A pitiful complaint of Zion in prayer to God, 1-22.
1 Remember, O LORD, what has come upon us./
Consider and behold our reproach.
2 Our inheritance is turned to strangers,/
our houses to foreigners.
3 We are orphans and fatherless./
Our mothers are as widows.
4 We have drank our water for money./
Our wood is sold to us.
5 Our necks are under persecution./
We labor 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 no more,/
and we have borne their iniquities.
8 Servants have ruled over us./
There is no one who delivers us out of their hand.
9 We procured 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 virgins in the cities of Judah.
12 Princes were hanged by their hand./
The faces of elders were not honored.
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 music.
15 The joy of our heart has ceased./
Our dance is turned into mourning.
16 The crown has fallen from our head./
Woe to 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 You, O LORD, remain forever./
Your throne is from generation to generation.
20 Why do you forget us forever/
and forsake us for such a long time?
21 Turn us to you, O LORD, and we shall be turned./
Renew our days as of old.
22 But you have utterly rejected us./
You are very angry against us.
Matthew Henry Commentary - Lamentations, Chapter 5[➚]
John Gill's Chapter Summary:
In this chapter are reckoned up the various calamities and distresses of the Jews in Babylon, which the Lord is desired to remember and consider (Lamentations 5:1-16); their great concern for the desolation of the temple in particular is expressed (Lamentations 5:17-18); and the chapter is concluded with a prayer that God would show favor to them, turn them to him, and renew their prosperity as of old, though he had rejected them and been angry with them (Lamentations 5:19-22).