Amplified Bible

Lamentations 2:3-12 Amplified Bible (AMP)

3. He has broken off in His fierce anger every horn (means of defense) of Israel. He has drawn back His right hand from before the enemy. And He has burned amidst Jacob like a flaming fire consuming all around.

4. He has bent His bow like an enemy; He has stood with His right hand set like a foe and has slain all the delights and pride of the eye; on and in the tent of the Daughter of Zion He has poured out His wrath like fire.

5. The Lord has become like an enemy; He has destroyed Israel. He has destroyed all its palaces, has laid in ruins its strongholds, and has multiplied in the Daughter of Judah groaning and moaning and lamentation.

6. And He has violently broken down His temple like a booth or hedge of a garden; He has destroyed the place of His appointed assembly. The Lord has caused the solemn appointed feasts and Sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion and has spurned and rejected in the indignation of His anger the king and the priest.

7. The Lord has scorned, rejected, and cast off His altar; He has abhorred and disowned His sanctuary. He has given into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces [and high buildings]; they have raised a clamor in the house of the Lord as on a day of a solemn appointed feast.

8. The Lord purposed to lay in ruins the [city] wall of the Daughter of Zion. He marked it off by measuring line; He restrained not His hand from destroying. He made rampart and wall lament; they languished together.

9. Her gates have sunk into the ground; He has destroyed and broken her bars. Her king and her princes are [exiled] among the nations; the law is no more; her prophets also obtain no vision from the Lord.

10. The elders of the Daughter of Zion sit on the ground keeping silent; they have cast dust on their heads, they have girded themselves with sackcloth. The maidens of Jerusalem have bowed their heads to the ground [says Jeremiah].

11. My eyes fail from weeping, my emotions are deeply disturbed, my heart is poured out upon the ground [in grief] because of the destruction of the daughter of my people, because infants and nurslings faint in the streets of the city.

12. They keep crying to their mothers, Where is corn and wine [food and drink]? as they faint like wounded men in the streets of the city, as their lives ebb away on their mothers' bosom.