3 After years of pain and hard labor, Judah has gone into exile.She camps out among the nations, never feels at home.Hunted by all, she’s stuck between a rock and a hard place.
4 Zion’s roads weep, empty of pilgrims headed to the feasts.All her city gates are deserted, her priests in despair.Her virgins are sad. How bitter her fate.
5 Her enemies have become her masters. Her foes are living it upbecause God laid her low, punishing her repeated rebellions.Her children, prisoners of the enemy, trudge into exile.
6 All beauty has drained from Daughter Zion’s face.Her princes are like deer famished for food,chased to exhaustion by hunters.
7 Jerusalem remembers the day she lost everything,when her people fell into enemy hands, and not a soul there to help.Enemies looked on and laughed, laughed at her helpless silence.
8 Jerusalem, who outsinned the whole world, is an outcast.All who admired her despise her now that they see beneath the surface.Miserable, she groans and turns away in shame.
9 She played fast and loose with life, she never considered tomorrow,and now she’s crashed royally, with no one to hold her hand:“Look at my pain, O God! And how the enemy cruelly struts.”