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gressions is bound by his hand: they are wreathed, and come up upon my neck: he hath made my strength to fall, the Lord hath delivered me into their hands, from whom I am not able to rise up.

14 The Lord hath trodden under foot all my mighty men in the midst of me: he hath called an assembly against me to crush my young men: the Lord hath trodden the virgin, the daughter of Judah, as in a wine-press.

15 For these things I weep; mine eye runneth down with water, because the Comforter that should relieve my soul is far from me: my children are desolate, because the enemy prevailed.

16 Zion spreadeth forth her hands, and there is none to comfort her: the Lord hath commanded concerning Jacob, that his adversaries should be round about him.

¶ 17 The Lord is righteous; for I have rebelled against his commandment: hear, I pray you, all people, and behold my sorrow my virgins and my young men are gone into captivity.

18 I called for my lovers, but they deceived me: my priests and mine elders gave up the ghost in the city, while they sought their meat to relieve their souls.

19 Behold, O Lord; for I am in distress: my bowels are troubled; mine heart is turned within me; for I have grievously rebelled: abroad the sword

bereaveth; at home there is as death.

20 They have heard that I sigh: there is none to comfort me: all mine enemies have heard of my trouble; they are glad that thou hast done it : thou wilt bring the day that thou hast called, and they shall be like unto me.

21 Let all their wickedness come before thee; and do unto them, as thou hast done unto me for all my transgressions: for my sighs are many, and my heart is faint.

LESSON CLXVI.

How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger, and cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel, and remembered not his footstool in the day of his anger!

2 The Lord hath swallowed up all the habitations of Jacob, and hath not pitied: he hath thrown down in his wrath the strong holds of the daughter of Judah; he hath brought them down to the ground: he hath polluted the kingdom and the princes thereof.

3 He hath cut off in his fierce anger all the horn of Israel: he hath drawn back his right hand from before the enemy; and he burned against Jacob like a flaming fire, which devoureth round about.

4 He hath bent his bow like an enemy: he stood with his right hand as an adversary, and slew all that were pleasant to

the eye in the tabernacle of the daughter of Zion.

5 The Lord was as an enemy: he hath swallowed up Is rael, he hath swallowed up all her palaces: he hath destroyed his strong holds, and hath in creased, in the daughter of Judah, mourning and lamentation. 6 And he hath violently taken away his tabernacle, as if it were of a garden: he hath destroyed his places of the assembly: the Lord hath caused the solemn feasts and sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion, and hath despised, in the indignation of his anger, the king and the priest.

7 The Lord hath cast off his altar, he hath abhorred his sanctuary, he hath given up into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces; they have made a noise in the house of the Lord, as in the day of a solemn feast.

8 Her gates are sunk into the ground; he hath destroyed and broken her bars: her king and her princes are among the Gentiles: the law is no more; her prophets also find no vision from the Lord.

9 The elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground, and keep silence: they have cast up dust upon their heads; they have girded themselves with sackcloth: the virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground.

10 Mine eyes do fail with tears, for the destruction of the daughter of my people; because the children and the

sucklings swoon in the streets of the city.

11 They say to their mothers, Where is corn and wine? when they swooned as the wounded in the streets of the city, when their soul was poured out into their mother's bosom.

12 What thing shall I take to witness for thee? what thing shall I liken to thee, O daughter of Jerusalem? what shall I equal to thee, that I may comfort thee, O virgin daughter of Zion? for thy breach is great like the sea: who can heal thee?

13 All that pass by clap their hands at thee; they hiss and wag their head at the daughter of Jerusalem, saying, Is this the city that men call, The perfection of beauty, The joy of the whole earth?

14 All thine enemies have opened their mouth against thee: they hiss and gnash the teeth: they say, We have swallowed her up: certainly this is the day that we looked for; we have found, we have seen it.

15 The Lord hath done that which he had devised; he hath fulfilled his word that he had commanded in the days of old: he hath thrown down, and hath not pitied: and he hath caused thine enemy to rejoice over thee, he hath set up the horn of thine adversaries.

16 Their heart cried unto the Lord, O wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears run down like a river day and night: give thyself no rest; let not the apple of thine eye cease.

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17 Arise, cry out in the night in the beginning of the watches pour out thine heart like water before the face of the Lord: lift up thy hands toward him for the life of thy young children, that faint for hunger in the top of every street.

18 The young and the old lie on the ground in the streets my virgins and my young men are fallen by the sword; thou hast slain them in the day of thine anger; thou hast killed, and not pitied.

19 Thou hast called as in a solemn day my terrors round about, so that in the day of the Lord's anger none escaped nor remained: those that I have swaddled and brought up hath mine enemy consumed.

