18 Cry aloud before the Lord,O walls of beautiful Jerusalem!Let your tears flow like a riverday and night.Give yourselves no rest;give your eyes no relief.
19 Rise during the night and cry out.Pour out your hearts like water to the Lord.Lift up your hands to him in prayer,pleading for your children,for in every streetthey are faint with hunger.
20 “O lord, think about this!Should you treat your own people this way?Should mothers eat their own children,those they once bounced on their knees?Should priests and prophets be killedwithin the Lord’s Temple?
21 “See them lying in the streets—young and old,boys and girls,killed by the swords of the enemy.You have killed them in your anger,slaughtering them without mercy.
22 “You have invited terrors from all around,as though you were calling them to a day of feasting.In the day of the lord’s anger,no one has escaped or survived.The enemy has killed all the childrenwhom I carried and raised.”