3. Judah has gone into exile [to escape] from the affliction and laborious servitude [of the homeland]. She dwells among the [heathen] nations, but she finds no rest; all her persecutors overtook her amid the [dire] straits [of her distress].
4. The roads to Zion mourn, because no one comes to the solemn assembly or the appointed feasts. All her gates are desolate, her priests sigh and groan, her maidens are grieved and vexed, and she herself is in bitterness.
5. Her adversaries have become the head; her enemies prosper. For the Lord has afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions; her young children have gone into captivity before the enemy. [Jer. 30:14, 15; 52:28; Dan. 9:7-14.]
6. From the Daughter of Zion all her beauty and majesty have departed. Her princes have become like harts that find no pasture; they have fled without strength before the pursuer.
7. Jerusalem [earnestly] remembers in the days of her affliction, in the days of her [compulsory] wanderings and her bitterness, all the pleasant and precious things that she had from the days of old. When her people fell into and at the hands of the adversary, and there was none to help her, the enemy [gloated as they] looked at her, and they mocked at her desolations and downfall.