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Chapter 2
1 Aleph. How has the Lord covered with obscurity the daughter of Sion in his wrath! how has he cast down from heaven to the earth the glorious one of Israel, and has not remembered his footstool in the day of his anger!
2 Beth. The Lord has cast down headlong, and has not spared, all that was beautiful in Jacob: he has destroyed in his wrath the strong holds of the virgin of Juda, and brought them down to the ground: he has made the kingdom unclean, and the princes thereof.
3 Ghimel. He has broken in his fierce anger all the horn of Israel: he has drawn back his right hand from before the enemy: and he has kindled in Jacob as it were a flaming fire devouring round about.
4 Daleth. He has bent his bow as an enemy, he has fixed his right hand as an adversary: and he has killed all that was fair to behold in the tabernacle of the daughter of Sion, he has poured out his indignation like fire.
5 He. The Lord is become as an enemy: he has cast down Israel headlong, he has overthrown all the walls thereof: he has destroyed his strong holds, and has multiplied in the daughter of Juda the afflicted, both men and women.
6 Vau. And he has destroyed his tent as a garden, he has thrown down his tabernacle: the Lord has caused feasts and sabbaths to be forgotten in Sion: and has delivered up king and priest to reproach, and to the indignation of his wrath.
7 Zain. The Lord has cast off his altar, he has cursed his sanctuary: he has delivered the walls of the towers thereof into the hand of the enemy: they have made a noise in the house of the Lord, as in the day of a solemn feast.
8 Heth. The Lord has purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Sion: he has stretched out his line, and has not withdrawn his hand from destroying: and the bulwark has mourned, and the wall has been destroyed together.
9 Teth. Her gates are sunk into the ground: he has destroyed, and broken her bars: her king and her princes are among the Gentiles: the law is no more, and her prophets have found no vision from the Lord.
10 Jod. The ancients of the daughter of Sion sit upon the ground, they have held their peace: they have sprinkled their heads with dust, they are girded with haircloth, the virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground.
11 Caph. My eyes have failed with weeping, my bowels are troubled: my liver is poured out upon the earth, for the destruction of the daughter of my people, when the children, and the sucklings, fainted away in the streets of the city.
12 Lamed. They said to their mothers: Where is corn and wine? when they fainted away as the wounded in the streets of the city: when they breathed out their souls in the bosoms of their mothers.
13 Mem. To what shall I compare you? or to what shall I liken you, O daughter of Jerusalem? to what shall I equal you, that I may comfort you, O virgin daughter of Sion? for great as the sea is your destruction: who shall heal you?
14 Nun. your prophets have seen false and foolish things for you: and they have not laid open your iniquity, to excite you to penance: but they have seen for you false revelations and banishments.
15 Samech. All they that passed by the way have clapped their hands at you: they have hissed, and wagged their heads at the daughter of Jerusalem, saying: Is this the city of perfect beauty, the joy of all the earth?
16 Phe. All your enemies have opened their mouth against you: they have hissed, and gnashed with the teeth, and have said: We will swallow her up: lo, this is the day which we looked for: we have found it, we have seen it.
17 Ain. The Lord has done that which he purposed, he has fulfilled his word, which he commanded in the days of old: he has destroyed, and has not spared, and he has caused the enemy to rejoice over you, and has set up the horn of your adversaries.
18 Sade. Their heart cried to the Lord upon the walls of the daughter of Sion: Let tears run down like a torrent day and night: give yourself no rest, and let not the apple of your eye cease.
19 Coph. Arise, give praise in the night, in the beginning of the watches: pour out your heart like water before the face of the Lord: lift up your hands to him for the life of your little children, that have fainted for hunger at the top of all the streets.
20 Res. Behold, O Lord, and consider whom you have thus dealt with: shall women then eat their own fruit, their children of a span long? shall the priest and the prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord ?
21 Sin. The child and the old man lie without on the ground: my virgins and my young men are fallen by the sword: you have slain them in the day of your wrath: you have killed, and shewn them no pity.
22 Thau. you have called as to a festival, those that should terrify me round about, and there was none in the day of the wrath of the Lord that escaped and was left: those that I brought up, and nourished, my enemy has consumed them.