Lamentations-Echah
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Lamentations-Echah
To Our Forefathers Yisrael
1 How does the city sit alone, that was full of people! How she is become as a widow she that was great among the goyim and a princess among the provinces, how she has become an eved!
2 She weeps heavy in the lyla and her tears are on her cheeks: among all her lovers she has none to comfort her: all her chaverim have dealt treacherously with her, they are become her enemies.
3 Yahudah has gone into exile because of affliction and because of great labor: she dwells among the goyim, she finds no rest: all her persecutors overtook her between the narrow places.
4 The derachot of Tzion do mourn because none come to the moadeem: all her gates are desolate: her kohanim sigh, her virgins are afflicted and she is in bitterness.
5 Her adversaries have become the rulers, her enemies prosper; for YHUH has afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions: her children are gone into exile before the enemy.
6 And from the daughter of Tzion all her beauty has departed: her rulers are become like harts that find no pasture and they go without strength before their pursuer.
7 Yahrushalayim remembered in the yamim of her affliction and of her miseries, all her pleasant things that she had in the yamim of old, when her people fell into the hand of the enemy and none did help her: the adversaries saw her and did mock her Shabbats.
8 Yahrushalayim has grievously sinned; therefore she has been removed: all that honored her despise her because they have seen her nakedness: yes, she sighed and turned away.
9 Her filthiness is in her skirts; she remembers not her last end; therefore her collapse was awesome: she had no comforter. O YHUH, behold my affliction: for the enemy has magnified himself.
10 The adversary has spread out his hand upon all her pleasant things: for she has seen that the goyim entered into her Kadosh-Place, whom You did command that they should not enter into Your kehilla.
11 All her people sigh, they seek lechem; they barter their pleasant things for food to relieve their being: see, O YHUH and consider; for I am become despised.
12 Is it nothing to you, all you that pass by? Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow, which is done to me, by which YHUH has afflicted me in the yom of His fierce anger.
13 From above He sent fire into my bones and it prevailed against them: He has spread a net for my feet, He has turned me back: He has made me desolate and faint all the yom.
14 The yoke of my transgressions is bound by His hand: they are wreathed and come up upon my neck: He has made my strength to fall,YHUH has delivered me into their hands, from whom I am not able to rise up.
15 YHUH has trodden under foot all my mighty men in the midst of me: He has called a company against me to crush my young men: YHUH has trodden the virgin, the daughter of Yahudah, as in a winepress.
16 For these things I weep; my eye runs down with mayim because the comforter that should relieve my being is far from me: my children are desolate because the enemy has prevailed.
17 Tzion spreads forth her hands and there is none to comfort her:YHUH has commanded concerning Yaakov, that his adversaries should be around him: Yahrushalayim is as an unclean woman in nidah among them.
18 YHUH is tzadik; for I have rebelled against His Torah: listen all my people and behold my sorrow: my virgins and my young men are gone into exile.
19 I called for my lovers, but they deceived me: my kohanim and my zechanim died in the city, while they sought food to relieve their naphsoth.
20 See, O YHUH; for I am in distress: my inward parts are troubled; my lev is turned within me; for I have grievously rebelled: from abroad the sword has bereaved us, at home there is death.
21 They have heard me sigh: there is none to comfort me: all my enemies have heard of my trouble; they are glad that You have done it: You will bring on the yom that You have announced to them also and they shall be like me.
22 Let 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 lev is faint.
2 How has YHUH covered the daughter of Tzion with a cloud in His anger and cast down from the shamayim to the earth the beauty of Yisrael and remembered not His footstool in the yom of His anger!
2 YHUH has swallowed up all the pastures of Yaakov and has not pitied: He has thrown down in His wrath the strongholds of the daughter of Yahudah; He has brought them down to the ground: He has polluted the malchut and its rulers.
3 He has cut off in His fierce anger all the horns of Yisrael: He has drawn back His Right Hand from before the enemy and He burned against Yaakov like a flaming fire, that devours all things all around.
4 He has bent His bow like an enemy: He stood with His Right Hand as an adversary and killed all that were pleasant to the eye in the Mishkan of the daughter of Tzion: He poured out His fury like fire.
