3748 verses about Suffering

Her gates have sunk into the ground. He has destroyed and broken her bars. Her king and her princes are among the nations where the law is not. Yes, her prophets find no vision from Yahweh.

The elders of the daughter of Zion sit on the ground. They keep silence. They have cast up dust on their heads. They have clothed themselves with sackcloth. The virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground.

My eyes fail with tears. My heart is troubled. My liver is poured on the earth, because of the destruction of the daughter of my people, because the young children and the infants swoon in the streets of the city.

They ask their mothers, “Where is grain and wine?” when they swoon as the wounded in the streets of the city, when their soul is poured out into their mothers’ bosom.

What shall I testify to you? What shall I liken to you, daughter of Jerusalem? What shall I compare to you, that I may comfort you, virgin daughter of Zion? For your breach is as big as the sea. Who can heal you?

All that pass by clap their hands at you. They hiss and wag their head at the daughter of Jerusalem, saying, “Is this the city that men called ‘The perfection of beauty, the joy of the whole earth’?”

All your enemies have opened their mouth wide against you. They hiss and gnash their teeth. They say, “We have swallowed her up. Certainly this is the day that we looked for. We have found it. We have seen it.”

Yahweh has done that which he planned. He has fulfilled his word that he commanded in the days of old. He has thrown down, and has not pitied. He has caused the enemy to rejoice over you. He has exalted the horn of your adversaries.

Their heart cried to the Lord. O wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears run down like a river day and night. Give yourself no relief. Don’t let the your eyes rest.

Arise, cry out in the night, at the beginning of the watches! Pour out your heart like water before the face of the Lord. Lift up your hands toward him for the life of your young children, who faint for hunger at the head of every street.

“Look, Yahweh, and see to whom you have done thus! Should the women eat their offspring, the children that they held and bounced on their knees? Should the priest and the prophet be killed in the sanctuary of the Lord?

“The youth and the old man lie on the ground in the streets. My virgins and my young men have fallen by the sword. You have killed them in the day of your anger. You have slaughtered, and not pitied.

“You have called, as in the day of a solemn assembly, my terrors on every side. There was no one that escaped or remained in the day of Yahweh’s anger. My enemy has consumed those whom I have cared for and brought up.

I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of his wrath.

He has led me and caused me to walk in darkness, and not in light.

Surely he turns his hand against me again and again all day long.

He has made my flesh and my skin old. He has broken my bones.

He has built against me, and surrounded me with bitterness and hardship.

He has made me dwell in dark places, as those who have been long dead.

He has walled me about, so that I can’t go out. He has made my chain heavy.

Yes, when I cry, and call for help, he shuts out my prayer.

He has walled up my ways with cut stone. He has made my paths crooked.

He is to me as a bear lying in wait, as a lion in secret places.

He has turned away my ways, and pulled me in pieces. He has made me desolate.

He has bent his bow, and set me as a mark for the arrow.

He has caused the shafts of his quiver to enter into my kidneys.

I have become a derision to all my people, and their song all day long.

He has filled me with bitterness. He has stuffed me with wormwood.

He has also broken my teeth with gravel. He has covered me with ashes.

You have removed my soul far away from peace. I forgot prosperity.

I said, “My strength has perished, along with my expectation from Yahweh.”

Remember my affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the bitterness.

My soul still remembers them, and is bowed down within me.

It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.

Let him sit alone and keep silence, because he has laid it on him.

Let him put his mouth in the dust, if it is so that there may be hope.

Let him give his cheek to him who strikes him. Let him be filled full of reproach.

For though he causes grief, yet he will have compassion according to the multitude of his loving kindnesses.

For he does not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men.

To crush under foot all the prisoners of the earth,

Why does a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sins?

“You have covered us with anger and pursued us. You have killed. You have not pitied.

You have covered yourself with a cloud, so that no prayer can pass through.

You have made us an off-scouring and refuse in the middle of the peoples.

“All our enemies have opened their mouth wide against us.

Terror and the pit have come on us, devastation and destruction.”

My eye runs down with streams of water, for the destruction of the daughter of my people.

