How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger!
He hath cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel,
And hath not remembered his footstool in the day of his anger.
The Lord hath swallowed up all the habitations of Jacob, and hath not pitied:
He hath thrown down in his wrath the strongholds of the daughter of Judah;
He hath brought them down to the ground; he hath profaned the kingdom and the princes thereof.
He hath cut off in fierce anger {Or, every horn}all the horn of Israel;
He hath drawn back his right hand from before the enemy:
And he hath burned up Jacob like a flaming fire, which devoureth round about.
He hath bent his bow like an enemy, he hath stood with his right hand as an adversary,
And hath slain all that were pleasant to the eye:
{Or, On}In the tent of the daughter of Zion he hath poured out his wrath like fire.
The Lord is become as an enemy, he hath swallowed up Israel;
He hath swallowed up all her palaces, he hath destroyed his strongholds;
And he hath multiplied in the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation.
And he hath violently taken away his {Or, booth Or, hedge}tabernacle, as if it were of a garden; he hath destroyed his place of assembly:
Jehovah hath caused {Or, appointed feast}solemn assembly and sabbath to be forgotten in Zion,
And hath despised in the indignation of his anger the king and the priest.
The Lord hath cast off his altar, he hath abhorred his sanctuary;
He hath given up into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces:
They have made a noise in the house of Jehovah, as in the day of a solemn assembly.
Jehovah hath purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion;
He hath stretched out the line, he hath not withdrawn his hand from {Hebrew: swallowing up.}destroying;
And he hath made the rampart and wall to lament; they languish together.
Her gates are sunk into the ground; he hath destroyed and broken her bars:
Her king and her princes are among the nations where the law is not;
Yea, her prophets find no vision from Jehovah.
The elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground, they keep silence;
They have cast up dust upon their heads; they have girded themselves with sackcloth:
The virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground.
Mine eyes do fail with tears, my heart is troubled;
My liver is poured upon the earth, because of the {Or, breach}destruction of the daughter of my people,
Because the young children and the sucklings swoon in the streets of the city.
They say to their mothers, Where is grain and wine?
When they swoon as the wounded in the streets of the city,
When their soul is poured out into their mothers' bosom.
What shall I {Or, take to witness for thee}testify unto thee? what shall I liken to thee, O daughter of Jerusalem?
What shall I compare to thee, that I may comfort thee, O virgin daughter of Zion?
For thy breach is great like the sea: who can heal thee?
Thy prophets have seen for thee false and foolish visions;
And they have not uncovered thine iniquity, to bring back thy captivity,
But have seen for thee false {Hebrew: burdens.}oracles and {Or, things to draw thee aside}causes of banishment.
All that pass by clap their hands at thee;
They hiss and wag their head at the daughter of Jerusalem, saying,
Is this the city that men called The perfection of beauty, The joy of the whole earth?
All thine enemies have opened their mouth wide against thee;
They hiss and gnash the teeth; they say, We have swallowed her up;
Certainly this is the day that we looked for; we have found, we have seen it.
Jehovah hath done that which he purposed; he hath {Or, finished}fulfilled his word that he commanded in the days of old;
He hath thrown down, and hath not pitied:
And he hath caused the enemy to rejoice over thee; he hath exalted the horn of thine adversaries.
Their heart cried unto the Lord:
O wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears run down like a river day and night;
Give thyself no respite; let not the apple of thine eye cease.
Arise, cry out in the night, at the beginning of the watches;
Pour out thy heart like water before the face of the Lord:
Lift up thy hands toward him for the life of thy young children, that faint for hunger at the head of every street.
See, O Jehovah, and behold to whom thou hast done thus!
Shall the women eat their fruit, the children that are dandled in the hands?
Shall the priest and the prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord?
The youth and the old man lie on the ground in the streets;
My virgins and my young men are fallen by the sword:
Thou hast slain them in the day of thine anger; thou hast slaughtered, and not pitied.
Thou hast called, as in the day of a solemn assembly, my terrors on every side;
And there was none that escaped or remained in the day of Jehovah's anger:
Those that I have dandled and brought up hath mine enemy consumed.
Querverweise zu Klagelieder 2,6 Klgl 2,6
Why hast thou broken down its walls,So that all they that pass by the way do pluck it?
And the daughter of Zion is left as a booth in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city.
