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November 10, 2007

Lamentations 1-2 - They Fled Without Strength

From today's Bible reading:

Lamentations 1:

How lonely sits the city
that was full of people!
How like a widow has she become,
she who was great among the nations!
She who was a princess among the provinces
has become a slave.

She weeps bitterly in the night,
with tears on her cheeks;
among all her lovers
she has none to comfort her;
all her friends have dealt treacherously with her;
they have become her enemies.

From the daughter of Zion
all her majesty has departed.
Her princes have become like deer
that find no pasture;
they fled without strength
before the pursuer.

Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?

Look and see
if there is any sorrow like my sorrow,
which was brought upon me,
which the LORD inflicted
on the day of his fierce anger.

Jerusalem has become
a filthy thing among them.

The LORD is in the right,
for I have rebelled against his word;
but hear, all you peoples,
and see my suffering;
my young women and my young men
have gone into captivity.

Lamentations 2:

How the Lord in his anger
has set the daughter of Zion under a cloud!
He has cast down from heaven to earth
the splendor of Israel;
he has not remembered his footstool
in the day of his anger.

(Most people don't remember their footstool when they are angry either.)

He has laid waste his booth like a garden,
laid in ruins his meeting place;
the LORD has made Zion forget
festival and Sabbath,
and in his fierce indignation has spurned king and priest.

What can I say for you, to what compare you,
O daughter of Jerusalem?
What can I liken to you, that I may comfort you,
O virgin daughter of Zion?

For your ruin is vast as the sea; who can heal you?

Arise, cry out in the night,
at the beginning of the night watches!

Pour out your heart like water
before the presence of the Lord!

Lift your hands to him
for the lives of your children,
who faint for hunger
at the head of every street.

Look, O LORD, and see!
With whom have you dealt thus?

Should women eat the fruit of their womb,
the children of their tender care?
Should priest and prophet be killed
in the sanctuary of the Lord?

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