Groan in silence for the dead, ¹  but do not perform mourning rites. ²  Bind on your turban ³  and put your sandals on your feet. Do not cover your lip ⁴  and do not eat food brought by others.” ⁵ 

This is a lament; they will chant it. The daughters of the nations will chant it. They will chant it over Egypt and over all her hordes, declares the sovereign Lord.”

Get dressed ¹  and lament, you priests! Wail, you who minister at the altar! Come, spend the night in sackcloth, you servants of my God, because no one brings grain offerings or drink offerings to the temple of your God anymore. ² 

Residents ¹  of Shaphir, ²  pass by in nakedness and humiliation! ³  The residents of Zaanan can’t leave their city. ⁴  Beth Ezel ⁵  mourns, ⁶  “He takes from you what he desires.” ⁷ 

Shave your heads bald as you mourn for the children you love; ¹  shave your foreheads as bald ²  as an eagle, ³  for they are taken from you into exile.

Everyone who sees you will turn away from you in disgust; they will say, ‘Nineveh has been devastated! Who will lament for her?’ There will be no one to comfort you!” ¹ 

Howl, fir tree, because the cedar has fallen; the majestic trees have been destroyed. Howl, oaks of Bashan, because the impenetrable forest has fallen.

Then the people ¹  who were with Mary ²  in the house consoling her saw her ³  get up quickly and go out. They followed her, because they thought she was going to the tomb to weep ⁴  there.

As much as ¹  she exalted herself and lived in sensual luxury, ²  to this extent give her torment and grief because she said to herself, ³  ‘I rule as queen and am no widow; I will never experience grief!’

Then Ezra got up from in front of the temple of God and went to the room of Jehohanan son of Eliashib. While he stayed ¹  there, he did not eat food or drink water, for he was in mourning over the infidelity of the exiles.

I said, ¹  “I will weep and mourn ²  for the grasslands on the mountains, ³  I will sing a mournful song for the pastures in the wilderness because they are so scorched no one travels through them. The sound of livestock is no longer heard there. Even the birds in the sky and the wild animals in the fields have fled and are gone.”

Those who have been killed by the Lord at that time will be scattered from one end of the earth to the other. They will not be mourned over, gathered up, or buried. ¹  Their dead bodies will lie scattered over the ground like manure.

Wail, you people in Heshbon, because Ai in Ammon is destroyed. Cry out in anguish, you people in the villages surrounding ¹  Rabbah. Put on sackcloth and cry out in mourning. Run about covered with gashes. ²  For your god Milcom will go into exile along with his priests and officials. ³ 

“Son of man, sing a lament for Pharaoh king of Egypt, and say to him: “‘You were like a lion ¹  among the nations, but you are a monster in the seas; you thrash about in your streams, stir up the water with your feet, and muddy your ²  streams.

Because of Israel’s sins ¹  this is what the Lord, the God who commands armies, the sovereign One, ²  says: “In all the squares there will be wailing, in all the streets they will mourn the dead. ³  They will tell the field workers ⁴  to lament and the professional mourners ⁵  to wail.

I will turn your festivals into funerals, ¹  and all your songs into funeral dirges. I will make everyone wear funeral clothes ²  and cause every head to be shaved bald. ³  I will make you mourn as if you had lost your only son; ⁴  when it ends it will indeed have been a bitter day. ⁵