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Summary: Lamentations is structured around grief, destruction, and hope in God’s mercy.
Lamentations Chapter 1:1-22
Jerusalem’s Desolation
1 𝑺 How the city sits solitary,
2 𝑺 She weeps bitterly in the night.
3 𝑺 Judah has gone into captivity because of affliction
4 𝑺 The roads to Zion mourn,
5 𝑺 Her adversaries have become the head.
6 𝑺 All majesty has departed from the daughter of Zion.
7 𝑺 Jerusalem remembers in the days of her affliction and of her miseries
8 𝑺 Jerusalem has grievously sinned.
9 𝑺 Her filthiness was in her skirts.
10 𝑺 The adversary has spread out his hand on all her pleasant things;
11 𝑺 All her people sigh.
Is There Any Sorrow Like My Sorrow?
12 𝑺 ‘Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?
13 𝑺 ‘From on high has he sent fire into my bones,
14 𝑺 ‘The yoke of my transgressions is bound by his hand.
15 𝑺 ‘The Lord has set at nothing all my mighty men within me.
16 𝑺 ‘For these things I weep.
17 𝑺 Zion spreads out her hands.
The LORD Is Righteous
18 𝑺 ‘Yahweh is righteous,
19 𝑺 ‘I called for my lovers,
20 𝑺 ‘Look, Yahweh; for I am in distress.
21 𝑺 ‘They have heard that I sigh.
22 𝑺 ‘Let all their wickedness come before you.
Lamentations Chapter 2:1-22
The LORD’s Anger Against Zion
1 𝑺 How has the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger!
2 𝑺 The Lord has swallowed up all the dwellings of Jacob
3 𝑺 He has cut off all the horn of Israel in fierce anger.
4 𝑺 He has bent his bow like an enemy.
5 𝑺 The Lord has become as an enemy.
6 𝑺 He has violently taken away his tabernacle,
7 𝑺 The Lord has cast off his altar.
8 𝑺 Yahweh has purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion.
9 𝑺 Her gates have sunk into the ground.
10 𝑺 The elders of the daughter of Zion sit on the ground.
The People’s Suffering
11 𝑺 My eyes fail with tears.
12 𝑺 They ask their mothers,
13 𝑺 What shall I testify to you?
14 𝑺 Your prophets have seen false and foolish visions for you.
15 𝑺 All that pass by clap their hands at you.
16 𝑺 All your enemies have opened their mouth wide against you.
17 𝑺 Yahweh has done that which he planned.
Cry Out to the Lord
18 𝑺 Their heart cried to the Lord.
19 𝑺 Arise, cry out in the night,
20 𝑺 ‘Look, Yahweh, and see to whom you have done thus!
21 𝑺 ‘The youth and the old man lie on the ground in the streets.
22 𝑺 ‘You have called, as in the day of a solemn assembly, my terrors on every side.
Lamentations Chapter 3:1-66
The Man Who Has Seen Affliction
1 𝑺 I am the man who has seen affliction
2 𝑺 He has led me and caused me to walk in darkness,
3 𝑺 Surely he turns his hand against me
4 𝑺 He has made my flesh and my skin old.
5 𝑺 He has built against me,
6 𝑺 He has made me dwell in dark places,
7 𝑺 He has walled me about, so that I can’t go out.
8 𝑺 Yes, when I cry, and call for help,
9 𝑺 He has walled up my ways with cut stone.
10 𝑺 He is to me as a bear lying in wait,
11 𝑺 He has turned away my path,
12 𝑺 He has bent his bow,
13 𝑺 He has caused the shafts of his quiver to enter into my kidneys.
14 𝑺 I have become a derision to all my people,
15 𝑺 He has filled me with bitterness.
16 𝑺 He has also broken my teeth with gravel.
17 𝑺 You have removed my soul far away from peace.
18 𝑺 I said, ‘My strength has perished,
19 𝑺 Remember my affliction and my misery,
20 𝑺 My soul still remembers them,
21 𝑺 This I recall to my mind;
Great Is Your Faithfulness
22 𝑺 It is because of Yahweh’loving kindnesses that we are not consumed,
23 𝑺 They are new every morning.
24 𝑺 ‘Yahweh is my portion,’ says my soul.
25 𝑺 Yahweh is good to those who wait for him,
26 𝑺 It is good that a man should hope
27 𝑺 It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.
28 𝑺 Let him sit alone and keep silence,
29 𝑺 Let him put his mouth in the dust,
30 𝑺 Let him give his cheek to him who strikes him.
31 𝑺 For the Lord will not cast off forever.
