Irmos: I will pour out my prayer to the Lord/ and to Him I will proclaim my sorrows/ for my soul is filled with evil/ and my life is drawing near to hell,/ and I pray like Jonah:/ from aphids, O God, lift me up.
The lament of the Jewish mother about her babies, innocently killed by Herod. At the same time, I ask You, Most Pure One: grant me tears to mourn the child who was lost through unbelief and malice, and I beg Your Son to dwell in peace.
Jonah remained in the belly of the whale until God had mercy on him; But with my hard-heartedness I destroyed in my womb the child God had given me. Moreover, now I pray to Thee, Most Holy One: bring me out of the abyss of despair.
Glory: Having found a child in the womb, to the righteous Elizabeth at the meeting, the Mother of God, you rose up, and the Forerunner leaped in her womb, foretelling the birth of the Son of God. But I, in the womb, have a child, unkind advisers, asking questions, who frighten me through poverty, to the bitter compulsion of murder.
And now: Thy womb, God-chosen Virgin, became heaven and the abode of Christ. I have made my own place of destruction and a playground of passions. Oh, my bitter curse, I pray that you deliver me from it!