“Judah mourns, and her gates languish; her people lament on the ground, and the cry of Jerusalem goes up.
And her gates shall lament and mourn; empty, she shall sit on the ground.
For the wound of the daughter of my people is my heart wounded; I mourn, and dismay has taken hold on me.
The men who did not die were struck with tumors, and the cry of the city went up to heaven.
“As I called, and they would not hear, so they called, and I would not hear,” says the Lord of hosts,
Now their face is blacker than soot; they are not recognized in the streets; their skin has shriveled on their bones; it has become as dry as wood. Happier were the victims of the sword than the victims of hunger, who wasted away, pierced by lack of the fruits of the field.
Therefore, thus says the Lord, Behold, I am bringing disaster upon them that they cannot escape. Though they cry to me, I will not listen to them.
Before them peoples are in anguish; all faces grow pale.
The fields are destroyed, the ground mourns, because the grain is destroyed, the wine dries up, the oil languishes.
Therefore the land mourns, and all who dwell in it languish, and also the beasts of the field and the birds of the heavens, and even the fish of the sea are taken away.
Our skin is hot as an oven with the burning heat of famine.
Her gates have sunk into the ground; he has ruined and broken her bars; her king and princes are among the nations; the law is no more, and her prophets find no vision from the Lord.
May a cry be heard from their houses, when you bring the plunderer suddenly upon them! For they have dug a pit to take me and laid snares for my feet.
How long will the land mourn and the grass of every field wither? For the evil of those who dwell in it the beasts and the birds are swept away, because they said, “He will not see our latter end.”
“For this the earth shall mourn, and the heavens above be dark; for I have spoken; I have purposed; I have not relented, nor will I turn back.”
The land mourns and languishes; Lebanon is confounded and withers away; Sharon is like a desert, and Bashan and Carmel shake off their leaves.
The wine mourns, the vine languishes, all the merry-hearted sigh.
The earth mourns and withers; the world languishes and withers; the highest people of the earth languish.
My heart cries out for Moab; her fugitives flee to Zoar, to Eglath-shelishiyah. For at the ascent of Luhith they go up weeping; on the road to Horonaim they raise a cry of destruction;
For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are his pleasant planting; and he looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed; for righteousness, but behold, an outcry!
so that they caused the cry of the poor to come to him, and he heard the cry of the afflicted—
“Tomorrow about this time I will send to you a man from the land of Benjamin, and you shall anoint him to be prince over my people Israel. He shall save my people from the hand of the Philistines. For I have seen my people, because their cry has come to me.”
And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.
Unless otherwise indicated, all content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License. All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Copyright ©2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Contact me: openbibleinfo (at) gmail.com.