The Elders and Virgins Lament

‎In the second of the songs of lamentation, God is regarded with awe; the weight and terror of His anger becomes the central thought. The dirge opens, “How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger, and cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel, and remembered not his footstool in the day of his anger!” The wailing of the women is then described, and the horrors of their desolation in the ruined city.

‎In the third lament the poet depicts his own suffering, or that of the nation personified in him: “He hath turned aside my ways, and pulled me in pieces: he hath made me desolate.”

‎The fourth and fifth songs look to the tremendous weight of the punishment, and contrast the drear present with the splendid past. The poet then closes with a prayer for mercy, “Turn thou us unto thee, O Lord, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old,” and a final drooping in despair, “But thou hast utterly rejected us; thou art very wroth against us.”