13 My very bones burn with the fire God dispatched from on high; I am beset: ensnared in the net God Himself spread for me. He has left me desolate in an age of misery.
14 Neck bowed by the heavy yoke of my transgressions, I bear a burden imposed on me by God’ s own hand. My strength is gone. The Lord has reduced me to so lowly a state, I shall never rise again.
15 Our God has repudiated all the men of stature in my midst. He has designated this season for the predation of our youth. He has trampled, as in a wine press, virginal Fair Judea.
16 Plaintively I bewail these losses, my eyes filled with tears. Any measure of comfort, of spiritual recovery, is but a distant hope. My children, too, are inconsolable. The enemy is triumphant.
17 Quite without anyone to comfort her, Zion extends her hands in vain supplication. At God’ s command, Jacob is beset, surrounded by his enemies. Jerusalem is a befouled outcast in their midst.
18 Right the Lord is, for I have violated His word. Hear me, fellow nations; behold my anguish: my young sons and daughters have been taken into captivity.
19 So I call out to those who have professed their love for me, but they have deceitfully turned against me. My priests and my elders have perished in the city, as they searched for food in their desperate effort to survive.
20 Take note of my distress, Lord: my innermost soul is in torment! My heart is broken within me, for I know how wrong, how faithless I have been. The sword may threaten outside, but it is my inner recesses where I sense death.
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