Jeremiah Grieves for His People

18  My joy is gone; grief is upon me;4

fmy heart is sick within me.

19  Behold, the cry of the daughter of my people

from gthe length and breadth of the land:

“Is the Lord not in Zion?

hIs her King not in her?”

i“Why have they provoked me to anger with their carved images

and with their foreign idols?”

20  “The harvest is past, the summer is ended,

and we are not saved.”

21  For the wound of jthe daughter of my people is my heart wounded;

kI mourn, and dismay has taken hold on me.

22  Is there no lbalm in Gilead?

Is there no physician there?

Why then has the health of the daughter of my people

not been restored?

9 1 mOh that my head were waters,

and my eyes a fountain of tears,

that I might weep day and night

for the slain of jthe daughter of my people!

2  2 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 nadulterers,

a company of otreacherous men.

3  pThey bend their tongue like a bow;

falsehood and not truth has grown strong3 in the land;

for they proceed from evil to evil,

qand they do not know me, declares the Lord.

4  rLet everyone beware of his neighbor,

and put no trust in any brother,

for every sbrother is a deceiver,

and every neighbor tgoes about as a slanderer.

5  Everyone deceives his neighbor,

and no one speaks the truth;

they have taught their tongue to speak lies;

they weary themselves committing iniquity.

6  Heaping oppression upon oppression, and deceit upon deceit,

uthey refuse to know me, declares the Lord.