Jeremiah 8:18–9:1

The Prophet Mourns for the People

¹⁸My joy is gone; grief is upon me;

my heart is sick.

¹⁹Listen! The cry of the daughter of my people

from far and wide in the land:

“Is the Lord not in Zion?

Is her King not in her?”

(“Why have they provoked me to anger with their images,

with their foreign idols?”)^*

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

and we are not saved.”

²¹For the brokenness of the daughter of my people I am broken,

I mourn, and horror has seized me.^*

²²Is there no balm in Gilead?

Is there no physician there?

Why then has the health of the daughter of my people

not been restored?^*

⁹ⁱO that my head were a spring of water

and my eyes a fountain of tears,

so that I might weep day and night

for the slain of the daughter of my people!^*