5-9 “Why bother even trying to do anything with you
    when you just keep to your bullheaded ways?
You keep beating your heads against brick walls.
    Everything within you protests against you.
From the bottom of your feet to the top of your head,
    nothing’s working right.
Wounds and bruises and running sores—
    untended, unwashed, unbandaged.
Your country is laid waste,
    your cities burned down.
Your land is destroyed by outsiders while you watch,
    reduced to rubble by barbarians.
Daughter Zion is deserted—
    like a tumbledown shack on a dead-end street,
Like a tarpaper shanty on the wrong side of the tracks,
    like a sinking ship abandoned by the rats.
If God-of-the-Angel-Armies hadn’t left us a few survivors,
    we’d be as desolate as Sodom, doomed just like Gomorrah.

Read full chapter

Why should you be beaten(A) anymore?
    Why do you persist(B) in rebellion?(C)
Your whole head is injured,
    your whole heart(D) afflicted.(E)
From the sole of your foot to the top of your head(F)
    there is no soundness(G)
only wounds and welts(H)
    and open sores,
not cleansed or bandaged(I)
    or soothed with olive oil.(J)

Your country is desolate,(K)
    your cities burned with fire;(L)
your fields are being stripped by foreigners(M)
    right before you,
    laid waste as when overthrown by strangers.(N)

Read full chapter