The MacArthur Study Bible, NKJV
Page 377
“See, O LORD, and consider,
For I am scorned.”
12“ Is it nothing to you, all you who 12pass by?
Behold and see
s If there is any sorrow like my sorrow,
Which has been brought on me,
Which the LORD has inflicted
In the day of His fierce anger.
13“From above He has sent fire into my bones,
And it overpowered them;
He has tspread a net for my feet
And turned me back;
He has made me desolate
And faint all the day.
14“Theu yoke of my transgressions was 13bound;
They were woven together by His hands,
And thrust upon my neck.
He made my strength fail;
The Lord delivered me into the hands of those whom I am not able to withstand.
15“The Lord has trampled underfoot all my mighty men in my midst;
He has called an assembly against me
To crush my young men;
v The Lord trampled as in a winepress
The virgin daughter of Judah.
16“For these things I weep;
My eye, wmy eye overflows with water;
Because the comforter, who should restore my life,
Is far from me.
My children are desolate
Because the enemy prevailed.”
17x Zion 14spreads out her hands,
But no one comforts her;
The LORD has commanded concerning Jacob
That those yaround him become his adversaries;
Jerusalem has become an unclean thing among them.
18“The LORD is zrighteous,
For I arebelled against His 15commandment.
Hear now, all peoples,
And behold my sorrow;
My virgins and my young men
Have gone into captivity.
19“I called for my lovers,
But they deceived me;
My priests and my elders
Breathed their last in the city,
While they sought food
To restore their life.
20“See, O LORD, that I am in distress;
My bsoul16 is troubled;
My heart is overturned within me,
For I have been very rebellious.
c Outside the sword bereaves,
At home it is like death.
21“They have heard that I sigh,
But no one comforts me.
All my enemies have heard of my trouble;
They are dglad that You have done it.
Bring on ethe day You have 17announced,
That they may become like me.
22“Letf all their wickedness come before You,
And do to them as You have done to me
For all my transgressions;
For my sighs are many,
And my heart is faint.”
Lamentations 2
God’s Anger with Jerusalem
1How the Lord has covered the daughter of Zion
With a acloud in His anger!
b He cast down from heaven to the earth
c The beauty of Israel,
And did not remember dHis footstool
In the day of His anger.
2The Lord has swallowed up and has enot pitied
All the dwelling places of Jacob.
He has thrown down in His wrath
The strongholds of the daughter of Judah;
He has brought them down to the ground;
f He has profaned the kingdom and its princes.
3He has cut off in fierce anger
Every 1horn of Israel;
g He has drawn back His right hand
From before the enemy.
h He has blazed against Jacob like a flaming fire
Devouring all around.
4i Standing like an enemy, He has bent His bow;
With His right hand, like an adversary,
He has slain jall who were pleasing to His eye;
On the tent of the daughter of Zion,
He has poured out His fury like fire.
5k The Lord was like an enemy.
He has swallowed up Israel,
He has swallowed up all her palaces;
l He has destroyed her strongholds,
And has increased mourning and lamentation
In the daughter of Judah.
6He has done violence mto His 2tabernacle,
n As if it were a garden;
He has destroyed His place of assembly;
The LORD has caused
The appointed feasts and Sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion.
In His burning indignation He has ospurned the king and the priest.
7The Lord has spurned His altar,
He has pabandoned His sanctuary;
He has 3given up the walls of her palaces
Into the hand of the enemy.
q They have made a noise in the house of the LORD
As on the day of a set feast.
8The LORD has 4purposed to destroy
The rwall of the daughter of Zion.
s He has stretched out a line;
He has not withdrawn His hand from destroying;
Therefore He has caused the rampart and wall to lament;
They languished together.
9Her gates have sunk into the ground;
He has destroyed and tbroken her bars.
u Her king and her princes are among the 5nations;
v The Law is no more,
And her wprophets find no 6vision from the LORD.
10The elders of the daughter of Zion
x Sit on the ground and keep silence;
7 They ythrow dust on their heads
And zgird themselves with sackcloth.
The virgins of Jerusalem
Bow their heads to the ground.
11a My eyes fail with tears,
My 8heart is troubled;
b My 9bile is poured on the ground
Because of the destruction of the daughter of my people,
Because cthe children and the infants
Faint in the streets of the city.
12They say to their mothers,
“Where is grain and wine?”
