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Jeremiah
4:30.1-5:3.1

Every city flees for the noise of the horsemen and archers. They go into the thickets, and climb up on the rocks.

Every city is forsaken, and not a man dwells therein. You, when you are made desolate, what will you do? Though you clothe yourself with scarlet, though you deck yourself with ornaments of gold, though you enlarge your eyes with makeup, you make yourself beautiful in vain. Your lovers despise you. They seek your life.

For I have heard a voice as of a woman in travail,

the anguish as of her who gives birth to her first child,

the voice of the daughter of Zion, who gasps for breath, who spreads her hands, saying, “Woe is me now! For my soul faints before the murderers.”

“Run back and forth through the streets of Jerusalem, and see now, and know, and seek in its wide places, if you can find a man, if there is anyone who does justly, who seeks truth, then I will pardon her. Though they say, ‘As Yahweh lives,’ surely they swear falsely.”

O Yahweh, don’t your eyes look on truth? You have stricken them, but they were not grieved. You have consumed them, but they have refused to receive correction. They have made their faces harder than a rock. They have refused to return.