Her uncleanness was easily seen, but she showed no concern for her fate. Her downfall was terrible; no one can comfort her. Her enemies have won, and she cries to the LORD for mercy.

Her people groan as they look for something to eat; They exchange their treasures for food to keep themselves alive. "Look at me, LORD," the city cries; "see me in my misery."

My voice was thin and weak, And I moaned like a dove. My eyes grew tired from looking to heaven. LORD, rescue me from all this trouble.

My eyes are worn out with weeping; my soul is in anguish. I am exhausted with grief at the destruction of my people. Children and babies are fainting in the streets of the city.

I am torn apart by worry and pain; I have had day after day of suffering.

My strength is gone, gone like water spilled on the ground. All my bones are out of joint; my heart is like melted wax.

I groan with sadness for Moab, with grief for Kir Heres.

The pain! I can't bear the pain! My heart! My heart is beating wildly! I can't keep quiet; I hear the trumpets and the shouts of battle.

"Israel, you are my dearest child, the one I love best. Whenever I mention your name, I think of you with love. My heart goes out to you; I will be merciful.

"So my heart mourns for Moab and for the people of Kir Heres, like someone playing a funeral song on a flute, because everything they owned is gone.

"How can I give you up, Israel? How can I abandon you? Could I ever destroy you as I did Admah, or treat you as I did Zeboiim? My heart will not let me do it! My love for you is too strong.

I hear all this, and I tremble; my lips quiver with fear. My body goes limp, and my feet stumble beneath me. I will quietly wait for the time to come when God will punish those who attack us.

"But the LORD is just, for I have disobeyed him. Listen to me, people everywhere; look at me in my pain. My young men and women have been taken away captive.

"But your descendants will confess their sins and the sins of their ancestors, who resisted me and rebelled against me,

I will remember my covenant with Jacob and with Isaac and with Abraham, and I will renew my promise to give my people the land.

listen to your people's prayers. If there in that land they repent and pray to you, confessing how sinful and wicked they have been, hear their prayers, O LORD.

then listen to their prayers. In your home in heaven hear them and be merciful to them.

Each one will say in public, "I have sinned. I have not done right, but God spared me.

I recognize my faults; I am always conscious of my sins.

I have sinned against you---only against you--- and done what you consider evil. So you are right in judging me; you are justified in condemning me.

You will never succeed in life if you try to hide your sins. Confess them and give them up; then God will show mercy to you.

you say, 'I am innocent; surely the LORD is no longer angry with me.' But I, the LORD, will punish you because you deny that you have sinned.

Only admit that you are guilty and that you have rebelled against the LORD, your God. Confess that under every green tree you have given your love to foreign gods and that you have not obeyed my commands. I, the LORD, have spoken.

I will get up and go to my father and say, "Father, I have sinned against God and against you.

I am no longer fit to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired workers." '

But the tax collector stood at a distance and would not even raise his face to heaven, but beat on his breast and said, 'God, have pity on me, a sinner!'

I tell you," said Jesus, "the tax collector, and not the Pharisee, was in the right with God when he went home. For those who make themselves great will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be made great."

Those who died in the war were better off than those who died later, who starved slowly to death, with no food to keep them alive.

The disaster that came to my people brought horror; loving mothers boiled their own children for food.

War will bring death in the streets; terrors will strike in the homes. Young men and young women will die; neither babies nor old people will be spared.

Death has come in through our windows and entered our palaces; it has cut down the children in the streets and the young men in the marketplaces.

Dead bodies are scattered everywhere, like piles of manure on the fields, like grain cut and left behind by the reapers, grain that no one gathers. This is what the LORD has told me to say."

When I go out in the fields, I see the bodies of men killed in war; when I go into the towns, I see people starving to death. Prophets and priests carry on their work, but they don't know what they are doing."

There is fighting in the streets, and sickness and hunger in the houses. Anyone who is out in the country will die in the fighting, and anyone in the city will be a victim of sickness and hunger.