Lamentations 5

KJV · Chapter 5/5

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.

📖 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.

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