Lamentations 5

¹Remember, O what is LORD, come upon us: behold, and see our reproach. ²Our inheritance is turned unto strangers, our houses unto 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 pursuers are upon our necks: we are weary, 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 rule over us: there is none to deliver us out of their hand. ⁹We get our bread with the peril of our lives because of the sword of the wilderness. ¹⁰Our skin is black like an oven because of the burning heat of famine. ¹¹They ravished the women in Zion, the maidens in the cities of Judah. ¹²Princes were hanged up by their hand: the faces of elders were not honoured. ¹³The young men bare the mill, and the children stumbled under the wood. ¹⁴The elders have ceased from the gate, the young men from their music. ¹⁵The joy of our heart is ceased; our dance is turned into mourning. ¹⁶The crown is fallen from our head: woe unto us! for we have sinned. ¹⁷For this our heart is faint; for these things our eyes are dim; ¹⁸For the mountain of Zion, which is desolate; the foxes walk upon it. ¹⁹Thou, O LORD, abidest for ever; thy throne is from generation to generation. ²⁰Wherefore dost thou forget us for ever, andforsake 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.