Douay Rheims Original ↷
Lamentations 2 💬 📚 📜 📕 ↷
God's Anger over Jerusalem
1 ALEPH. How hath our Lord in his fury covered the daughter of Sion with darkness: cast forth the noble one of Israel from heaven to the earth, and hath not remembered the footstool of his feet in the day of his fury.
2 Beth. Our Lord hath cast down headlong, and hath not spared, all the beautiful things of Jacob: he hath destroyed in his fury the munitions of the virgin of Juda, and cast it down to the ground: he hath polluted the kingdom, and the princes thereof.
3 Ghimel. He hath broken every horn of Israel in the wrath of fury: he hath turned away his right hand backward from the face of the enemy: and he hath kindled in Jacob as it were the fire of a flame devouring round about.
4 Daleth. He hath bent his bow as an enemy, he hath fastened his right hand as an adversary: and he hast killed all, that was fair to behold in the tabernacle of the daughter of Sion, he hath poured out his indignation as fire.
5 He. Our Lord is become as an enemy: he hath cast down Israel headlong, he hath cast down headlong all her walls: he hath destroyed the munitions thereof, and hath replenished in the daughter of Juda the humbled man and humbled woman.
6 Vau. And he hath destroyed his tent as a garden, he hath thrown down his tabernacle: our Lord hath brought festivity and sabbath in Sion to oblivion: and king and priest into reproach, and into the indignation of his fury.
7 Zain. Our Lord hath rejected, he hath cursed his sanctification: he hath delivered the walls of the towers thereof into the hand of the enemy: they have made a noise in the house of our Lord, as in a solemn day.
8 Heth. Our Lord hath meant to destroy the wall of the daughter of Sion: he hath stretched out his cord, and hath not turned away his hand from destruction: and the forewall hath mourned, and the wall is destroyed together.
9 Teth. Her gates are fastened in the ground: he hath destroyed, and broken her bars: her king and her princes in the Gentiles: there is no law, and her prophets have not found vision from our Lord.
10 Jod. The ancients of the daughter of Sion have sitten on the ground, they have held their peace: they have sprinkled their heads with dust, they are girded with hair cloths, the virgins of Jerusalem have cast down their heads to the ground.
11 Caph. Mine eyes have failed for tears, my bowels are troubled: my liver is poured out on the earth, for the destruction of the daughter of my people, when the little one, and the sucking fainted in the streets of the town.
12 Lamed. They said to their mothers: Where is wheat and wine? When they fainted as the wounded in the streets of the city: when they yielded up the ghosts in the bosom of their mothers.
13 Mem. Whereto shall I compare thee? Or whereto shall I liken thee o daughter of Jerusalem: whereto shall I make thee equal, and comfort thee o virgin daughter of Sion? For great is thy destruction as the sea: who shall heal thee?
14 Nun. Thy prophets have seen false and foolish things for thee: neither have they opened thine iniquity, to provoke thee to penance, but they have seen false burdens and banishments for thee.
15 Samech. All that passed by the way have clapped their hands upon thee: they have hissed, and moved their head upon the daughter of Jerusalem, saying: Is this the city of perfect beauty, the joy of all the earth?
16 Phe. All thine enemies have opened their mouth upon thee: they have hissed, and gnashed with the teeth, and have said: We will devour: Lo this is the day, which we expected: we have found it, we have seen it.
17 Ain. Our Lord hath done the things that he meant, he hath accomplished his word, which he commanded from the days of old: he hath destroyed, and hath not spared, and he hath made the enemy joyful over thee, and hath exalted the horn of thine adversaries.
18 Sade. Their heart hath cried to our Lord upon the walls of the daughter of Sion: Shed tears as a torrent by day, and night: give no rest to thyself, neither let the apple of thine eye cease.
19 Coph. Arise, praise in the night in the beginning of the watches: pour out thy heart as waters before the sight of our Lord: lift up thy hands to him for the life of thy little ones, which have fainted for famine in the head of all high ways.
20 Res. See o Lord, and consider whom thou hast vintaged thus: shall women then eat their own fruit, little ones of the measure of a span? Is the priest, and the prophet slain in the sanctuary of our Lord?
21 Sin. The child and the old man lay on the ground without: my virgins and my youngmen are fallen by the sword: thou hast killed in the day of thy fury: thou hast strucken, neither hast thou had mercy.
22 Thau. Thou hast called as it were to a solemn day, those that should terrify me round about, and there was none in the day of the fury of our Lord, that escaped and was left: whom I brought up, & nourished, mine enemy hath consumed them.
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