4. Zion’s roads weep, empty of pilgrims headed to the feasts.All her city gates are deserted, her priests in despair.Her virgins are sad. How bitter her fate.
5. Her enemies have become her masters. Her foes are living it upbecause God laid her low, punishing her repeated rebellions.Her children, prisoners of the enemy, trudge into exile.
6. All beauty has drained from Daughter Zion’s face.Her princes are like deer famished for food,chased to exhaustion by hunters.
7. Jerusalem remembers the day she lost everything,when her people fell into enemy hands, and not a soul there to help.Enemies looked on and laughed, laughed at her helpless silence.
8. Jerusalem, who outsinned the whole world, is an outcast.All who admired her despise her now that they see beneath the surface.Miserable, she groans and turns away in shame.
9. She played fast and loose with life, she never considered tomorrow,and now she’s crashed royally, with no one to hold her hand:“Look at my pain, O God! And how the enemy cruelly struts.”
10. The enemy reached out to take all her favorite things. She watchedas pagans barged into her Sanctuary, those very people for whomyou posted orders: keep out: this assembly off-limits.