Lamentations 5:1-22 - A Request For Mercy

¹ Remember, O LORD, what has come upon us. Behold, and see 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 to us. ⁵ Our pursuers are upon our necks. We are weary, 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 sinned, and are not, and we have borne their iniquities. ⁸ Servants rule over us. There is none to deliver us out of their hand. ⁹ We get our bread at the peril of our lives, because of the sword of the wilderness. ¹⁰ Our skin is black like an oven, because of the burning heat of famine. ¹¹ They ravished the women in Zion, the virgins in the cities of Judah. ¹² Rulers were hanged up by their hand. The faces of elders were not honored. ¹³ The young men bore the mill, and the sons stumbled under the wood. ¹⁴ The elders have ceased from the gate, the young men from their music. ¹⁵ The joy of our heart is ceased, our dance is turned into mourning. ¹⁶ The crown has fallen from our head. Woe to us! For we have sinned. ¹⁷ For this our heart is faint. For these things our eyes are dim, ¹⁸ for the mountain of Zion, which is desolate. The foxes walk upon it. ¹⁹ Thou, O LORD, abide forever. Thy throne is from generation to generation. ²⁰ Why do thou forget us forever, [and] forsake us so long time? ²¹ Turn thou us back to thee, O LORD, and we shall be turned back. Renew our days as of old. ²² But thou have utterly rejected us. Thou are very angry against us.