Lamentations 5

Chapter context

What is happening in Lamentations 5?

lamentjudgmentsorrowhope

Lamentations 5 belongs to the closing movement of the book, especially the section often described as communal prayer for restoration. Lamentations gives the church and synagogue one of the most disciplined and devastating vocabularies of grief in all Scripture. Read this chapter with the wider themes of lament, judgment, and sorrow in view so the individual verses keep their proper weight.

¹ Remember, O LORD, what is come upon us: consider, and behold our reproach. ² Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens. ³ We are orphans and fatherless, our mothers are as widows. ⁴ We have drunken our water for money; our wood is sold unto us. ⁵ Our necks are under persecution: we labour, and have no rest. ⁶ We have given the hand to the Egyptians, and to the Assyrians, to be satisfied with bread. ⁷ Our fathers have sinned, and are not; and we have borne their iniquities. ⁸ Servants have ruled over us: there is none that doth deliver us out of their hand. ⁹ We gat our bread with the peril of our lives because of the sword of the wilderness. ¹⁰ Our skin was black like an oven because of the terrible famine. ¹¹ They ravished the women in Zion, and the maids in the cities of Judah. ¹² Princes are hanged up by their hand: the faces of elders were not honoured. ¹³ They took the young men to grind, and the children fell under the wood. ¹⁴ The elders have ceased from the gate, the young men from their musick. ¹⁵ The joy of our heart is ceased; our dance is turned into mourning. ¹⁶ The crown is fallen from our head: woe unto us, that we have sinned! ¹⁷ For this our heart is faint; for these things our eyes are dim. ¹⁸ Because of the mountain of Zion, which is desolate, the foxes walk upon it. ¹⁹ Thou, O LORD, remainest for ever; thy throne from generation to generation. ²⁰ Wherefore dost thou forget us for ever, and forsake us so long time? ²¹ Turn thou us unto thee, O LORD, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old. ²² But thou hast utterly rejected us; thou art very wroth against us.

Study helps

Glossary

Assyria Place v. 6: Biblical region. Modern identification: Nineveh.
Egypt Place v. 6: The land of the Nile and the pyramids, the oldest kingdom of which we have any record, holds a place of great significance in Scripture. Modern identification: Ain Shams.
Zion Place v. 11: Biblical settlement. Modern identification: Jerusalem.
Mount Zion Place v. 18: Biblical hill. Modern identification: Mount Zion.