Lamentations 5

Restore Us to Yourself, O Lord

¹Remember, O Lord, what has befallen us;

look, and see our disgrace!

²Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers,

our homes to foreigners.

³We have become orphans, fatherless;

our mothers are like widows.

⁴We must pay for the water we drink;

the wood we get must be bought.

⁵Our pursuers are at our necks;

we are weary; we are given no rest.

⁶We have given the hand to Egypt, and to Assyria,

to get bread enough.

⁷Our fathers sinned, and are no more;

and we bear their iniquities.

⁸Slaves rule over us;

there is none to deliver us from their hand.

⁹We get our bread at the peril of our lives,

because of the sword in the wilderness.

¹⁰Our skin is hot as an oven

with the burning heat of famine.

¹¹Women are raped in Zion,

young women in the towns of Judah.

¹²Princes are hung up by their hands;

no respect is shown to the elders.

¹³Young men are compelled to grind at the mill,

and boys stagger under loads of wood.

¹⁴The old men have left the city gate,

the young men their music.

¹⁵The joy of our hearts has ceased;

our dancing has been turned to mourning.

¹⁶The crown has fallen from our head;

woe to us, for we have sinned!

¹⁷For this our heart has become sick,

for these things our eyes have grown dim,

¹⁸for Mount Zion which lies desolate;

jackals prowl over it.

¹⁹But you, O Lord, reign forever;

your throne endures to all generations.

²⁰Why do you forget us forever,

why do you forsake us for so many days?

²¹Restore us to yourself, O Lord, that we may be restored!

Renew our days as of old—

²²unless you have utterly rejected us,

and you remain exceedingly angry with us.