Lamentations 4

¹How is the gold become dim, Changed the best — the pure gold? Poured out are stones of the sanctuary At the head of all out-places.

²The precious sons of Zion, Who are comparable with fine gold, How have they been reckoned earthen bottles, Work of the hands of a potter.

³Even dragons have drawn out the breast, They have suckled their young ones, The daughter of my people is become cruel, Like the ostriches in a wilderness.

⁴Cleaved hath the tongue of a suckling unto his palate with thirst, Infants asked bread, a dealer out they have none.

⁵Those eating of dainties have been desolate in out-places, Those supported on scarlet have embraced dunghills.

⁶And greater is the iniquity of the daughter of my people, Than the sin of Sodom, That was overturned as [in] a moment, And no hands were stayed on her.

⁷Purer were her Nazarites than snow, Whiter than milk, ruddier of body than rubies, Of sapphire their form.

⁸Darker than blackness hath been their visage, They have not been known in out-places, Cleaved hath their skin unto their bone, It hath withered — it hath been as wood.

⁹Better have been the pierced of a sword Than the pierced of famine, For these flow away, pierced through, Without the increase of the field.

¹⁰The hands of merciful women have boiled their own children, They have been for food to them, In the destruction of the daughter of my people.

¹¹Completed hath Jehovah His fury, He hath poured out the fierceness of His anger, And he kindleth a fire in Zion, And it devoureth her foundations.