When Mordecai learned all that had been done, Mordecai tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and ashes and went through the city, wailing with a loud and bitter cry;
Therefore I weep as Jazer weeps for the vines of Sibmah; I drench you with my tears, O Heshbon and Elealeh, for the shout over your fruit harvest and your grain harvest has ceased.
Therefore my loins are filled with anguish; pangs have seized me like the pangs of a woman in labor; I am bowed down so that I cannot hear; I am dismayed so that I cannot see.
My anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain! Oh, the walls of my heart! My heart is beating wildly; I cannot keep silent, for I hear the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war.
Take up weeping and wailing for the mountains and a lamentation for the pastures of the wilderness, because they are laid waste so that no one passes through, and the lowing of cattle is not heard; both the birds of the air and the animals have fled and are gone.
For a sound of wailing is heard from Zion: “How we are ruined! We are utterly shamed because we have left the land, because they have cast down our dwellings.”
Mortal, wail over the hordes of Egypt and send them down, with Egypt and the daughters of majestic nations, to the world below, with those who go down to the Pit.
On that day they shall take up a taunt song against you and wail with bitter lamentation and say, “We are utterly ruined; the Lord alters the inheritance of my people; how he removes it from me! Among our captors he parcels out our fields.”
He, too, stripped off his clothes, and he, too, fell into a frenzy before Samuel. He lay naked all that day and all that night. Therefore it is said, “Is Saul also among the prophets?”