Easy English Bible - Lamentations  2009
Chapter  1  2  3  4  5

A Very Sad Man Prays to God

About this book
We call this book Lamentations because it is a sad book. It has five parts. All five parts are about the city called Jerusalem.
God wanted people to look after Jerusalem and the special house there. God wanted people to worship only him in that house. But the people who lived in Jerusalem did not obey God. In the end, he was angry with those people. He let armies come from another country. Those armies came to destroy Jerusalem and to take the people away. The writer lived in Jerusalem. We think that he was a man called Jeremiah. We can read a translation of Lamentations in a very old book called the Septuagint. It says that Jeremiah wrote Lamentations. He certainly wrote another book in the Bible, which is called Jeremiah. Jeremiah was a man who loved God and his own people. He was very sad when they destroyed his city, Jerusalem. Jeremiah wrote the book about 586 years before Jesus was born.
In the first two parts of the book, Jeremiah writes sometimes as if he himself is speaking. Other times he writes as if Jerusalem city and its people are speaking. The city speaks as if a woman is speaking. In the next two parts, only Jeremiah speaks. In the last part, he writes as if the city’s people are praying to God.
The first part is about the lonely city. The second part says that God was like an angry enemy. In the next part, Jeremiah remembers how good God is. If people really love God, they can hope for better things always. After that, Jeremiah talks about the cruel enemies. He remembers what those enemies did to the people in the city. In the last part, the city’s people know that they have done many wrong things. So they ask God to forget those bad things.
Lamentations shows us that God gets angry about sin. He is happy when we change. This book also shows us what God wants. He wants us to love him. He wants us to obey him. If we do that, he helps us. He will help us to be good and to do good things.

 Chapter 1
Jeremiah is speaking

1 The city that was full of people is lonely now.
The city is like the wife of a dead husband.
Once she was great.
She was like a queen among the other places in the country.
Now she is a slave.

2 She weeps in the night
and there are tears on her face.
Not one of her lovers will help her to feel better.
All her friends have left her.
They have gone against her and they are now her enemies.

3 The enemies have taken Judah’s people away as slaves.
The slaves have only trouble and difficult work.
They now live among strangers.
They have no rest, and they live far away from home.
They cannot go away from those who do cruel things to them.

4 Zion’s streets are sad places now.
Nobody comes to worship God there any longer.
There is nothing to hear at the city gates.
The priests are sad.
Strangers are cruel to the young women.
The people in Zion are very sad.

5 The people’s enemies rule them now.
Those who hate them have plenty.
The Lord has caused trouble for the people
because they did so many wrong things.
The enemies took the children away to work as slaves.

6 Zion is not beautiful any longer.
Her leaders are like animals without food.
They are too weak to run from their enemies.

7 Jerusalem’s people are in trouble and they are away from their homes now.
So, they remember the good things
that they had a long time ago.
When their enemies came, nobody was there with them.
Nobody helped them.
Their enemies laughed when they destroyed Jerusalem.

8 Jerusalem’s people have sinned very much.
That is why this city is not clean any longer.
People thought that this city was the best.
Now they think that it is not important.
They see it as it is.
Jerusalem’s people make sad noises and they want to hide themselves away.

9 Jerusalem seemed dirty because the people were so bad.
They never thought that the end would be like this.
But their enemies destroyed the city.
They do not have anyone who can help them to feel better.
God did not listen any longer when they asked for his help.
‘Lord, see our troubles.
See how happy our enemies are’, the people pray.

10 The enemies have taken away all Jerusalem’s valuable things.
Foreign people have walked into God’s holy house.
But God had said that people like that must not go in there.
They are not his people.

11 Jerusalem’s people are making sad noises.
They are sad as they look for food.
They sell things that they love.
They use them to buy food.
That way, they can keep themselves alive.
The city’s people are speaking like one person
‘Lord, see what is happening.
Think about me,
because nobody else does’, the people pray.

12 ‘Come and really look at me!
All you people who pass me do not show any interest in me.
But you have never seen anything as sad as I am.
The Lord was very angry with me.
So it was the Lord who did this to me.’
The city’s people are speaking

13 ‘It is like God has sent fire down into our bones to hurt us.
He wants us to turn towards him again.
So he has caused things to be very difficult for us.
All day he causes us to feel lonely and weak.

