Jeremiah 8:18–9:2

¹⁸“My comfort is gone from me,

sorrow is on me,

my heart is sick.

¹⁹Look, the sound of the cry for help of the daughter of my people

from a distant land,

‘Is Yahweh not in Zion?

Is her king not in her?’

Why have they provoked me to anger with their images,

with idols of a foreign land?”

²⁰The harvest has passed,

the summer has come to an end,

and we have not received help.ⁿ

Yahweh’s Lament

²¹“Because of the wound of the daughter of my people I am broken down,

I mourn, horror has seized me.

²²Is there no balm in Gilead?

Is there no healer there?

Why, then, has the healing of the daughter of my people not been restored?

9^a Oh that my head were waters,^b

and my eyes a fountain of tears,

so that I might weep day and night,

for the slain of the daughter of my people.

²Oh that I had^c in the desert a place of overnight lodging for travelers,

that I may leave my people and go from them,

for all of them are adulterers,

a band of traitors.