5 YHUH was as an enemy: He has swallowed up Yisrael, He has swallowed up all her palaces: He has destroyed her strongholds and has increased in the daughter of Yahudah mourning and lamentation.
6 And He has violently taken away His Mishkan, as if it were of a gan: He has destroyed the places of the kehilla:YHUH has caused the moadeem and Shabbats to be forgotten in Tzion and has despised in the indignation of His anger both the melech and the kohen.
7 YHUH has cast off His altar, He has rejected His Kadosh-Place, He has given up into the hands of the enemy the walls of her palaces; they have made a noise in the Bayit of YHUH, as in the yom of a solemn moed.
8 YHUH has purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Tzion: He has stretched out a line, He has not withdrawn His hand from destroying it: therefore He made her forces and the wall to lament; they languished together.
9 Her gates are sunk into the ground; He has destroyed and broken her bars: her melech and her rulers are among the goyim: the Torah is no more; her neviim also find no further vision from YHUH.
10 The zechanim of the daughter of Tzion sit upon the ground and keep silent: they have cast dust upon their heads; they have girded themselves with sackcloth: the virgins of Yahrushalayim hang down their heads to the ground.
11 My eyes do fail with tears, my inward parts are troubled, my liver is poured upon the earth, for the destruction of the daughter of my people; because the children and the infants languish in the streets of the city.
12 They say to their mothers, Where is the grain and wine? When they languished as the wounded in the streets of the city, when their being was poured out into their mothers’ bosom.
13 What thing shall I take to witness for you? What thing shall I liken to you, O daughter of Yahrushalayim? What shall I equal to you, that I may comfort you, O virgin daughter of Tzion? For your breach is great like the sea: who can heal you?
14 Your neviim have seen vain and foolish things for you: and they have not discovered your iniquity, to turn away your exile; but have seen visions for you that are false and misleading messages.
15 All that pass by clap their hands at you; they hiss and shake their head at the daughter of Yahrushalayim, saying, Is this the city that men call the perfection of beauty, the simcha of the whole earth?
16 All your enemies have opened their mouth against you: they hiss and gnash their teeth: and they say, We have swallowed her up: certainly this is the yom that we looked for; we have found, we have seen it.
17 YHUH has done that which He had devised; He has fulfilled His Word that He had commanded in the yamim of old: He has thrown down and has not pitied: and He has caused your enemy to gilah over you, He has set up the horn of your adversaries.
18 Their lev cried to YHUH, O wall of the daughter of Tzion, let tears run down like a river yom and lyla: give yourself no rest; let not the apple of Your eye cease.
19 Arise, cry out in the lyla: in the beginning of the watches pour out your lev like mayim before the face of YHUH: lift up your hands toward Him for the chayim of your young children, that faint for hunger at the top of every street.
20 See, O YHUH and consider to whom You have done this. Shall the women eat the fruit of their womb, children the size of a hand? Shall the kohen and the navi be slain in the Kadosh-Place of YHUH ?
21 The young and the old lie on the ground in the streets: my virgins and my young men are fallen by the sword; You have slain them in the yom of Your anger; You have killed and not pitied.
22 You have called as in a moed my terrors all around, so that in the yom of YHUH’s anger none escaped nor remained: those that I have nursed and brought up has my enemy consumed.