As they swoon like the wounded
In the streets of the city,
As their life is poured out
In their mothers’ bosom.
13How shall I dconsole10 you?
To what shall I liken you,
O daughter of Jerusalem?
What shall I compare with you, that I may comfort you,
O virgin daughter of Zion?
For your ruin is spread wide as the sea;
Who can heal you?
14Your eprophets have seen for you
False and deceptive visions;
They have not funcovered your iniquity,
To bring back your captives,
But have envisioned for you false gprophecies and delusions.
15All who 11pass by hclap their hands at you;
They hiss iand shake their heads
At the daughter of Jerusalem:
“Is this the city that is called
j‘The perfection of beauty,
The joy of the whole earth’?”
16k All your enemies have opened their mouth against you;
They hiss and gnash their teeth.
They say, l“We have swallowed her up!
Surely this is the mday we have waited for;
We have found it, nwe have seen it!#8221;
17The LORD has done what He opurposed;
He has fulfilled His word
Which He commanded in days of old.
He has thrown down and has not pitied,
And He has caused an enemy to prejoice over you;
He has exalted the 12horn of your adversaries.
18Their heart cried out to the Lord,
“O wall of the daughter of
Zion,
q Let tears run down like a river day and night;
Give yourself no relief;
Give 13your eyes no rest.
19“Arise, rcry out in the night,
At the beginning of the watches;
s Pour out your heart like water before the face of the Lord.
Lift your hands toward Him
For the life of your young children,
Who faint from hunger tat the head of every street.”
20“See, O LORD, and consider!
To whom have You done this?
u Should the women eat their offspring,
The children 14they have cuddled?
Should the priest and prophet be slain
In the sanctuary of the Lord?
21“Youngv and old lie
On the ground in the streets;
My virgins and my young men
Have fallen by the wsword;
You have slain them in the day of Your anger,
You have slaughtered and not pitied.
22“You have invited as to a feast day
x The terrors that surround me.
In the day of the LORD’s anger
There was no refugee or survivor.
y Those whom I have borne and brought up
My enemies have zdestroyed.”
Lamentations 3
The Prophet’s Anguish and Hope
1I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of His wrath.
2He has led me and made me walk
In darkness and not in light.
3Surely He has turned His hand against me
Time and time again throughout the day.
4He has aged amy flesh and my skin,
And bbroken my bones.
5He has besieged me
And surrounded me with bitterness and 1woe.
6c He has set me in dark places
Like the dead of long ago.
7d He has hedged me in so that I cannot get out;
He has made my chain heavy.
8Even ewhen I cry and shout,
He shuts out my prayer.
9He has blocked my ways with hewn stone;
He has made my paths crooked. Other Laments
10f He has been to me a bear lying in wait,
Like a lion in 2ambush.
11He has turned aside my ways and gtorn me in pieces;
He has made me desolate.
12He has bent His bow
And hset me up as a target for the arrow.
13He has caused ithe 3arrows of His quiver
To pierce my 4loins.
14I have become the jridicule of all my people—
k Their taunting song all the day.
15l He has filled me with bitterness,
He has made me drink wormwood.
16He has also broken my teeth mwith gravel,
And 5covered me with ashes.
17You have moved my soul far from peace;
I have forgotten 6prosperity.
18n And I said, “My strength and my hope
Have perished from the LORD.”
19Remember my affliction and roaming,
o The wormwood and the 7gall.
20My soul still remembers
And 8sinks within me.
21This I recall to my mind,
Therefore I have phope.
22q Through the LORD’s mercies we are not consumed,
Because His compassions rfail not.
23They are new severy morning;
Great is Your faithfulness.
24“The LORD is my tportion,” says my soul,
“Therefore I uhope in Him!”
25The LORD is good to those who vwait for Him,
To the soul who seeks Him.
26It is good that one should whope xand wait quietly
For the salvation of the LORD.
27y It is good for a man to bear
The yoke in his youth.
28z Let him sit alone and keep silent,
Because God has laid it on him;
29a Let him put his mouth in the dust—
There may yet be hope.
30b Let him give his cheek to the one who strikes him,
And be full of reproach.
31c For the Lord will not cast off forever.
32Though He causes grief,
Yet He will show compassion
According to the multitude of His mercies.
33For dHe does not afflict 9willingly,
Nor grieve the children of men.
34To crush under one’s feet
All the prisoners of the earth,
35To turn aside the justice due a man
Before the face of the Most High,
36Or subvert a man in his cause—
e The Lord does not approve.