14 He has caused our sins to seem like something very heavy that lies on our necks.
It makes us weak.
He has let the enemy be very strong.
He let them win against us.
So we cannot beat them.

15 The Lord has let the enemy beat all our strong men.
He brought a big army to fight our young men.
And the enemy won that fight.
People walk on grapes to break them.
Like that, the Lord let the enemy hurt our young women here in Judah.’

16 ‘We weep because of these things.
Tears run down our faces because God is not with us.
Nobody will help us.
We are the children of this city
and we have nothing now.
The enemy has won.’
Jeremiah is speaking again

17 Zion’s people ask for help,
but nobody is their friend.
They are Jacob’s children.
But the Lord has said that he will cause their enemies
to come from every country near them.
Those other people think about Jerusalem as they would think about something dirty.
The city’s people are speaking again

18 ‘The Lord is right to punish us.
We have not obeyed him.
Listen, all people everywhere, and look at us.
We are in very bad trouble.
The enemy has taken away our young women
and our young men to be slaves.’

19 ‘We shouted to our friends.
They had said that they would help us.
But they did not help us.
Our priests and our leaders died in the city.
They were looking for food to keep them alive.

20 Look, Lord, we are in a lot of trouble.
We are very sad.
We are weak deep inside ourselves
because we have done so many bad things.
They are killing our people in the streets.
People are dying in the houses.’

21 ‘Everybody knows that we are very sad.
Nobody wants to help us.
All our enemies know about our trouble.
They are happy, God, that you caused that trouble.
Please cause trouble for those enemies too, as you promised.

22 You know that they have done many bad things.
Punish them as you have punished us.
You punished us because we did many bad things.
Now we are ashamed and we are very sad.’

 Chapter 2
Jeremiah is speaking

1 The Lord was very angry.
He wanted Zion’s people to be ashamed.
Zion was the most beautiful city in Israel.
But he has put it down to the ground from its high place.
Zion was like a place where he had rested his feet.
Now that he is angry, he has forgotten about that.

2 The Lord has destroyed all the houses where Jacob’s people lived.
He decided that he must punish them.
Because he is angry,
he has destroyed all Judah’s strong towns.
Yes, he has destroyed all the buildings.
And he has killed the rulers and all the people.

3 Yes, because he is very angry,
he has destroyed Israel’s whole army.
He did not help them when they were fighting the enemy.
He was like a big hot fire
that burned Jacob’s people from all sides.

4 He has bent his bow like an enemy ready to kill people.
And, like an enemy,
he has killed all those who once gave him pleasure.
He has shown how angry he was.
He has sent a fire and he burned all Zion’s houses.

5 The Lord has become like an enemy.
He has destroyed Israel
and all the beautiful houses there.
He has destroyed all the strong towns that had walls.
He has caused Judah’s people to weep.
They are very sad.

6 He has knocked down his own holy house
as easily as someone can knock down a hut in a garden.
He has destroyed this place where people once met him.
He has caused Zion’s people to forget
the special events and the Sabbaths in his holy house.
He was very angry.
So he thought that our king and our priests were not important.
He refused to help them.

7 His holy house and his altar there
no longer give pleasure to the Lord.
He has given Zion’s most beautiful houses to the enemy.
They shout in the holy house of the Lord
as people shout on a special holy day.

8 The Lord decided to destroy the strong walls of Zion.
He carefully broke away each stone.
It causes us to weep when we look at those walls.
He destroyed them all.
He destroyed the inside walls and he destroyed the strong outside walls.

9 Zion’s gates fell down on the ground.
He destroyed them and he has broken them in pieces.
The enemies have taken away our king
and his sons to a foreign country.
The people have nearly forgotten God’s rules.
And God does not send messages to us any longer.
His prophets have nothing to say to us.

10 Zion’s leaders sit on the ground and they are saying nothing.
They have dressed themselves in sackcloth
and they throw dirt on their own heads.
They are showing everyone that they are very sad.
And the young women of Jerusalem can only look down to the ground,
because they are very sad too.

11 I have cried so much that my eyes are red now.
Even the parts inside my body hurt,
because my people are dying.
I feel ill because I am so sad.
The children and babies fall in the city’s streets
because they are so weak.

12 ‘Where has all the food and drink gone?’
the hungry children ask their mothers.
Then they fall down in pain on the streets of the city.
They die in their mothers’ arms.