3 I am the man that has seen affliction by the rod of His wrath.
2 He has led me and brought me into darkness, but not into ohr.
3 Surely against me is He turned; He turned His hand against me all the yom.
4 My flesh and my skin has He made old; He has broken my bones.
5 He has built against me and surrounded me with bitterness and hardship.
6 He has set me in dark places, as they that are dead of old.
7 He has hedged me around, so that I cannot get out: He has made my chains heavy.
8 Also when I cry and shout, He shuts out my tefillah.
9 He has enclosed my derachot with cut stone; He has made my paths crooked.
10 He was to me as a bear lying in wait and as a lion in secret places.
11 He has turned aside my derachot and pulled me in pieces: He has made me desolate.
12 He has bent His bow and set me as a mark for the arrow.
13 He has caused the arrows of His quiver to enter into my loins.
14 I was a derision to all my people; and their shir all the yom.
15 He has filled me with bitterness; He has made me drunk with wormwood.
16 He has also broken my teeth with gravel stones; He has covered me with ashes.
17 And You have removed my being far off from shalom: I have forgotten prosperity.
18 And I said, my strength and my tikvah has perished from before YHUH:
19 As I remember my affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the bitterness.
20 My being has them still in remembrance and is humbled in me.
21 This I recall to my mind, therefore have I tikvah.
22 It is because of YHUH’s chesed that we are not consumed because His rachamim fail not.
23 They are new every boker: great is Your faithfulness.
24 YHUH is my portion, says my being; therefore will I tikvah in Him.
25 YHUH is tov to them that wait for Him, to the being that seeks Him.
26 It is tov that a man should both have tikvah and quietly wait for the YAHUSHA of YHUH.
27 It is tov for a man that he bears a yoke in his youth.
28 He sits alone and keeps silent because He has borne it upon him.
29 He puts his mouth in the dust; if so there may be tikvah.
30 He gives his cheek to him that smites him: he is filled full with reproach.
31 For YHUH will not cast off le-olam-va-ed:
32 But though He causes grief, yet will He have rachamim according to the multitude of His rachamim.
33 For He does not afflict in simcha nor grieve the children of men.
34 To crush under His feet all the prisoners of the earth,
35 To turn aside the right of a man before the face of El-Elyon,
36 To subvert a man in his cause,YHUH does not approve.
37 Who is He that spoke and it came to pass, has YHUH not commanded it?
38 Out of the mouth of El-Elyon evil and tov do not come.
39 Why does a living man complain, for the punishment of his sins?
40 Let us search and try our derachot and make teshuvah to YHUH.
41 Let us lift up our lev with our hands to El in the shamayim.
42 We have transgressed and have rebelled: You have not pardoned.
43 You have covered with anger and persecuted us: You have slain, You have not pitied.
44 You have covered Yourself with a cloud that our tefillah should not pass through.
45 You have made us as filth and refuse in the midst of the goyim.
46 All our enemies have opened their mouths against us.
47 Fear and a snare has come upon us, desolation and destruction.
48 My eye runs down with rivers of mayim for the destruction of the daughter of my people.
49 My eye trickles down and ceases not, without any stop,
50 Until YHUH looks down and beholds from the shamayim.
51 My eye affects my lev because of all the daughters of my city.
52 My enemies hunted me down, like a bird, without cause.
53 They have cut off my chayim in the dungeon and cast a stone on top of me.
54 Waters flowed over my head; then I said, I am cut off.
55 I called upon Your Name, O YHUH, out of the lowest dungeon.
56 You have heard my voice: hide not Your ear at my breathing, at my cry.
57 You drew near in the yom that I called upon You: You said, Fear not.
58 O YHUH, You have pleaded the causes of my being; You have redeemed my chayim.
59 O YHUH, You have seen my oppression: judge my cause.
60 You have seen all their vengeance and all their plans against me.
61 You have heard their reproach, O YHUH and all their plans against me;
62 The lips of those that rose up against me and their plans against me all the yom.
63 See their sitting down and their rising up; I am their music.
64 Repay them, O YHUH, according to the works of their hands.
65 Give them sorrow of lev, Your curse be upon them.
66 Persecute and destroy them in anger from under the shamayim of YHUH.
4 How is the gold become dim! How is the most fine gold changed! The stones of the Kadosh-Place are poured out at the top of every street.
2 The precious sons of Tzion, who were comparable to fine gold, how they are now reckoned as earthen pitchers, the work of the hands of the potter!
3 Even the jackals draw out the breast, they nurse their young ones: the daughter of my people has become cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness.
4 The tongue of the nursing child clings to the roof of his mouth for thirst: the young children ask lechem and no man breaks it for them.
5 Those that did eat delicacies are desolate in the streets: they that were brought up in scarlet embrace dunghills.
6 For the punishment of the iniquity of the daughter of my people is greater than the punishment of the sin of Sedom, that was overthrown as in a moment and no hands wearied in destroying her.
