Lamentations 5

¹Remember o Lord what is fallen to us: behold, and regard our reproach.

²Our inheritance is turned to aliens: our houses to strangers.

³We are made pupils without father: our mothers are as it were widows.

⁴Our water we have drunk for money: our wood we have bought for a price.

⁵We were led by our necks, no rest was given to the weary.

⁶We have given our hand to Ægypt, and to the Assyrians, that we might be filled with bread.

⁷Our fathers have sinned, & they are not: and we have borne their iniquities.

⁸Servants have ruled over us: there was none that would redeem us out of their hand.

⁹In peril of our lives did we fetch us bread, at the face of the sword in the desert.

¹⁰Our skin was burnt as an oven, by reason of the tempests of famine.

¹¹They humbled the women in Sion, and the virgins in the cities of Juda.

¹²The Princes were hanged up by the hand: they did not reverence the faces of the ancients.

¹³Young men they abused unchastely: and the children fell in wood.

¹⁴The ancients decayed out of the gates: the youngmen out of the choir of the singers.

¹⁵The joy of our heart hath failed, our choir is turned into mourning.

¹⁶The crown of our head is fallen: woe to us, because we have sinned.

¹⁷Therefore is our heart made sorrowful, therefore are our eyes darkened.

¹⁸For mount Sion, because it is perished, foxes have walked on it.

¹⁹But thou o Lord shalt remain for ever, thy throne in generation and to generation.

²⁰Why wilt thou for ever be forgetful of us? Wilt thou forsake us in length of days?

²¹Convert us o Lord to thee, and we shall be converted: renew our days, as from the beginning.

²²But rejecting thou hast rejected us, thou art angry against us exceedingly.