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Exile & Return: Covenant broken, exile, prophets cry for restoration

Lamentations

Chapter 5

Prayer for Divine Remembrance and Restoration

The people call upon the Lord to remember their reproach: their inheritance turned to strangers, their houses to aliens, they are orphans and fatherless with mothers as widows. They have drunken their water for money, their wood is sold to them, and their necks are under persecution; they labour and have no rest, giving hand to Egyptians and Assyrians for bread. They bear their fathers' iniquities while servants rule over them, and none delivers them from their enemies' hand; their skin was black from terrible famine, women were ravished, and princes hanged up. Elders ceased from the gate, young men from their music; the crown fallen from their head, they plead with the Lord, whose throne remains forever, to turn them unto Him and renew their days as of old.

Inherited sinDispossessionServitudeRavishmentLost joyEternal throne

1 Remember, O LORD, what is come upon us: consider, and behold our reproach.

2 Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens.

3 We are orphans and fatherless, our mothers are as widows.

4 We have drunken our water for money; our wood is sold unto us.

5 Our necks are under persecution: we labour, and have no rest.

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

7 Our fathers have sinned, and are not; and we have borne their iniquities.

8 Servants have ruled over us: there is none that doth deliver us out of their hand.

9 We gat our bread with the peril of our lives because of the sword of the wilderness.

10 Our skin was black like an oven because of the terrible famine.

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

12 Princes are hanged up by their hand: the faces of elders were not honoured.

13 They took the young men to grind, and the children fell under the wood.

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

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

16 The crown is fallen from our head: woe unto us, that we have sinned!

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

18 Because of the mountain of Zion, which is desolate, the foxes walk upon it.

19 Thou, O LORD, remainest for ever; thy throne from generation to generation.

20 Wherefore dost thou forget us for ever, and forsake us so long time?

21 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 very wroth against us.

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