7 Her Nazarites were purer than snow, they were whiter than milk, they were more ruddy in gooff than rubies and their polish was like sapphire:
8 Their appearance is blacker than a coal; they are not known in the streets: their skin cleaves to their bones; it is withered, it is become dry like wood.
9 Those that are slain with the sword are better than those that are slain with hunger: for these pine away, stricken for want of the fruits of the field.
10 The hands of the compassionate women have boiled their own children: they were their food in the destruction of the daughter of my people.
11 YHUH has accomplished His fury; He has poured out His fierce anger and has lit a fire in Tzion and it has devoured its foundations.
12 The melechim of the earth and all the inhabitants of the olam, would not have believed that the adversary and the enemy would have entered into the gates of Yahrushalayim.
13 For the sins of her neviim and the iniquities of her kohanim, that have shed the dahm of the just in the midst of her,
14 They have wandered as blind men in the streets; they have polluted themselves with innocent dahm, so that men could not touch their garments.
15 They cried to them, Depart it is unclean; depart, depart, do not touch them: when they fled away and wandered among the goyim they said, They shall no more go to sojourn there.
16 The anger of YHUH has exiled them; He will no more regard them: they did not respect the kohanim; they showed no chen to the zechanim.
17 As for us, our eyes failed in our vain watch for help: in our watchtower we have watched for a nation that could not save us.
18 They hunt our steps that we cannot go in our streets: our end is near, our yamim are fulfilled; for our end is come.
19 Our persecutors are swifter than the eagles of the shamayim: they pursued us upon the mountains, they lay wait for us in the wilderness.
20 The breath of our nostrils, the anointed of YHUH, was taken in their pits, of whom we said, Under His shadow we shall live among the goyim.
21 Gilah and be in simcha, O daughter of Edom, that dwells in the land of Uz; this cup also shall pass through to you: you shall be drunk and shall make yourself naked.
22 The punishment of your iniquity is accomplished, O daughter of Tzion; He will no more carry you away into exile: He will visit your iniquity, O daughter of Edom; He will discover your sins.
5 Remember, O YHUH, what is come upon us: consider and behold our reproach.
2 Our inheritance is turned over to gerim, our houses to aliens.
3 We are orphans and fatherless, our mothers are as widows.
4 We have paid to drink our mayim; our wood is sold to us.
5 Our necks are under the yoke of persecution: we labor and have no rest.
6 We have given our hand to the Mitzrim and to the Ashurim, to be satisfied with lechem.
7 Our ahvot have sinned and are no more; and we have borne their iniquities.
8 Avadim have ruled over us: there is none that does deliver us out of their hand.
9 We have gotten our lechem with the peril of our lives because of the sword of the wilderness.
10 Our skin was black like an oven because of the terrible famine.
11 They ravished the women in Tzion and the young women in the cities of Yahudah.
12 Princes are hung up by their hands: the faces of the elderly were not honored.
13 They took the young men to grind and the children fell under their loads of wood.
14 The zechanim have ceased from the gate, the young men from their music.
15 The simcha of our lev is ceased; our dance is turned into mourning.
16 The keter is fallen from our head: woe to us; for we have sinned!
17 For this our lev is faint; for these things our eyes are dim.
18 Because of the Har Tzion, which is desolate, the foxes walk upon it.
19 You, O YHUH, remain le-olam-va-ed; Your kesay from generation to generation.
20 Why do You forget us le-olam-va-ed and forsake us for so long a time?
21 Turn us to You, O YHUH and we shall be turned; renew our yamim as of old.
22 But You have utterly rejected us; You are very angry with us, exceedingly! X
LAMENTATIONS
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1:3 If Judah is in the nations, how much more Efrayim who has been there far longer and is numerically greater than Judah.
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1:9 Lacked the Set-Apart Spirit as it remains so to this day.
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1:14 Babylonian exile and captivity.
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2:6 All 12 tribes, or both houses in Dawid’s Tabernacle.
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3:15 False faiths and doctrines.
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4:22 Though Jewish-Israel's exile was temporal (lasting 70 years), Edom's would be permanent in the end times. But through Messiah they can still join the Commonwealth of Israel as individuals.
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5:21The liturgy for the eytz chayim/tree of life Torah cantorial.