Lamentations 1:4

¹¹“I will make Jerusalem heaps, a dwelling place of jackals. I will make the cities of Judah a desolation, without inhabitant.”

⁸Mourn like a virgin dressed in sackcloth for the husband of her youth! ⁹The meal offering and the drink offering are cut off from the LORD’s house. The priests, the LORD’s ministers, mourn. ¹⁰The field is laid waste. The land mourns, for the grain is destroyed, The new wine has dried up, and the oil languishes. ¹¹Be confounded, you farmers! Wail, you vineyard keepers, for the wheat and for the barley; for the harvest of the field has perished. ¹²The vine has dried up, and the fig tree withered— the pomegranate tree, the palm tree also, and the apple tree, even all of the trees of the field are withered; for joy has withered away from the sons of men. ¹³Put on sackcloth and mourn, you priests! Wail, you ministers of the altar. Come, lie all night in sackcloth, you ministers of my God, ^[+] for the meal offering and the drink offering are withheld from your God’s house.

⁶He has violently taken away his tabernacle, as if it were a garden. He has destroyed his place of assembly. The LORD has caused solemn assembly and Sabbath to be forgotten in Zion. In the indignation of his anger, he has despised the king and the priest. ⁷The Lord has cast off his altar. He has abhorred his sanctuary. He has given the walls of her palaces into the hand of the enemy. They have made a noise in the LORD’s house, as in the day of a solemn assembly.

⁴The earth mourns and fades away. The world languishes and fades away. The lofty people of the earth languish. ⁵The earth also is polluted under its inhabitants, because they have transgressed the laws, violated the statutes, and broken the everlasting covenant. ⁶Therefore the curse has devoured the earth, and those who dwell therein are found guilty. Therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned, and few men are left.

²²The voice of news, behold, it comes, and a great commotion out of the north country, to make the cities of Judah a desolation, a dwelling place of jackals.

²“Judah mourns, and its gates languish. They sit in black on the ground. The cry of Jerusalem goes up.

⁹Rise up, you women who are at ease! Hear my voice! You careless daughters, give ear to my speech! ¹⁰For days beyond a year you will be troubled, you careless women; for the vintage will fail. The harvest won’t come. ¹¹Tremble, you women who are at ease! Be troubled, you careless ones! Strip yourselves, make yourselves naked, and put sackcloth on your waist. ¹²Beat your breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine. ¹³Thorns and briers will come up on my people’s land; yes, on all the houses of joy in the joyous city. ¹⁴For the palace will be forsaken. The populous city will be deserted. The hill and the watchtower will be for dens forever, a delight for wild donkeys, a pasture of flocks,

¹²Therefore Zion for your sake will be plowed like a field, and Jerusalem will become heaps of rubble, and the mountain of the temple like the high places of a forest.

¹³The young men carry millstones. The children stumbled under loads of wood.

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, who faint for hunger at the head of every street. ²⁰“Look, LORD, and see to whom you have done thus! Should the women eat their offspring, the children that they held and bounced on their knees? Should the priest and the prophet be killed in the sanctuary of the Lord? ²¹“The youth and the old man lie on the ground in the streets. My virgins and my young men have fallen by the sword. You have killed them in the day of your anger. You have slaughtered, and not pitied.