13 I want to help you people of Jerusalem.
But there is nothing that I can say to you.
I do not know about anything like what has happened to you.
God has destroyed Zion completely!
I do not know anyone who can make you people better.

14 Your prophets have promised you many good things.
Those good things will not happen.
They should have told you that you should not do wrong things.
If they had told you that, none of these troubles would have happened.
The prophets do not tell you true messages from God
and their dreams are false.

15 Everyone who goes by laughs.
They are happy because you are sad.
They see how the enemy has destroyed everything in Jerusalem.
“Surely this cannot be the city that men called ‘most beautiful’ ”, they say.
“People have said that this city is the best city on earth.”

16 All your enemies make noises through their teeth
because they are very happy.
‘We have won!’ they say.
‘We have waited for this day.
Now we have beaten you!
Now we have seen it!’

17 The Lord has done what he decided to do.
Yes, he has done what he told you about a long time ago.
He has destroyed your city and he has not felt sorry about it.
He has caused your enemies to be happy.
He has made them strong
so that they could win against you.

18 Day and night, cause your tears to run like a river round the walls of Zion.
Cry to the Lord all the time, you people.
Do not rest.
Do not let your eyes stop crying.

19 Stand up and pray for God’s help.
Talk to God all night.
Pour out your words and thoughts to God
as you pour out water from a jar.
Lift up your hands to him when you ask him.
And ask him to save the lives of your children.
They fall down to die at the end of every street
because they are so hungry.
Jerusalem’s people speak

20 ‘Look at us, Lord’, you should say.
‘You have done all this to your people.
Women eat their own children now!
But they are the children that they looked after.
People have killed your own priests and prophets
in your holy house!

21 Young people and old people lie dead in the streets.
The enemy has killed the young men and women with long knives.
But it was really you who killed them.
You were very angry with us.
So you killed them and you did not feel sorry.

22 You asked our enemies to come round us
as people come to a special party.
They killed our people because you were angry.
Nobody could hide or run away.
They all died.
We saw the enemy kill our own children.’

 Chapter 3

1 I am the man who has seen trouble.
God punished me because he was angry with me.

2 He has led me into the dark.
There is no light, so I cannot see the right way.

3 He is completely against me;
so again and again, he causes me trouble all day long.

4 God has caused my skin and my whole body to become old.
He has broken my bones.

5 He has fought against me from every side.
He caused much trouble for me,
so that I am very sad.

6 He has brought me to this dark place.
So I am like a person who has been dead for a long time.

7 I am like a person inside high walls that God has built.
And I cannot go out.
My troubles are very bad.
They are like heavy metal and they hold me down.

8 I shout and I pray for help,
But God does not listen.

9 I am like a person on a path with lots of curves,
because he put big rocks in my way.

10 God is like a strong wild animal.
He hides and he waits for me by the path.

11 He is like an animal that pulls a person away from the path.
Then it tears the person in pieces.
He has made me very lonely.

12 God is like a soldier with a bow.
He bent the bow and he shot at me.

13 It was as if he shot me in the heart.

14 All the people see me and laugh.
They even sing silly songs about me all day long.

15 God has caused my life to become a thing of pain.
It is as if he filled a cup with a very bitter drink for me.

16 It is as if he caused me to eat small stones.
And the stones broke my teeth.
Then he put me on the ground,
and he covered me with ashes.

17 He has taken peace away from my mind.
I have forgotten what good days are like.
There were good days when I had plenty.
And there were good days when I was happy.
But I have forgotten what that was like.

18 ‘Everything good has finished for me!
The things that I hoped for from the Lord have not come!’ I tell myself.

19 Remember (Lord) all my troubles because I am sad.
Remember that I am very lonely.
And my mouth tastes bad as I think about it.

20 I think about all those things,
and I feel small and alone.

21 But then I choose to remember God,
and then I hope again:

22 God is good and he never stops being kind to us.
That is why we are alive at all.

23 Each new day we can remember
that God’s promises will certainly happen.

24 ‘He is my Lord’, I say to myself.
‘He is the reason why I can hope again.’

