| 1 | Moreover take thou up a lamentation for the princes of Israel, |
| 2 | And say: Why did thy mother the lioness lie down among the lions, and bring up her whelps in the midst of young lions? |
| 3 | And she brought out one of her whelps, and he became a lion: and he learned to catch the prey, and to devour men. |
| 4 | And the nations heard of him, and took him, but not without receiving wounds: and they brought him in chains into the land of Egypt. |
| 5 | But she seeing herself weakened, and that her hope was lost, took one of her young lions, and set him up for a lion. |
| 6 | And he went up and down among the lions, and became a lion: and he learned to catch the prey, and to devour men. |
| 7 | He learned to make widows, and to lay waste their cities: and the land became desolate, and the fulness thereof by the noise of his roaring. |
| 8 | And the nations came together against him on every side out of the provinces, and they spread their net over him, in their wounds he was taken. |
| 9 | And they put him into a cage, they brought him in chains to the king of Babylon: and they cast him into prison, that his voice should no more be heard upon the mountains of Israel. |
| 10 | Thy mother is like a vine in thy blood planted by the water: her fruit and her branches have grown out of many waters. |
| 11 | And she hath strong rods to make sceptres for them that bear rule, and her stature was exalted among the branches: and she saw her height in the multitude of her branches. |
| 12 | But she was plucked up in wrath, and cast on the ground, and the burning wind dried up her fruit: her strong rods are withered, and dried up: the fire hath devoured her. |
| 13 | And now she is transplanted into the desert, in a land not passable, and dry. |
| 14 | And a fire is gone out from a rod of her branches, which hath devoured her fruit: so that she now hath no strong rod, to be a sceptre of rulers. This is a lamentation, and it shall be for a lamentation. |
