Lamentations 2:10-12
New American Bible (Revised Edition)
10 The elders of daughter Zion
sit silently on the ground;
They cast dust[a] on their heads
and dress in sackcloth;
The young women of Jerusalem
bow their heads to the ground.(A)
11 My eyes are spent with tears,
my stomach churns;[b]
My bile is poured out on the ground
at the brokenness of the daughter of my people,
As children and infants collapse
in the streets of the town.(B)
12 They cry out to their mothers,
“Where is bread and wine?”
As they faint away like the wounded
in the streets of the city,
As their life is poured out
in their mothers’ arms.
Footnotes
- 2:10 They cast dust: as a sign of mourning; cf. Jos 7:6; Jb 2:12; Ez 27:30.
- 2:11 My eyes are spent with tears, my stomach churns: the poet appropriates the emotional language used by Zion in 1:16 and 1:20 to express a progressively stronger commitment to her cause. After describing the systematic dismantling of the city in vv. 5–9, the poet turns to the plight of the inhabitants in vv. 10–12. It is the description of children dying in the streets that finally brings about the poet’s emotional breakdown, even as it did for Zion in 1:16.
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