25 The Lord does good things for people who wait for him.
He is kind to everyone who looks for him.

26 It is good when people go on hoping.
It is good when they quietly wait for God,
because he will save them.

27 It is also good for people to obey God when they are young.
They should work well for him.

28 Also, they should sit alone quietly,
when God causes them to be in trouble.

29 They should lie down on the ground in front of God.
Then they can hope again.

30 Cruel people will want to hurt them.
And those people will want to say cruel things to them.
They should let them do it and they should not fight them.

31 The Lord does not turn away from people for always.

32 God does cause people to feel sad sometimes,
but he is sorry for us.
He is also very kind to us,
because he loves us very much.

33 He does not enjoy seeing people who are in pain.
He does not enjoy causing trouble for them.

34 Bad people may be cruel to those who are in a prison.
But God does not like to see that.

35 Bad people may take other people’s things.
But God does not like to see that.
And God is the greatest of all.

36 People with authority may not be fair to other people.
But the Lord is not happy when he sees that.

37 The Lord causes things to happen.
Nobody can cause things to happen without him.

38 God is the greatest of all and he causes things to happen.
He causes good things and bad things when he speaks.

39 He only punishes us when we do wrong things.
We are still alive, so we should not be angry with God.

40 Instead, we should think a lot about what we do.
And we should turn back to the Lord again.

41 God is in his home and we should pray to him.
We should offer ourselves completely to him.

42 ‘We have done wrong things,
and we have gone against you.
And you have not forgiven us’, we say to God.

43 ‘You have hidden yourself from us because you are angry.
You have followed us so that you could kill us.
You were not sorry about it.

44 You have hidden from us in a cloud.
So you do not listen to us when we talk to you.

45 You let people from other countries think bad things about us.
They think that we have no value.
We are like things that nobody can use any longer.

46 All our enemies say bad things to us.

47 And we are very afraid of the people who have beaten us.
They have caught us like animals.
They have killed us.
And they have destroyed all the things that we had.’

48 I weep, and my eyes are red with all my tears.
It is because the enemy has killed my people.

49 Tears come like a river from my eyes.
And they will not stop,

50 until the Lord looks down on us from his home in heaven.
He will see us and he will help us.

51 I see our city.
I see what has happened to all the people here.
And so I am very sad.

52 My enemies had no reason to follow me.
But they caught me as they would catch a bird.

53 They put me alive into the well,
and they threw stones down on me.

54 The water covered my head.
Then I said, ‘I shall die.’

55 I shouted your name, Lord,
when I was in the well.

56 ‘Please listen to me, Lord’, I shouted.
‘Help me! Save me!’ I shouted,
and you heard me.

57 You came near to me when I prayed to you.
‘Do not be afraid’, you said.

58 Lord, you have given me help.
You have paid the price to keep me alive.

59 You saw the bad things that they did to me.
So please agree with me that they were not fair!

60 You know all the bad things that they did to me.
And you know about all the bad things that they want to do to me.

61 You have heard their cruel words against me, Lord.
Yes, you know about all the bad things that they want to do to me.

62 These people have been cruel to me.
They attack me with cruel words every hour of the day.

63 Look at them as they sing cruel things about me.
They sing when they are sitting.
And they sing when they are standing.

64 Punish them for what they have done, Lord.

65 Cause them to think that they cannot hope for anything good.
Cause bad things to happen to them.

66 Run after them angrily.
Kill them all because you are angry with them.
Let nobody on earth remember them any longer.

 Chapter 4

1 Look! The gold has stopped shining!
Look how the best gold has changed!
The valuable stones from the Holy Place lie at the end of every street!

2 Jerusalem’s men were valuable, like the best gold.
Now they lie in the streets, because God has broken them.
They are like common pots that a potter makes.

3 Even the wild animals offer the breast to their young animals.
But Jerusalem’s young women have become cruel.
They are like ostriches that put their young ostriches in wild places.

4 The mouths of the babies in Jerusalem are completely dry, because they are so thirsty.
And the young children ask for food, but nobody gives them anything to eat.

5 There are people here who had been very rich.
They ate the best foods, but now they are hungry.
Now they lie in the streets with nothing to eat.
They wore the best clothes, but now they sit in the ashes.

6 God has punished my people.
He punished us more than he punished Sodom’s people.
God destroyed that city in a moment,
and no human person helped him.

7 The leaders of Jerusalem were more clean than the cleanest cold water.
They seemed to be more white than milk.
Their bodies had very good health,
and they seemed to shine like valuable stones.

