Jeremiah 4:19–31

¹⁹My bowels, my bowels! I writhe!

The walls of my heart!

My heart is restless within me, I cannot keep silent,

for I hear in my inner self the sound of a horn, the alarm of war.

²⁰Destruction on destruction is proclaimed,

for all of the land is devastated.

Suddenly my tents are devastated,

my tent curtains in a moment.

²¹How long must I see the banner,

and hear the sound of a horn?

²²“For my people are foolish,

they have not known me.

They are foolish children,

and they do not have insight.

They are skillful at doing evil,

and they do not know how to do good.”

²³I looked at the earth, and behold, it was wasteland and emptiness,

and to the heavens, and they were without their light.

²⁴I looked at the mountains, and behold, they were quaking,

and all of the hills were jolted to and fro.

²⁵I looked and behold, there was no person,

and all of the birds^t of the sky had fled.

²⁶I looked and behold, the fruitful land was a desert,^u

and all of its cities were ruined before Yahweh,

before the face of his burning anger.^v

²⁷For thus says Yahweh, “All of the land will be a desolation,

yet I will not make a complete desolation.

²⁸Because of this the earth will mourn,

and the heavens above will become dark.

Because I have spoken, I have planned,

and I have not relented, and I will not turn back from it.”

²⁹From the sound of a horseman and an archer^w every town flees,

they enter in the thickets and among the rocks they climb.

Every town is forsaken,

and there is no person who lives in them.

³⁰And you, O devastated one, what do you do,

that you put on crimson,

that you adorn yourself with ornaments of gold,

that you make your eyes look bigger with the eye make-up?

In vain you beautify yourself.

Your lovers reject you;

they seek your life.

³¹For I heard a voice like an ill woman,

anxiety like a woman who bears her first child,

the voice of the daughter of Zion.

She is gasping for breath,

she is spreading out her hands:

“Woe is me, for I am becoming tired^x before killers.”