Skip to content

You Are Here in the Story

Creation
Fall
Patriarchs
Exodus & Kingdom
Exile & Return
Christ
Church & Consummation

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

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

2Our inheritance is turned 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 unto us.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

21Turn thou us unto thee, O LORD, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old.

22But thou hast utterly rejected us; thou art very wroth against us.

Highlight verses · Track progress · Unlock AI tools — free to start.