Lamentations 5

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.