1. HOW THE gold has become dim! How the most pure gold has changed! The hallowed stones [of the temple] are poured out at the head of every street.
2. The noble and precious sons of Zion, [once] worth their weight in fine gold–how they are esteemed [merely] as earthen pots or pitchers, the work of the hands of the potter! [Isa. 30:14; Jer. 19:11; II Cor. 4:7.]
3. Even the jackals draw out the breast, they give suck to their young ones, but the daughter of my people has become cruel like ostriches in the wilderness [that desert their young].
4. The tongue of the nursing babe cleaves to the roof of its mouth because of thirst; the young children beg for food, but no one gives it to them.
5. Those who feasted on dainties are perishing in the streets; those who were brought up in purple lie cleaving to refuse and ash heaps.
6. For the punishment of the iniquity of the daughter of my people is greater than the punishment of the sin of Sodom, which was overthrown in a moment, and no hands had come against her or been laid on her. [Gen. 19:25.]
7. [In physical appearance] her princes were purer than snow, they were whiter than milk; they were more ruddy in body than rubies or corals, their shapely figures [suggested a carefully cut] sapphire.
8. [Prolonged famine has made] them look blacker than soot and darkness; they are not recognized in the streets. Their skin clings to their bones; it is withered and it has become [dry] like a stick.
9. Those who are slain with the sword are more fortunate than those who are the victims of hunger [slain by the famine]; for they [the hungry] pine and ebb away, stricken through for want of the fruits of the field.
10. The hands of [heretofore] compassionate women have boiled their own children; they were their food during the destruction of the daughter of my people [Judah].
11. The Lord has fulfilled His wrath; He has poured out His fierce anger and has kindled a fire in Zion that has consumed her foundations.
12. The kings of the earth did not believe, nor did any of the inhabitants of the earth, that the oppressor and enemy could enter the gates of Jerusalem.
13. [But this happened] because of the sins of her [false] prophets and the iniquities of her priests, who shed the blood of the just and righteous in the midst of her.