8 Now their faces are black like wood that somebody has burnt.
People see them in the streets, but do not recognise them.
Their skin hangs on their bones.
Their skin is as dry as wood for a fire.

9 Our enemies have killed many people with long knives.
It is better for those dead people
than for the people who have no food.
They are very hungry.
And they die slowly because they have nothing to eat.

10 Women who once were very kind
have boiled their own children.
Their children became their food,
when the enemies were destroying the city.

11 The Lord was very angry.
So he sent fire to burn Zion.
It destroyed the whole city, even the strongest houses.

12 The kings in the other cities on earth could not believe it.
None of the people on earth could believe it.
They thought that no enemy could go through Jerusalem’s gates.

13 God punished Jerusalem and its people because their leaders sinned.
God did not like the things that their prophets and priests did.
They had caused good people to die.

14 Those leaders walked in the streets like men who cannot see.
There was blood on their clothes and everybody was afraid to touch them.

15 ‘Go away!’ people shouted at them.
‘Do not touch us!
You are too dirty to be among God’s people!’
So they went away to other countries, but the people there did not want them.
‘They cannot stay here with us!’ those people said.

16 The Lord himself has sent them away because he is angry with them.
He will not be kind to them any longer.
Nobody likes bad priests and nobody likes bad leaders.

17 Our eyes became red as we watched.
We were looking for help, but it did not come.
The people from other countries could not save us.

18 Enemies ran after us, so that we could not go into the streets any longer.
We knew that we would die soon.
We could not live like this any longer.

19 The enemy was quicker than big birds that fly in the air.
They followed us so that they could catch us out on the mountains.
They hid and they waited for us in the wild places.

20 God had chosen a man to be our king.
We thought that he would save us.
‘Under his shadow we will live among the other countries’, we had always said.
But the enemy caught him.

21 You, Edom’s people, live in the country called Uz. And you are happy now.
But at a future time, God will hurt you also.
The enemy will take away everything that you have.
So you will become like drunks.

22 God has finished punishing Zion’s people.
He will let them return to their homes soon.
But you, Edom’s people, God will certainly punish you.
He will discover everything that you have done wrong.

 Chapter 5

1 Lord, please remember the trouble that has happened to us.
Look at us, because we are ashamed.

2 Strangers have taken the land that our fathers gave to us.
Foreign people live in our homes.

3 We are children whose fathers are dead.
Our mothers no longer have husbands.

4 We must pay money for the water that we drink.
We must buy wood for our fires.

5 Our enemies cause us to work like animals.
But the work is too difficult
and they will not let us rest.

6 We gave ourselves to the Egyptians and to the Assyrians,
so that we could get food to eat.

7 Our fathers sinned, but they are dead.
Now we have the troubles that you caused because of them.
You punished us because of their sin.

8 Slaves now rule us.
And there is nobody to save us from their power.

9 We meet danger when we work in the fields.
Enemies are everywhere and they want to kill us.

10 Our skin feels as if we are burning.
We are so hungry that we are ill.

11 Enemies do what they want with the women in Zion.
They are cruel to the young women in Judah’s cities.

12 They hang our leaders by their hands.
And they are cruel to our old men also.

13 They took the young men to work as slaves.
Those young men make flour for them.
And our boys carry wood.
They fall down under big bags of wood.

14 Our enemies no longer let our old men decide things.
The old men cannot say what is right or fair for us.
And the young men have stopped their music.

15 We are not happy any longer.
Instead, we are very sad,
so we do not dance any longer.

16 And we have no king in Jerusalem any longer.
We have sinned and so very bad things have happened to us.

17 So our bodies feel ill and we feel ill deep inside us.
Our eyes are very tired and we cannot hope for good things any longer.

18 We are so sad because they destroyed Zion’s walls and buildings.
Wild animals walk on them now.

19 But you, Lord, are always king.
You will always rule us.

20 Tell us why you have forgotten us.
Tell us why you have left us for so long.

21 Help us to come back to you, Lord.
We really want to make a new start with you.
We were great before our enemies beat us.
We pray that you will make us as great as that again.

22 That could happen unless you have turned away from us completely.
That could happen unless you will continue to be very angry with us.

Info
© Wycliffe Associates (UK), 1999-2009
This version published May 2009
The translated Bible text has been through Advanced Checking.