Lament of the Daughter of Judah

Abraham Dov (Adam) ha-Kohen Lebensohn

1842

O God of Hosts, our God from of old,

Was it for this that You selected our ancestors from days of yore

That You took their descendants as an inheritance for Yourself

To set them up as the target of Your blasts of fury,

So that they run around the world when stricken by the evils inflicted by You?

Are all Your arrows spent with a view to their annihilation?

How is it that we have strayed from the path of understanding,

And how is it that all that is upright within man has become crooked within us?

How has all righteousness among us been turned into a destructive force,

Wisdom and morality into an abomination of the soul?

Is it not You, O Lord, in that You have forsaken us,

Have placed us in darkness rather than in light?

By reason of the abundance of the days of affliction, we have lost sight of justice,

Those marching us along are perplexed, without vision:

Not a single man among them looks attentively at the nation,

There is no one among them who knows how to repair their breaches:

In the place of fences, they build sheepfolds,

They cannot discern the location where the breaches lie:

They who fear the Lord are merely in fear of the reproach of man,

They who love Him are simply lovers of human gifts:

They who honor the Lord despise the knowledge of Him,

They who praise Him are the ones profaning the man of understanding, who seeks after God:

Our God, make Your wisdom known upon earth,

Open, I pray You, forever the eyes of those who hate it,

Lo, You have bestowed upon it redemption and salvation,

Only those acquainted with it have the ability to save, or to be saved, through it!

Translated by

David E.

Cohen

Credits

Abraham Dov (Adam) ha-Kohen Lebensohn, “Kol na’akat bat Yehudah = Elegie der Tochter Jehuda während ihrer Leiden im Mittelalter” in Shire Śefat Ḳodesh = Poemata Linguâ Sacra Hebraica, by Abraham Dov ha-Kohen Lebensohn (Lipsiae: C.L. Fritzsche, 1842), 104-115:106ff, https://www.nli.org.il/en/books/NNL_ALEPH001967864/NLI. Republished as: Abraham Dov (Adam) ha-Kohen Lebensohn, “Kol na’akat bat Yehudah,” in Shire Śefat Ḳodesh = Poemata Lingua Sacra Hebraica (Prima Pars), by Abraham Dov ha-Kohen Lebensohn (Vilna: Rom, 1870), 153-164:155-156, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.c109223607&seq=156.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 6.