Lamentations 4:1-12

The Punishment of Zion Accomplished

4¹ How dark has the gold become! how changed the best gold! the stones of the holy place are dropping out at the top of every street. ² The valued sons of Zion, whose price was the best gold, are looked on as vessels of earth, the work of the hands of the potter! ³ Even the beasts of the waste land have full breasts, they give milk to their young ones: the daughter of my people has become cruel like the ostriches in the waste land. ⁴ The tongue of the child at the breast is fixed to the roof of his mouth for need of drink: the young children are crying out for bread, and no man gives it to them. ⁵ Those who were used to feasting on delicate food are wasted in the streets: those who as children were dressed in purple are stretched out on the dust. ⁶ For the punishment of the daughter of my people is greater than the punishment of Sodom, which was overturned suddenly without any hand falling on her. ⁷ Her holy ones were cleaner than snow, they were whiter than milk, their bodies were redder than corals, their form was as the sapphire: ⁸ Their face is blacker than night; in the streets no one has knowledge of them: their skin is hanging on their bones, they are dry, they have become like wood. ⁹ Those who have been put to the sword are better off than those whose death is caused by need of food; for these come to death slowly, burned up like the fruit of the field. ¹⁰ The hands of kind-hearted women have been boiling their children; they were their food in the destruction of the daughter of my people. ¹¹ The Lord has given full effect to his passion, he has let loose his burning wrath; he has made a fire in Zion, causing the destruction of its bases. ¹² To the kings of the earth and to all the people of the world it did not seem possible that the attackers and the haters would go into the doors of Jerusalem.