New alphabet; prophet shares the city’s discipline
Terrible things have befallen the prophet both before the city was taken and when this had been captured. For which reason, beginning another alphabetic sequence, he bewails himself, seeing poverty and desolation of the city through the Lord’s discipline. And he himself no less has come to be in lack of good things—at once having come to be in circumstance when he was convicting these, so as to say “I continued being mocked the whole day,” (Jeremiah 20:7) and at once also sharing in the calamities of their terrible things and from sympathy. And he also says according to David: “a shadow of death overshadowed me.” (Psalm 44:19) For when he seems for a short while to give relief to the pains, again he runs back making continuous punishment (Lamentations 3:3).
Greek
Klagel. Jerem. 3, 1. Δεινὰ συνέβη τῷ προφήτῃ καὶ πρὶν ἁλῶναι τὴν πόλιν καὶ ταύτης ἑαλωκυίας. διὸ στοιχειώσεως ἑτέρας κατάρχων, ἐαυτὸν ἀποδύρεται, πτωχείαν ὁρῶν καὶ ἐρημίαν τῆς πόλεως διὰ παιδείαν κυρίου. καὶ αὐτὸς δὲ οὐδὲν ἡττον γέγονεν έν ἐνδείᾳ ἀγαθῶν, ἅμα μὲν ἐν περιστάσει γεγονὼς ἡνίκα τούτους ἐξήλεγχεν, ὥστε λέγειν· «διετέλεσα μυκτηριζόμενος πᾶσαν τὴν ἡμέραν«, ἅμα δὲ καὶ ταῖς τῶν δεινῶν αὐτῶν κοινωνῶν συμφοραῖς καὶ τῇ ἐκ συμπαθείας φησὶ δὲ καὶ κατὰ τὸν Δαβίδ· «σκιὰ θανάτου ἐπεσκίασέ με. ὅταν γὰρ δοκῇ πρὸς βραχὺ διδόναι τοῖς πόνοις ἀνακωχήν, αὐθις παλινδρομεῖ διημνεκῆ τιμωρίαν ποιούμενος.