And Jeremiah composed a dirge for Josiah, and all the male and female singers speak of Josiah in their laments to this day; and they made them a statute in Israel; behold, they are written in the Laments.
He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also put obscurity in their hearts so that people do not come to know the work that God has done from the beginning to the end.
he has gone up to the temple and to Dibon, the high places, to weep. Moab shall wail over Nebo and over Medeba; on all their heads shall be baldness, and every beard cut off.
Though favor is shown to the wicked, yet he will not learn righteousness; in the land of uprightness he deals unjustly and does not perceive the majesty of the Lord.
Instead of sweet perfume there shall be a stench; and instead of a belt, a rope; and instead of well-set hair, baldness; and instead of fine clothes, a girding of sackcloth; and branding instead of beauty.
He sent Eliakim, who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and the elders of the priests, covered with sackcloth, to Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz.
“Why have we fasted and You do not see? Why have we humbled ourselves and You take no notice?” Behold, in the day of your fast you find your desire and are exacting on all your laborers.
Both the great and the small will die in this land. They will not be buried; neither will men lament for them, cut themselves, nor make themselves bald for them.
Cut off your hair, O Jerusalem, and cast it away, and take up a lamentation on high places, for the Lord has rejected and forsaken the generation of His wrath.
Also they shall make themselves utterly bald for you, and gird themselves with sackcloth; and they shall weep for you with bitterness of heart and bitter wailing.
Do not rejoice, O Israel! Do not exult like the peoples, for you have played the whore departing from your God. You have loved a prostitute’s wages on every threshing floor.
Put on sackcloth and lament, O priests; wail, ministers of the altar. Come, spend the night in sackcloth, ministers of my God, because the grain offering and the drink offering are withheld from the house of your God.
Between the temple porch and the altar, let the priests, ministers of the Lord, weep and say, “Have pity upon Your people, and do not make Your inheritance a disgrace, a mockery among the nations. Why should they say among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’ ”
I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into dirges; I will put sackcloth upon all loins, and baldness on every head; I will make it like the mourning for an only child, and its end like a bitter day.