned grievously;
        therefore she became filthy;
    all who honored her despise her,
        for they have seen her nakedness;
    she herself groans
        and turns her face away.
    
    
    Her uncleanness was in her skirts;
        she took no thought of her future;
    therefore her fall is terrible;
        she has no comforter.
    “O LORD, behold my affliction,
        for the enemy has triumphed!”
    
    
    The enemy has stretched out his hands
        over all her precious things;
    for she has seen the nations
        enter her sanctuary,
    those whom you forbade
        to enter your congregation.
    
    
    All her people groan
        as they search for bread;
    they trade their treasures for food
        to revive their strength.
    “Look, O LORD, and see,
        for I am despised.”
    
    
    “Is it nothing to you, 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.
    
    
    “From on high he sent fire;
        into my bones he made it descend;
    he spread a net for my feet;
        he turned me back;
    he has left me stunned,
        faint all the day long.
    
    
    “My transgressions were bound into a yoke;
        by his hand they were fastened together;
    they were set upon my neck;
        he caused my strength to fail;
    the Lord gave me into the hands
        of those whom I cannot withstand.
    
    
    “The Lord rejected
        all my mighty men in my midst;
    he summoned an assembly against me
        to crush my young men;
    the Lord has trodden as in a winepress
        the virgin daughter of Judah.
    
    
    “For these things I weep;
        my eyes flow with tears;
    for a comforter is far from me,
        one to revive my spirit;
    my children are desolate,
        for the enemy has prevailed.”
    
    
    Zion stretches out her hands,
        but there is none to comfort her;
    the LORD has commanded against Jacob
        that his neighbors should be his foes;
    Jerusalem has become
        a filthy thing among them.
    
    
    “The LORD is in the right,
        for I have rebelled against his word;
    but hear, all you peoples,
        and see my suffering;
    my young women and my young men
        have gone into captivity.
    
    
    “I called to my lovers,
        but they deceived me;
    my priests and elders
        perished in the city,
    while they sought food
        to revive their strength.
    
    
    “Look, O LORD, for I am in distress;
        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.
    
    
    “They heard my groaning,
        yet there is no one to comfort me.
    All my enemies have heard of my trouble;
        they are glad that you have done it.
    You have brought the day you announced;
        now let them be as I am.
    
    
    “Let all their evildoing come before you,
        and deal with them
    as you have dealt with me
        because of all my transgressions;
    for my groans are many,
        and my heart is faint.”
    
    
        How the Lord in his anger
        has set the daughter of Zion under a cloud!
    He has cast down from heaven to earth
        the splendor of Israel;
    he has not remembered his footstool
        in the day of his anger.
    
    
    The Lord has swallowed up without mercy
        all the habitations of Jacob;
    in his wrath he has broken down
        the strongholds of the daughter of Judah;
    he has brought down to the ground in dishonor
        the kingdom and its rulers.
    
    
    He has cut down in fierce anger
        all the might of Israel;
    he has withdrawn from them his right hand
        in the face of the enemy;
    he has burned like a flaming fire in Jacob,
        consuming all around.
    
    
    He has bent his bow like an enemy,
        with his right hand set like a foe;
    and he has killed all who were delightful in our eyes;
        in the tent of the daughter of Zion,
    he has poured out his fury like fire.
    
    
    The Lord has become like an enemy;
        he has swallowed up Israel;
    he has swallowed up all its palaces;
        he has laid in ruins its strongholds,
    and he has multiplied in the daughter of Judah
        mourning and lamentation.
    
    
    He has laid waste his booth like a garden,
        laid in ruins his meeting place;
    the LORD has made Zion forget
        festival and Sabbath,
    and in his fierce indignation has spurned king and priest.
    
    
    The Lord has scorned his altar,
        disowned his sanctuary;
    he has delivered into the hand of the enemy
        the walls of her palaces;
    they raised a clamor in the house of the LORD
        as on the day of festival.
    
    
    The LORD determined to lay in ruins
        the wall of the daughter of Zion;
    he stretched out the measuring line;
        he did not restrain his hand from destroying;
    he caused rampart and wall to lament;
        they languished together.
    
    
    Her gates have sunk into the ground;
        he has ruined and broken her bars;
    her king and princes are among the nations;
        the law is no more,
    and her prophets find
        no vision from the LORD.
    
    
    The elders of the daughter of Zion
        sit on the ground in silence;
    they have thrown dust on their heads
        and put on sackcloth;
    the young women of Jerusalem
        have bowed their heads to the ground.
    
    
    My eyes are spent with weeping;
        my stomach churns;
    my bile is poured out to the ground
        because of the destruction of the daughter of my people,
    because infants and babies faint
        in the streets of the city.
    
    
    They cry to their mothers,
        “Where is bread and wine?”
    as they faint like a wounded man
        in the streets of the city,
    as their life is poured out
        on their mothers’ bosom.
    
    
    What can I say for you, to what compare you,
        O daughter of Jerusalem?
    What can I liken to you, that I may comfort you,
        O virgin daughter of Zion?
    For your ruin is vast as the sea;
        who can heal you?
    
    
    Your prophets have seen for you
        false and deceptive visions;
    they have not exposed your iniquity
        to restore your fortunes,
    but have seen for you oracles
        that are false and misleading.
    
    
    All who pass along the way
        clap their hands at you;
    they hiss and wag their heads
        at the daughter of Jerusalem:
    “Is this the city that was called
        the perfection of beauty,
        the joy of all the earth?”
    
    
    All your enemies
        rail against you;
    they hiss, they gnash their teeth,
        they cry: “We have swallowed her!
    Ah, this is the day we longed for;
        now we have it; we see it!”
    
    
    The LORD has done what he purposed;
        he has carried out his word,
    which he commanded long ago;
        he has thrown down without pity;
    he has made the enemy rejoice over you
        and exalted the might of your foes.
    
    
    Their heart cried to the Lord.
        O wall of the daughter of Zion,
    let tears stream down like a torrent
        day and night!
    Give yourself no rest,
        your eyes no respite!
    
    
    “Arise, cry out in the night,
        at the beginning of the night 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.”
    
    
    Look, O LORD, and see!
        With whom have you dealt thus?
    Should women eat the fruit of their womb,
        the children of their tender care?
    Should priest and prophet be killed
        in the sanctuary of the Lord?
    
    
    In the dust of the streets
        lie the young and the old;
    my young women and my young men
        have fallen by the sword;
    you have killed them in the day of your anger,
        slaughtering without pity.
    
    
    You summoned as if to a festival day
        my terrors on every side,
    and on the day of the anger of the LORD
        no one escaped or survived;
    those whom I held and raised
        my enemy destroyed. (ESV)

But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed. And in their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.

  For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment; if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; and if he rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked (for as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard); then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority.

  Bold and willful, they do not tremble as they blaspheme the glorious ones, whereas angels, though greater in might and power, do not pronounce a blasphemous judgment against them before the Lord. But these, like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed, blaspheming about matters of which they are ignorant, will also be destroyed in their destruction, suffering wrong as the wage for their wrongdoing. They count it pleasure to revel in the daytime. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions, while they feast with you. They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls. They have hearts trained in greed. Accursed children! Forsaking the right way, they have gone astray. They have followed the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved gain from wrongdoing, but was rebuked for his own transgression; a speechless donkey spoke with human voice and restrained the prophet’s madness.

  These are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm. For them the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved. For, speaking loud boasts of folly, they entice by sensual passions of the flesh those who are barely escaping from those who live in error. They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved. For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. What the true proverb says has happened to them: “The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire.” (ESV)