20 Judah mourneth, and the gates thereof languish; they are black unto the ground; and the cry of Jerusalem is gone up.

21 And their nobles have sent their little ones to the waters: they came to the pits, and found no water; they returned with their vessels empty; they were ashamed and confounded, and covered their heads;

22 Because the ground is chapt; for there was no rain in the earth; the ploughmen were ashamed, they covered their heads:

23 Yea, the hind also calved in the field, and forsook it, because there was no grass.

24 And the wild asses did stand in the high places, they snuffed up the wind like dragons; their eyes did fail, because there was no grass.

LESSON CLXVII.

How is the gold become dim! how is the most fine gold changed! the stones of the sanctuary are poured out in the top of every street.

2 The precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold, how are they esteemed as earthen pitchers, the work of the hands of the potter!

3 Even the sea monsters draw out the breast, they give suck to their young ones: the daughter of my people is become cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness.

4 The tongue of the sucking child cleaveth to the roof of his mouth for thirst: the young children ask bread, and no man breaketh it unto them.

5 They that did feed delicately are desolate in the streets: they that were brought up in scarlet embrace dunghills.

6 For the punishment of the iniquity of the daughter of my people is greater than the punishment of the sin of Sodom, that was overthrown as in a moment, and no hands stayed on her.

7 Her Nazarites were purer than snow; they were whiter than milk; they were more ruddy in body than rubies; their polishing was of sapphire:

8 Their visage is blacker than a coal; they are not known in the streets: their skin cleaveth to their bones; it is withered, it is become like a stick.

9 They that be slain with the sword are better than they that

be slain with hunger: for these pine away, stricken through for want of the fruits of the field.

10 The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their own children they were their meat in the destruction of the daughter of my people.

11 The Lord hath accomplished his fury; he hath poured out his fierce anger, and hath kindled a fire in Zion, and it hath devoured the foundations thereof.

12 The kings of the earth, and all the inhabitants of the world, would not have believed that the adversary and the enemy should have entered into the gates of Jerusalem.

13 For the sins of her prophets, and the iniquities of her priests, that have shed the blood of the just in the midst of her,

14 They have wandered as blind men in the streets, they have polluted themselves with blood.

15 The anger of the Lord hath divided them; he will no more regard them: they respected not the persons of the priests, they favoured not the elders.

16 As for us, our eyes as yet failed for our vain help: in our watching we have watched for a nation that could not save

us.

17 They hunt our steps, that we cannot go in our streets: our end is near, our days are fulfilled; for our end is come.

18 Our persecutors are swifter than the eagles of the heaven:

they pursued us upon the mountains, they laid wait for us in the wilderness.

19 The breath of our nostrils, the anointed of the Lord, was taken in their pits; of whom we said, Under his shadow we shall live among the heathen.

LESSON CLXVIII.

REMEMBER, O Lord, what is come upon us: consider, and behold our reproach.

2 Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens.

3 We are orphans and fatherless, our mothers are as widows.

4 We have drunken our water for money; our wood is sold unto us.

5 Our necks are under persecution: we labour, and have no rest.

6 We have given the hand to the Egyptians, and to the Assyrians, to be satisfied with bread.

7 Our fathers have sinned, and are not; and we have borne their iniquities.

8 Servants have ruled over us: there is none that doth deliver us out of their hand.

9 We gat our bread with the peril of our lives, because of the sword of the wilderness.

10 Our skin was black like an oven, because of the terrible famine.

11 Princes are hanged up by their hand: the faces of elders were not honoured.

12 They took the young men to grind, and the children fell under the wood.

13 The elders have ceased from the gate, the young men from their music.

14 The joy of our heart is ceased; our dance is turned into mourning.

15 The crown is fallen from our head: woe unto us, that we have sinned!

16 For this our heart is faint; for these things our eyes are dim.

17 Because of the mountain of Zion, which is desolate; the foxes walk upon it.

18 Wherefore dost thou forget us for ever, and forsake us so long time?

19 Turn thou us unto thee, O Lord, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old.

20 But thou hast utterly re

jected us; thou art very wroth against us.

LESSON CLXIX.

O GOD, the heathen are come into thine inheritance: thy holy temple have they defiled: they have laid Jerusalem on heaps.

2 The dead bodies of thy servants have they given to be meat unto the fowls of the heaven; the flesh of thy saints unto the beasts of the earth.

3 Their blood have they shed like water round about Jerusalem; and there was none to bury them.

4 We are become a reproach to our neighbours; a scorn and derision to them that are round about us.

5 Wherefore should the heathen say, Where is their God?

SECTION III.-Prophecies of the Messiah.

LESSON CLXX.

MOSES Said unto the people of Israel,

2 Thou shalt be perfect with the Lord thy God. For these nations, which thou shalt possess, hearkened unto observers of times and unto diviners; but as for thee, the Lord hath not suffered thee so to do.

3 The Lord thy God shall raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him shall ye hearken;

4 According to all that thou

desiredst of the Lord thy God in Horeb in the day of the assembly, saying, Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God, neither let me see this great fire any more, that I die not.

5 And the Lord said unto me, They have well spoken that which they have spoken.

6 I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him.

7 And it shall come to pass,

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