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The Prophet Mourns for the People

¹⁸ My joy is gone, grief is upon me,
   my heart is sick.
¹⁹ Hark, the cry of my poor people
   from far and wide in the land:
‘Is the Lord not in Zion?
   Is her King not in her?’
(‘Why have they provoked me to anger with their images,
   with their foreign idols?’)
²⁰ ‘The harvest is past, the summer is ended,
   and we are not saved.’
²¹ For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt,
   I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me.

²² Is there no balm in Gilead?
   Is there no physician there?
Why then has the health of my poor people
   not been restored?

9^*O that my head were a spring of water,
   and my eyes a fountain of tears,
so that I might weep day and night
   for the slain of my poor people!
^{2 *}O that I had in the desert
   a traveller’s lodging-place,
that I might leave my people
   and go away from them!
For they are all adulterers,
   a band of traitors.
³ They bend their tongues like bows;
   they have grown strong in the land for falsehood, and not for truth;
for they proceed from evil to evil,
   and they do not know me, says the Lord.

⁴ Beware of your neighbours,
   and put no trust in any of your kin;^*
for all your kin^* are supplanters,
   and every neighbour goes around like a slanderer.
⁵ They all deceive their neighbours,
   and no one speaks the truth;
they have taught their tongues to speak lies;
   they commit iniquity and are too weary to repent.^*
6 Oppression upon oppression, deceit^* upon deceit!
   They refuse to know me, says the Lord.