My eye pours down and doesn’t cease, without any intermission,

until Yahweh looks down, and sees from heaven.

My eye affects my soul, because of all the daughters of my city.

They have chased me relentlessly like a bird, those who are my enemies without cause.

They have cut off my life in the dungeon, and have cast a stone on me.

Waters flowed over my head. I said, “I am cut off.”

I called on your name, Yahweh, out of the lowest dungeon.

You heard my voice: “Don’t hide your ear from my sighing, and my cry.”

Yahweh, you have seen my wrong. Judge my cause.

You have seen all their vengeance and all their plans against me.

You have heard their reproach, Yahweh, and all their plans against me,

the lips of those that rose up against me, and their plots against me all day long.

You see their sitting down and their rising up. I am their song.

How the gold has become dim! The most pure gold has changed! The stones of the sanctuary are poured out at the head of every street.

The precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold, how are they esteemed as earthen pitchers, the work of the hands of the potter!

Even the jackals offer their breast. They nurse their young ones. But the daughter of my people has become cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness.

The tongue of the nursing child clings to the roof of his mouth for thirst. The young children ask bread, and no one breaks it for them.

Those who ate delicacies are desolate in the streets. Those who were brought up in purple embrace dunghills.

Their appearance is blacker than a coal. They are not known in the streets. Their skin clings to their bones. It is withered. It has become like a stick.

Those who are killed with the sword are better than those who are killed with hunger; For these pine away, stricken through, for lack of the fruits of the field.

The hands of the pitiful women have boiled their own children. They were their food in the destruction of the daughter of my people.

Yahweh has accomplished his wrath. He has poured out his fierce anger. He has kindled a fire in Zion, which has devoured its foundations.

The kings of the earth didn’t believe, neither did all the inhabitants of the world, that the adversary and the enemy would enter into the gates of Jerusalem.

They wander as blind men in the streets. They are polluted with blood, So that men can’t touch their garments.

“Go away!” they cried to them. “Unclean! Go away! Go away! Don’t touch! When they fled away and wandered, men said among the nations, “They can’t live here any more.”

Our eyes still fail, looking in vain for our help. In our watching we have watched for a nation that could not save.

They hunt our steps, so that we can’t go in our streets. Our end is near. Our days are fulfilled, for our end has come.

Our pursuers were swifter than the eagles of the sky. They chased us on the mountains. They set an ambush for us in the wilderness.

The breath of our nostrils, the anointed of Yahweh, was taken in their pits; of whom we said, under his shadow we will live among the nations.

Remember, Yahweh, what has come on us. Look, and see our reproach.

Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, our houses to aliens.

We are orphans and fatherless. Our mothers are as widows.

We have drunken our water for money. Our wood is sold to us.

Our pursuers are on our necks. We are weary, and have no rest.

We have given our hands to the Egyptians, and to the Assyrians, to be satisfied with bread.

Our fathers sinned, and are no more. We have borne their iniquities.

Servants rule over us. There is no one to deliver us out of their hand.

We get our bread at the peril of our lives, because of the sword of the wilderness.

Our skin is black like an oven, because of the burning heat of famine.

They ravished the women in Zion, the virgins in the cities of Judah.

Princes were hanged up by their hands. The faces of elders were not honored.

The young men carry millstones. The children stumbled under loads of wood.

The elders have ceased from the gate, and the young men from their music.

The joy of our heart has ceased. Our dance is turned into mourning.

The crown has fallen from our head. Woe to us, for we have sinned!

For this our heart is faint. For these things our eyes are dim.

For the mountain of Zion, which is desolate. The foxes walk on it.

Why do you forget us forever, and forsake us for so long a time?

But you have utterly rejected us. You are very angry against us.

In the fifth of the month, which was the fifth year of king Jehoiachin’s captivity,

He spread it before me. It was written within and without; and lamentations, mourning, and woe were written in it.

Then I came to them of the captivity at Tel Aviv, that lived by the river Chebar, and to where they lived; and I sat there overwhelmed among them seven days.

But you, son of man, behold, they will put ropes on you, and will bind you with them, and you will not go out among them.