Lamentações 5

ARC · Chapter 5/5

¹Lembra-te, Senhor, do que nos tem succedido: considera, e olha o nosso opprobrio.

²A nossa herdade passou a estranhos, e as nossas casas a forasteiros.

³Orphãos somos sem pae, nossas mães são como viuvas.

⁴A nossa agua por dinheiro a bebemos, por preço vem a nossa lenha.

⁵Padecemos perseguição sobre os nossos pescoços: estamos cançados, e nós não temos descanço.

⁶Aos egypcios estendemos as mãos, e aos syros, para nos fartarem de pão.

⁷Nossos paes peccaram, e já não são: nós levamos as suas maldades.

⁸Servos dominam sobre nós; ninguem ha que nos arranque da sua mão.

⁹Com perigo de nossas vidas trazemos o nosso pão, por causa da espada do deserto.

¹⁰Nossa pelle se ennegreceu como um forno, por causa do ardor da fome.

¹¹Forçaram as mulheres em Sião, as virgens nas cidades de Judah.

¹²Os principes foram enforcados pelas mãos; as faces dos velhos não foram reverenciadas.

¹³Aos mancebos tomaram para moer, e os moços tropeçaram debaixo da lenha.

¹⁴Os velhos cessaram de se assentarem á porta, os mancebos de sua canção.

¹⁵Cessou o gozo de nosso coração, converteu-se em lamentação a nossa dança.

¹⁶Já caiu a corôa da nossa cabeça; ai agora de nós, porque peccámos.

¹⁷Portanto desmaiou o nosso coração, por isto se escureceram os nossos olhos.

¹⁸Pelo monte de Sião, que está assolado, as raposas andam por elle.

¹⁹Tu, Senhor, permaneces eternamente, e o teu throno de geração em geração.

²⁰Porque te esquecerias de nós para sempre? porque nos desampararias tanto tempo?

²¹Converte-nos, Senhor, a ti, e nos converteremos: renova os nossos dias como d'antes.

²²Porque nos rejeitarias totalmente? te enfurecerias contra nós em tão grande maneira?

📖 Chapter study

Summary

The book ends with a collective prayer: the people ask God to remember their condition as orphans and widows, servants under foreign rule, forced to buy even water and wood. Despite everything, it closes with a confident appeal that God's throne remains forever, asking to be restored 'as before.'

Explanation

Unlike the four previous chapters, this one does not follow an alphabetical acrostic structure, though it still has exactly 22 verses (the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet), perhaps suggesting exhaustion or an intentional break from the pattern to express that the pain had reached a point beyond organized structure. The list of losses — land taken by strangers, fatherless orphans, water bought with money, women violated, young men forced to grind grain like slaves — paints a complete picture of the total social collapse of a conquered nation. The closing prayer, acknowledging that 'thou, O Lord, remainest for ever' even amid so much loss, is an act of faith that does not deny the pain but clings to the hope that God still reigns sovereign. The practical application today is that ending a prayer of lament with a sincere plea for restoration, even without an immediate guarantee of an answer, is a legitimate biblical model of perseverance in faith.

Fun facts

This is the only chapter of Lamentations that does not follow an alphabetical acrostic structure, though it keeps the symbolic number of 22 verses — the same total as the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, suggesting an intentional connection even without the literal letter-by-letter pattern.
The book ends with an open question with no certain answer ('why wouldst thou utterly reject us?'), an unusual ending for a biblical book, one that honestly reflects how the process of grief and restoration does not always reach a neat, immediate conclusion.

Verse-by-verse explanation

Lamentações 5:1Unlike the previous four chapters, this last one is a direct prayer, a petition, addressed to God from beginning to end. Less a description of suffering and more a collective cry, almost a list of specific everyday complaints under occupation.
Lamentações 5:2Complains that the people's property and homes now belong to foreigners — a concrete loss of ownership and territorial identity.
Lamentações 5:3Describes the people as fatherless orphans and the mothers as widows — even when the fathers were physically alive in some cases, the loss of normal protection and family structure is felt as a collective orphanhood.
Lamentações 5:4A practical complaint: even water and firewood, basic resources that used to be free, now have to be bought — a sign of life under foreign occupation.
Lamentações 5:5Describes constant persecution, like a yoke on the neck, with no rest available for the exhausted people.
Lamentações 5:6Recalls the desperate attempts to seek help from foreign powers — Egypt and Assyria — just to get basic food, showing the humiliating dependence on outside alliances.
Lamentações 5:7The complaint that the fathers sinned and the children bear the wrongdoing is the same issue as the proverb about the sour grapes discussed in Jeremiah 31:29-30. Here, still in the middle of the suffering, the question of inherited guilt remains open, without the more hopeful answer found in the book of Jeremiah.
Lamentações 5:8Complains that now even servants, probably low-ranking Babylonian officials, rule over the people, with no one to free them from this reversed situation.
Lamentações 5:9Getting food has become life-threatening, because of bandits or armed enemies in the wilderness who threaten anyone who goes out to look for provisions.
Lamentações 5:10The people's skin darkened like an oven because of the extreme heat of hunger — an intense physical image of prolonged nutritional suffering.
Lamentações 5:11Denounces the sexual abuse of women in Zion and young women in the cities of Judah — one of the horrors of the conquest that the poem does not hide or soften.
Lamentações 5:12Describes princes hanged by the enemies' own hands and a basic lack of respect for the elders — the traditional social order completely overturned.
Lamentações 5:13Forcing young men to grind grain by hand was heavy labor normally reserved for prisoners or slaves, the same punishment Samson suffered in Judges 16:21. The detail shows how even household chores became a form of public humiliation under occupation.
Lamentações 5:14The elders, who used to gather at the city gates to judge and discuss public matters, and the young men, who used to sing, both stopped — a sign that normal community life had disappeared.
Lamentações 5:15The joy of the heart turned into mourning, and dancing turned into lamentation — a poetic summary of the complete reversal of everyday life after the fall.
Lamentações 5:16The 'crown' fallen from the head can mean either the loss of the monarchy or of the people's collective dignity; the cause is admitted without hesitation: 'woe unto us, that we have sinned.'
Lamentações 5:17The fainting heart and dimmed eyes describe the complete emotional exhaustion after so much accumulated suffering.
Lamentações 5:18Describes Mount Zion, where the temple stood, so desolate that only foxes now walk there — the nation's most sacred place turned into abandoned ground.
Lamentações 5:19Contrasts the eternal permanence of God's throne with the temporary destruction of Judah's monarchy — however much has fallen, divine authority remains firm.
Lamentações 5:20A direct, painful question: why would God forget the people forever, or abandon them for so long? A sincere questioning, not a final accusation.
Lamentações 5:21Unlike what one might expect from a classic lament poem, the book ends without a clear word of comfort or resolution: the plea to be turned back to God is followed by a question that goes unanswered. It's a deliberately unsettled ending, one that doesn't close the pain on a note of guaranteed hope.
Lamentações 5:22Ends the book with an open question, with no guaranteed answer: would God really reject the people completely, with limitless wrath? The book closes deliberately without a note of settled comfort.

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