Caph. All her people sigh, they seek bread: they have given all their precious things for food to relieve the soul. See, O Lord, and consider, for I am become vile.
My lord the king, these men have done evil in all that they have done against Jeremias the prophet, casting him into the dungeon to die there with hunger, for there is no more bread in the city.
Lamed. They said to their mothers: Where is corn and wine? when they fainted away as the wounded in the streets of the city: when they breathed out their souls in the bosoms of their mothers.
Res. Behold O Lord, and consider whom thou hast thus dealt with. Shall women then eat their own fruit, their children of a span long? Shall the priest and the prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord?
Teth. Her filthiness is on her feet and she hath not remembered her end: she is wonderfully cast down, not having a comforter. Behold, O Lord, my affliction, because the enemy is lifted up.
And I will feed them with the flesh of their sons and with the flesh of their daughters: and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend in the siege, and in the distress wherewith their enemies, and they that seek their lives shall straiten them.
And there was a great famine in Samaria: and so long did the siege continue, till the head of an ass was sold for fourscore pieces of silver, and the fourth part of a cabe of pigeon's dung, for five pieces of silver.
Therefore thus saith the Lord: If thou wilt be converted, I will convert thee, and thou shalt stand before my face: and if thou wilt separate the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as my mouth. They shall be turned to thee, and thou shalt not be turned to them.
Heth. Jerusalem hath grievously sinned, therefore is she become unstable: all that honoured her have despised her, because they have seen her shame: but she sighed and turned backward.
Caph. My eyes have failed with weeping, my bowels are troubled: my liver is poured out upon the earth, for the destruction of the daughter of my people, when the children, and the sucklings, fainted away in the streets of the city.