Look to the right and see! No one cares about me. ¹  I have nowhere to run; ²  no one is concerned about my life. ³ 

My lover is like a gazelle or a young stag. ¹  Look! There he stands behind our wall, gazing through the window, peering through the lattice.

The Lover to His Beloved: Oh, ²  you are beautiful, my darling! ³  Oh, you are beautiful! Your eyes behind your veil are like doves. ⁴  Your hair is like a flock of female goats descending ⁵  from Mount Gilead.

The sovereign master ¹  will give you distress to eat and suffering to drink; ²  but your teachers will no longer be hidden; your eyes will see them. ³ 

Like a swallow or a thrush I chirp, I coo ¹  like a dove; my eyes grow tired from looking up to the sky. ²  O sovereign master, ³  I am oppressed; help me! ⁴ 

you whom I am bringing back ¹  from the earth’s extremities, and have summoned from the remote regions – I told you, “You are my servant.” I have chosen you and not rejected you.

Indeed,” says the Lord, “captives will be taken from a warrior; spoils will be rescued from a conqueror. I will oppose your adversary and I will rescue your children.

Look, the sovereign Lord helps me. Who dares to condemn me? Look, all of them will wear out like clothes; a moth will eat away at them.

When you see this, you will be happy, ¹  and you will be revived. ²  The Lord will reveal his power to his servants and his anger to his enemies. ³ 

The Lord said, “Jerusalem, ¹  I will surely send you away for your own good. I will surely ²  bring the enemy upon you in a time of trouble and distress.

I said, ¹  “Lord, you know how I suffer. ²  Take thought of me and care for me. Pay back for me those who have been persecuting me. Do not be so patient with them that you allow them to kill me. Be mindful of how I have put up with their insults for your sake.

I will make you as strong as a wall to these people, a fortified wall of bronze. They will attack you, but they will not be able to overcome you. For I will be with you to rescue you and deliver you,” ¹  says the Lord.

But the Lord is with me to help me like an awe-inspiring warrior. ¹  Therefore those who persecute me will fail and will not prevail over me. They will be thoroughly disgraced because they did not succeed. Their disgrace will never be forgotten.

The king sent Jehudi to get the scroll. He went and got it from the room of Elishama, the royal secretary. Then he himself ¹  read it to the king and all the officials who were standing around him.

King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came against Jerusalem with his whole army and laid siege to it. The siege began in the tenth month of the ninth year that Zedekiah ruled over Judah. ¹ 

Do not be afraid of the king of Babylon whom you now fear. ¹  Do not be afraid of him because I will be with you to save you and to rescue you from his power. I, the Lord, affirm it! ² 

But the one who will rescue them ¹  is strong. He is known as the Lord who rules over all. ²  He will strongly ³  champion their cause. As a result ⁴  he will bring peace and rest to the earth, but trouble and turmoil ⁵  to the people who inhabit Babylonia. ⁶ 

Therefore the Lord says, “I will stand up for your cause. I will pay the Babylonians back for what they have done to you. ¹  I will dry up their sea. I will make their springs run dry. ² 

צ (Tsade) The Lord is right to judge me! ¹  Yes, I rebelled against his commands. ²  Please listen, all you nations, ³  and look at my suffering! My young women and men have gone into exile.

Wherever the spirit ¹  would go, they would go, ²  and the wheels would rise up beside them because the spirit ³  of the living being was in the wheel.