37Who is he fwho speaks and it comes to pass,
When the Lord has not commanded it?
38Is it not from the mouth of the Most High
That gwoe and well-being proceed?
39h Why should a living man 10complain,
i A man for the punishment of his sins? Beyond Lamentations
40Let us search out and examine our ways,
And turn back to the LORD;
41j Let us lift our hearts and hands
To God in heaven.
42k We have transgressed and rebelled;
You have not pardoned.
43You have covered Yourself with anger
And pursued us;
You have slain and not pitied.
44You have covered Yourself with a cloud,
That prayer should not pass through.
45You have made us an loffscouring and refuse
In the midst of the peoples.
46m All our enemies
Have opened their mouths against us.
47n Fear and a snare have come upon us,
o Desolation and destruction.
48p My eyes overflow with rivers of water
For the destruction of the daughter of my people.
49q My eyes flow and do not cease,
Without interruption,
50Till the LORD from heaven
r Looks down and sees.
51My eyes bring suffering to my soul
Because of all the daughters of my city.
52My enemies swithout cause
Hunted me down like a bird.
53They 11silenced my life tin the pit
And uthrew 12stones at me.
54v The waters flowed over my head;
w I said, “I am cut off!”
55x I called on Your name, O LORD,
From the lowest ypit.
56z You have heard my voice:
“Do not hide Your ear
From my sighing, from my cry for help.”
57You adrew near on the day I called on You,
And said, b“Do not fear!”
58O Lord, You have cpleaded the case for my soul;
d You have redeemed my life.
59O LORD, You have seen 13how I am wronged;
e Judge my case.
60You have seen all their vengeance,
All their fschemes against me.
61You have heard their reproach, O LORD,
All their schemes against me,
62The lips of my enemies
And their whispering against me all the day.
63Look at their gsitting down and their rising up;
I am their taunting song.
64h Repay them, O LORD,
According to the work of their hands.
65Give them 14a veiled heart;
Your curse be upon them!
66In Your anger,
Pursue and destroy them
i From under the heavens of the jLORD.
Lamentations 4
The Degradation of Zion
1How the gold has become dim!
How changed the fine gold!
The stones of the sanctuary are 1scattered
At the head of every street.<
br />
2The precious sons of Zion,
2 Valuable as fine gold,
How they are 3regarded aas clay pots,
The work of the hands of the potter!
3Even the jackals present their breasts
To nurse their young;
But the daughter of my people is cruel,
b Like ostriches in the wilderness.
4The tongue of the infant clings
To the roof of its mouth for thirst;
c The young children ask for bread,
But no one breaks it for them.
5Those who ate delicacies
Are desolate in the streets;
Those who were brought up in scarlet
d Embrace ash heaps.
6The punishment of the iniquity of the daughter of my people
Is greater than the punishment of the esin of Sodom,
Which was foverthrown in a moment,
With no hand to help her!
7Her 4Nazirites were 5brighter than snow
And whiter than milk;
They were more ruddy in body than rubies,
Like sapphire in their 6appearance.
8Now their appearance is blacker than soot;
They go unrecognized in the streets;
g Their skin clings to their bones,
It has become as dry as wood.
9Those slain by the sword are better off
Than those who die of hunger;
For these hpine away,
Stricken for lack of the fruits of the ifield.
10The hands of the jcompassionate women
Have 7cooked their kown children;
They became lfood for them
In the destruction of the daughter of my people.
11The LORD has fulfilled His fury,
m He has poured out His fierce anger.
n He kindled a fire in Zion,
And it has devoured its foundations.
12The kings of the earth,
And all inhabitants of the world,
Would not have believed
That the adversary and the enemy
Could oenter the gates of Jerusalem—
13p Because of the sins of her prophets
And the iniquities of her priests,
q Who shed in her midst
The blood of the just.
14They wandered blind in the streets;
r They have defiled themselves with blood,
s So that no one would touch their garments.
15They cried out to them,
“Go away, tunclean!
Go away, go away,
Do not touch us!”
When they fled and wandered,
Those among the nations said,
“They shall no longer dwell here.”
16The 8face of the LORD scattered them;
He no longer regards them.
u The people do not respect the priests
Nor show favor to the elders.
17Still vour eyes failed us,
Watching vainly for our help;
In our watching we watched
For a nation that could not save us.