Hymn 10.

Chapter 6

1My children have been slain; and my daughters that are without me — their walls are overthrown, their children scattered — and their holy places trodden down. R., Blessed is Your chastisement!

2The fowlers have taken, my doves out of my strongholds — which quitted their nests, and fled to the caves — in the net have they taken them.

3After the manner of wax, that melts before the fire — thus melted and dissolved, the bodies, of my sons before the heat — and the drought of my strongholds.

4And instead of streams, of milk that used to flow — for my sons and my little ones, milk fails the sucklings, and water the weaned children.

5The suckling falls, from its mother and gasps — because it cannot suck, nor can she give suck:— they breathe out their spirit and die.

6How is it possible, that Your grace can refrain — the welling of its stream, when it is not possible to restrain — the abundance of its flow?

7And why has Your grace , shut up its mercies — and withheld its streams, from the people that cry — for one to moisten their tongue?

8And there was a pit, between them and their brethren;— like the rich man who cried, and there was none to answer — to moisten his tongue.

9And as into the midst of fire, the wretched ones were cast — and heat in the midst of thirst, the fire was blowing — and kindling upon them.

10Their carcasses were melted, and dissolved by the heat — they that had thirsted gave in turn the earth to drink — of the reek of their bodies.

11And the fort that with thirst, had killed, its dwellers — it drank in its turn of the flux from the corpses — that were melted by thirst.

12Who has seen a people — that were burning with thirst — while there surrounded them a wall of water and they could not — moisten their tongue!

13Surely with the judgment of Sodom , were my beloved judged, — and my children smitten, with the torment of Sodom — though that was but for one day.

14The torment of fire, though it be for one hour, O my Lord, — in lingering thirst, is a lingering death, and a subtle punishment.

15After my sorrows, O my Lord, and my bitter sufferings — this is the best comfort, wherewith You have comforted me — that You have multiplied my afflictions.

16The medicine that I hoped, it is sorrow decreed;— the binding up that I looked for, it is bitter calamity — that it seeks to work for me.

17And whereas I hoped to escape, from the midst of the storm — worse for me is the storm in it, even in the harbour — than that in the sea.

18Whereas I thought in my folly, that I should anchor and escape — from the midst of the Gulf; my sins have cast me back — again into the midst of it.

19Look, O my Lord, on my limbs, how the swords are thick in me — and have left their mark on my arms; and the scars of the spears — are planted in my sides!

20Tears in my eyes, and in my ears ill rumours — wailing in my mouth, and mourning in my heart!— Add no more, O my Lord, to me!