Jeremiah Grieves for His People
18 My joy is gone; grief is upon me;1
my heart is sick within me.
19 Behold, the cry of the daughter of my people
from the length and breadth of the land:
“Is the Lord not in Zion?
bIs her King not in her?”
“Why have they provoked me to anger with their carved images
and cwith their foreign idols?”
20 “The harvest is past, the summer is ended,
and we are not saved.”
21 dFor the wound of the daughter of my people is my heart wounded;
I mourn, and dismay has taken hold on me.
22 Is there no ebalm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?
Why then has the health of the daughter of my people
not been restored?
1 2 Oh that my head were waters,
and my eyes a fountain of ftears,
that I might weep day and night
for the slain of the daughter of my people!
2 3 Oh that I had in the desert
a travelers’ lodging place,
that I might leave my people
and go away from them!
For they are all gadulterers,
a company of treacherous men.
3 They bend their tongue like a bow;
falsehood and not truth has grown strong4 in the land;
for they proceed from evil to evil,
and they do not know me, declares the Lord.
Exile Threatened
15 Hear and give ear; be not proud,
for the Lord has spoken.
16 Give glory to the Lord your God
before he brings darkness,
before your feet stumble
on the twilight mountains,
and while you glook for light
he turns it into gloom
and makes it deep darkness.
17 But if you will not listen,
my soul will weep in secret for your pride;
my eyes will weep bitterly and run down with htears,
because the Lord’s flock has been taken captive.
