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Lamentations 2 :: New American Standard Bible 1995 (NASB95)

God's Anger over Israel

Lam 2:1How the Lord has covered the daughter of Zion
With a cloud in His anger!
He has cast from heaven to earth
The glory of Israel,
And has not remembered His footstool
In the day of His anger.
Lam 2:2The Lord has swallowed up; He has not spared
All the habitations of Jacob.
In His wrath He has thrown down
The strongholds of the daughter of Judah;
He has brought them down to the ground;
He has profaned the kingdom and its princes.
Lam 2:3In fierce anger He has cut off
[fn]All the strength of Israel;
He has drawn back His right hand
From before the enemy.
And He has burned in Jacob like a flaming fire
Consuming round about.
Lam 2:4He has bent His bow like an enemy;
He has set His right hand like an adversary
And slain all that were pleasant to the eye;
In the tent of the daughter of Zion
He has poured out His wrath like fire.
Lam 2:5The Lord has become like an enemy.
He has swallowed up Israel;
He has swallowed up all its palaces,
He has destroyed its strongholds
And multiplied in the daughter of Judah
Mourning and moaning.
Lam 2:6And He has violently treated His [fn]tabernacle like a garden booth;
He has destroyed His appointed [fn]meeting place.
The LORD has caused to be forgotten
The appointed feast and sabbath in Zion,
And He has despised king and priest
In the indignation of His anger.
Lam 2:7The Lord has rejected His altar,
He has abandoned His sanctuary;
He has delivered into the hand of the enemy
The walls of her palaces.
They have made a noise in the house of the LORD
As in the day of an appointed feast.
Lam 2:8The LORD [fn]determined to destroy
The wall of the daughter of Zion.
He has stretched out a line,
He has not restrained His hand from [fn]destroying,
And He has caused rampart and wall to lament;
They have languished together.
Lam 2:9Her gates have sunk into the ground,
He has destroyed and broken her bars.
Her king and her princes are among the nations;
The law is no more.
Also, her prophets find
No vision from the LORD.
Lam 2:10The elders of the daughter of Zion
Sit on the ground, they are silent.
They have thrown dust on their heads;
They have girded themselves with sackcloth.
The virgins of Jerusalem
Have bowed their heads to the ground.
Lam 2:11My eyes fail because of tears,
My [fn]spirit is greatly troubled;
My [fn]heart is poured out on the earth
Because of the [fn]destruction of the daughter of my people,
When little ones and infants faint
In the streets of the city.
Lam 2:12They say to their mothers,
“Where is grain and wine?”
As they faint like a wounded man
In the streets of the city,
As their life is poured out
On their mothers’ bosom.
Lam 2:13How shall I admonish you?
To what shall I compare you,
O daughter of Jerusalem?
To what shall I liken you as I comfort you,
O virgin daughter of Zion?
For your [fn]ruin is as vast as the sea;
Who can heal you?
Lam 2:14Your prophets have seen for you
False and foolish visions;
And they have not exposed your iniquity
So as to restore you from captivity,
But they have seen for you false and misleading [fn]oracles.
Lam 2:15All who pass along the way
Clap their hands in derision at you;
They hiss and shake their heads
At the daughter of Jerusalem,
“Is this the city of which they said,
‘The perfection of beauty,
A joy to all the earth’?”
Lam 2:16All your enemies
Have opened their mouths wide against you;
They hiss and gnash their teeth.
They say, “We have swallowed her up!
Surely this is the day for which we waited;
We have reached it, we have seen it.
Lam 2:17The LORD has done what He purposed;
He has accomplished His word
Which He commanded from days of old.
He has thrown down without sparing,
And He has caused the enemy to rejoice over you;
He has exalted the [fn]might of your adversaries.
Lam 2:18Their heart cried out to the Lord,
“O wall of the daughter of Zion,
Let your tears run down like a river day and night;
Give yourself no relief,
Let [fn]your eyes have no rest.
Lam 2:19“Arise, cry aloud in the night
At the beginning of the night watches;
Pour out your heart like water
Before the presence of the Lord;
Lift up your hands to Him
For the life of your little ones
Who are faint because of hunger
At the head of every street.”
Lam 2:20See, O LORD, and look!
With whom have You dealt thus?
Should women eat their [fn]offspring,
The little ones who were [fn]born healthy?
Should priest and prophet be slain
In the sanctuary of the Lord?
Lam 2:21On the ground in the streets
Lie young and old;
My virgins and my young men
Have fallen by the sword.
You have slain them in the day of Your anger,
You have slaughtered, not sparing.
Lam 2:22You called as in the day of an appointed feast
My terrors on every side;
And there was no one who escaped or survived
In the day of the LORDS anger.
Those whom I [fn]bore and reared,
My enemy annihilated them.
NASB95 Footnotes
Literally: Every horn
Literally: booth
Or, feast
Literally: thought
Literally: swallowing up
Literally: inward parts are in ferment
Literally: liver
Literally: breaking
Literally: breaking
Literally: burdens
Literally: horn
Literally: the daughter of your eye
Literally: fruit
Or, tenderly cared for
Literally: bore healthy or, tenderly cared for
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New American Standard Bible 1995
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Lamentations Chapter 2 — Additional Translations: