Lamentations 5

¹Remember, Yahweh, what has come on us. Look, and see our reproach.

²Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, our houses to aliens.

³We are orphans and fatherless. Our mothers are as widows.

⁴We have drunken our water for money. Our wood is sold to us.

⁵Our pursuers are on our necks. We are weary, and have no rest.

⁶We have given our hands to the Egyptians, and to the Assyrians, to be satisfied with bread.

⁷Our fathers sinned, and are no more. We have borne their iniquities.

⁸Servants rule over us. There is no one to deliver us out of their hand.

⁹We get our bread at the peril of our lives, because of the sword of the wilderness.

¹⁰Our skin is black like an oven, because of the burning heat of famine.

¹¹They ravished the women in Zion, the virgins in the cities of Judah.

¹²Princes were hanged up by their hands. The faces of elders were not honored.

¹³The young men carry millstones. The children stumbled under loads of wood.

¹⁴The elders have ceased from the gate, and the young men from their music.

¹⁵The joy of our heart has ceased. Our dance is turned into mourning.

¹⁶The crown has fallen from our head. Woe to us, for we have sinned!

¹⁷For this our heart is faint. For these things our eyes are dim.

¹⁸For the mountain of Zion, which is desolate. The foxes walk on it.

¹⁹You, Yahweh, remain forever. Your throne is from generation to generation.

²⁰Why do you forget us forever, and forsake us for so long a time?

²¹Turn us to yourself, Yahweh, and we will be turned. Renew our days as of old.

²²But you have utterly rejected us. You are very angry against us.