5 The prayer of Jeremiah.
1 Remember, O Lord, what is come upon us: [a]consider, and behold our reproach.
2 Our inheritance is turned to the strangers, our houses to the aliens.
3 We are fatherless, even without father, and our mothers are as widows.
4 We have drunk our [b]water for money, and our wood is sold unto us.
5 Our necks are under persecution: we are weary, and have no rest.
6 We have given our [c]hands to the Egyptians, and to Assyria, to be satisfied with bread.
7 Our fathers have sinned, and are not, and we have borne [d]their iniquities.
8 Servants have ruled over us, none would deliver us out of their hands.
9 We got our bread with the peril of our lives, because of the sword [e]of the wilderness.
10 Our skin was black like as an oven because of the terrible famine.
11 They defiled the women in Zion, and the maids in the cities of Judah.
12 The princes are hanged up by [f]their hand: the faces of the Elders were not had in honor.
13 They took the young men to grind, and the children fell under [g]the wood.
14 The Elders have ceased from the [h]gate and the young men from their songs.
15 The joy of our heart is gone, our dance is turned into mourning.
16 The crown of our head is fallen: woe now unto us, that we have sinned.
17 Therefore our heart is heavy for these things, our [i]eyes are dim,
18 Because of the mountain of Zion, which is desolate: the foxes run upon it.
19 But thou, O Lord, remainest [j]forever: thy throne is from generation to generation.
20 Wherefore dost thou forget us forever, and forsake us so long time?
21 [k]Turn thou us unto thee, O Lord, and we shall be turned: renew our days as of old.
22 But thou hast utterly rejected us: thou art exceedingly angry against us.
Footnotes
- Lamentations 5:1 This prayer as is thought, was made when some of the people were carried away captive, others, as the poorest remained, and some went into Egypt, and other places for succor: albeit it seemeth that the Prophet foreseeing their miseries to come, thus prayed.
- Lamentations 5:4 Meaning, their extreme servitude and bondage.
- Lamentations 5:6 We are joined in league and amity with them, or have submitted ourselves unto them.
- Lamentations 5:7 As our fathers have been punished for their sins: so we that are culpable of the same sins, are punished.
- Lamentations 5:9 Because of the enemy that came from the wilderness, and would not suffer us to go and seek our necessary food.
- Lamentations 5:12 That is, by the enemy’s hand.
- Lamentations 5:13 Their slavery was so great, that they were not able to abide it.
- Lamentations 5:14 There were no more laws nor form of commonwealth.
- Lamentations 5:17 With weeping.
- Lamentations 5:19 And therefore thy covenant and mercies can never fail.
- Lamentations 5:21 Whereby is declared that it is not in man’s power to turn to God, but is only his work to convert us, and thus God worketh in us before we can turn to him, Jer. 31:18.