The ways of Zion do mourn, because none come to the {Or, appointed feast}solemn assembly;All her gates are desolate, her priests do sigh:Her virgins are afflicted, and she herself is in bitterness.
The {Hebrew: face.}anger of Jehovah hath scattered them; he will no more regard them:They respected not the persons of the priests, they favored not the elders.
Thou hast broken down all his hedges;Thou hast brought his strongholds to ruin.
{Or, They have been sorrowful for the solemn assembly which I took away from thee, for the lifting up of reproach against her}I will gather them that sorrow for the solemn assembly, who were of thee; to whom the burden upon {According to another reading, thee.}her was a reproach.
The breath of our nostrils, the anointed of Jehovah, was taken in their pits;Of whom we said, Under his shadow we shall live among the nations.
And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard: I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be {Or, burnt}eaten up; I will break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down:
Princes were hanged up by their hand:The faces of elders were not honored.
Thy holy people possessed it but a little while: our adversaries have trodden down thy sanctuary.
Therefore I {Or, have profaned}will profane the {Or, holy princes}princes of the sanctuary; and I {Or, have made}will make Jacob a {Or, devoted thing}curse, and Israel a reviling.
Our holy and our beautiful house, where our fathers praised thee, is burned with fire; and all our pleasant places are laid waste.
And he put out the eyes of Zedekiah; and the king of Babylon bound him in fetters, and carried him to Babylon, and put him in prison till the day of his death.
Now in the fifth month, in the tenth day of the month, which was the nineteenth year of king Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon, came Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard, who stood before the king of Babylon, into Jerusalem.
And he burned the house of Jehovah, and the king's house; and all the houses of Jerusalem, even {Or, every great man's house}every great house, burned he with fire.
And all the army of the Chaldeans, that were with the captain of the guard, brake down all the walls of Jerusalem round about.
Then Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard carried away captive of the poorest of the people, and the residue of the people that were left in the city, and those that fell away, that fell to the king of Babylon, and the residue of the {Or, artificers}multitude.
But Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard left of the poorest of the land to be vinedressers and husbandmen.
And the pillars of brass that were in the house of Jehovah, and the bases and the brazen sea that were in the house of Jehovah, did the Chaldeans break in pieces, and carried all the brass of them to Babylon.
The pots also, and the shovels, and the snuffers, and the basins, and the spoons, and all the vessels of brass wherewith they ministered, took they away.
And the cups, and the firepans, and the basins, and the pots, and the candlesticks, and the spoons, and the bowls—that which was of gold, in gold, and that which was of silver, in silver,— the captain of the guard took away.
The two pillars, the one sea, and the twelve brazen bulls that were under the bases, which king Solomon had made for the house of Jehovah—the brass of all these vessels was without weight.
And as for the pillars, the height of the one pillar was eighteen cubits; and a line of twelve cubits did compass it; and the thickness thereof was four fingers: it was hollow.
And a capital of brass was upon it; and the height of the one capital was five cubits, with network and pomegranates upon the capital round about, all of brass: and the second pillar also had like unto these, and pomegranates.
And there were ninety and six pomegranates {Or, on the outside Hebrew: towards the four winds.}on the sides; all the pomegranates were a hundred upon the network round about.
And the captain of the guard took Seraiah the chief priest, and Zephaniah the second priest, and the three keepers of the threshold:
and out of the city he took an {Or, eunuch}officer that was set over the men of war; and seven men of them that saw the king's face, that were found in the city; and the scribe of the captain of the host, who mustered the people of the land; and threescore men of the people of the land, that were found in the midst of the city.
And Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard took them, and brought them to the king of Babylon to Riblah.
And the king of Babylon smote them, and put them to death at Riblah in the land of Hamath. So Judah was carried away captive out of his land.
And the prince that is among them shall bear upon his shoulder in the dark, and shall go forth: they shall dig through the wall to carry out thereby: he shall cover his face, because he shall not see the land with his eyes.
My net also will I spread upon him, and he shall be taken in my snare; and I will bring him to Babylon to the land of the Chaldeans; yet shall he not see it, though he shall die there.
For he hath despised the oath by breaking the covenant; and behold, he had given his hand, and yet hath done all these things; he shall not escape.
Therefore have I also made you contemptible and base before all the people, according as ye have not kept my ways, but have had respect of persons in the law.