Chapter 19

The Israelite's calamity is described by two parables, of lions, ℣.10 and of a vine planted and plucked up.

1. 1

   And thou take up lamentation upon the Princes of Israel, Why lay thy mother a lioness among the

2. 2

   and thou shalt say: lions, in the midst of young lions brought up her whelps?

3. 3

   And she brought out one of her young lions, he became a lion: and he learned to catch preys, and to eat man.

4. 4

   And the Gentiles heard of him, and not without their wounds they took him: & they brought him in chains into the Land of Ægypt.

5. 5

   Who when she saw that she was weakened, and her expectation was lost, she took one of her young lions, she made him a lion.

6. 6

   Who went among the lions, & became a lion: and he learned to take prey, & to devour men.

7. 7

   He learned to make widows, and to bring their cities into a desert: and the land was made desolate, and the fullness thereof by the voice of his roaring.

8. 8

   And the Gentiles came together against him on every side out of the Provinces, and they spread their net upon him, in their wounds he was taken.

9. 9

   And they put him into a cave, in chains they brought him to the king of Babylon: and they cast him into prison, that his voice might no more be heard upon the mountains of Israel.

10. 10

    Thy mother as it were a vine in thy blood is planted upon the water: her fruit and her branches have grown out of many waters.

11. 11

    And there were made to her strong rods for the sceptres of them that rule, and her stature was exalted among the branches: and she saw her height in the multitude of her branches.

12. 12

    And she was plucked up in wrath, and cast on the ground: and the burning wind hath dried up her fruit: the rods of her strength are withered, & dried up: fire hath eaten her.

13. 13

    And now she is transplanted into the desert, in a land not passable, and dry.

14. 14

    And there came forth fire from the rod of her boughs, which hath eaten her fruit: and there was not in her a strong rod, the sceptre of rulers. Lamentation it is, and it shall be into lamentation.