32 𝑺 For though he causes grief,
33 𝑺 For he does not afflict willingly,
34 𝑺 To crush under foot all the prisoners of the earth,
35 𝑺 to turn away the right of a man before the face of the Most High,
36 𝑺 to subvert a man in his cause, the Lord doesn’t approve.
37 𝑺 Who is he who says, and it comes to pass,
38 𝑺 Doesn’t evil and good come out of the mouth of the Most High?
39 𝑺 Why should a living man complain,
Let Us Examine Our Ways
40 𝑺 Let us search and try our ways,
41 𝑺 Let’lift up our heart with our hands to God in the heavens.
42 𝑺 ‘We have transgressed and have rebelled.
43 𝑺 ‘You have covered us with anger and pursued us.
44 𝑺 You have covered yourself with a cloud,
45 𝑺 You have made us an off-scouring and refuse
46 𝑺 ‘All our enemies have opened their mouth wide against us.
47 𝑺 Terror and the pit have come on us,
48 𝑺 My eye runs down with streams of water,
49 𝑺 My eye pours down
50 𝑺 until Yahweh looks down,
51 𝑺 My eye affects my soul,
52 𝑺 They have chased me relentlessly like a bird,
53 𝑺 They have cut off my life in the dungeon,
54 𝑺 Waters flowed over my head.
You Heard My Plea
55 𝑺 I called on your name, Yahweh,
56 𝑺 You heard my voice:
57 𝑺 You came near in the day that I called on you.
58 𝑺 Lord, you have pleaded the causes of my soul.
59 𝑺 Yahweh, you have seen my wrong.
60 𝑺 You have seen all their vengeance
61 𝑺 You have heard their reproach, Yahweh,
62 𝑺 the lips of those that rose up against me,
63 𝑺 You see their sitting down and their rising up.
64 𝑺 You will pay them back, Yahweh,
65 𝑺 You will give them hardness of heart,
66 𝑺 You will pursue them in anger,
Lamentations Chapter 4:1-22
The Gold Has Grown Dim
1 𝑺 How the gold has become dim!
2 𝑺 The precious sons of Zion,
3 𝑺 Even the jackals offer their breast.
4 𝑺 The tongue of the nursing child clings to the roof of his mouth for thirst.
5 𝑺 Those who ate delicacies are desolate in the streets.
6 𝑺 For the iniquity of the daughter of my people is greater than the sin of Sodom,
7 𝑺 Her nobles were purer than snow.
8 𝑺 Their appearance is blacker than a coal.
9 𝑺 Those who are killed with the sword are better than those who are killed with hunger;
10 𝑺 The hands of the pitiful women have boiled their own children.
The LORD’s Wrath Completed
11 𝑺 Yahweh has accomplished his wrath.
12 𝑺 The kings of the earth didn’t believe,
13 𝑺 It is because of the sins of her prophets
14 𝑺 They wander as blind men in the streets.
15 𝑺 ‘Go away!’ they cried to them.
16 𝑺 Yahweh’anger has scattered them.
17 𝑺 Our eyes still fail,
18 𝑺 They hunt our steps,
19 𝑺 Our pursuers were swifter than the eagles of the sky.
20 𝑺 The breath of our nostrils,
Edom’s Judgment
21 𝑺 Rejoice and be glad, daughter of Edom,
22 𝑺 The punishment of your iniquity is accomplished, daughter of Zion.
Lamentations Chapter 5:1-22
A Prayer for Restoration
1 𝑺 Remember, Yahweh, what has come on us.
2 𝑺 Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers,
3 𝑺 We are orphans and fatherless.
4 𝑺 We must pay for water to drink.
5 𝑺 Our pursuers are on our necks.
6 𝑺 We have given our hands to the Egyptians,
7 𝑺 Our fathers sinned, and are no more.
8 𝑺 Servants rule over us.
9 𝑺 We get our bread at the peril of our lives,
10 𝑺 Our skin is black like an oven,
11 𝑺 They ravished the women in Zion,
12 𝑺 Princes were hanged up by their hands.
13 𝑺 The young men carry millstones.
14 𝑺 The elders have ceased from the gate,
15 𝑺 The joy of our heart has ceased.
16 𝑺 The crown has fallen from our head.
17 𝑺 For this our heart is faint.
18 𝑺 for the mountain of Zion, which is desolate.
19 𝑺 You, Yahweh, remain forever.
20 𝑺 Why do you forget us forever,
21 𝑺 Turn us to yourself, Yahweh, and we will be turned.
22 𝑺 But you have utterly rejected us.
