A Lament for the Princes of Israel

1“ And you, take up a lamentation for the princes of Israel, 2and say:

‘What was your mother?

A lioness among the lions!

She stretched out among the young lions;

she reared her cubs.

3And she brought up one of her cubs;

he became a young lion,

and he learned to tear prey;

he devoured men.

4And the nations heard of him;

he was caught in their pit,

and they brought him with the hooks

to the land of Egypt.

5And she saw that she had waited;

her hope had perished,

and she took one of her cubs;

she has made it a young lion.

6And he went about in the midst of the lions;

he became a young lion,

and he learned to catch prey;

he devoured men.

7And he broke down their strongholds,†

and their cities he laid waste,

and the land was devastated

and all its fullness

by the voice of his roaring.

8And set out against him

the nations all around from the provinces,

and they spread over him their net;

he was caught in their pit.

9And they put him in the cage with the hooks,

and they brought him to the king of Babylon;

they brought him in the nets

so that his voice was heard no longer

on the mountains of Israel.

10Your mother was was like a vine in your vineyard;†

by the waters she was planted;

she was fruitful and full of branches

from the many waters.

11And there were unto her branches of strength for scepters of rulers,

and she towered in height over among the thick branches,

and it was seen in its height,

in the abundance of its branches.

12And she was uprooted in fury;

she was cast down to the ground,

and the wind from the east dried up her fruit;

the branches of her strength were broken and withered;

fire consumed them.

13And now she is planted in the wilderness,

in a land of dryness and thirst.

14And fire has gone out from a staff of her branches;

it devoured her fruit,

so that there should not be in her

a staff of strength, a scepter for ruling.’

This is a lamentation, and it is for lamentation.”