Charles Ellicott Commentary Lamentations 5:3

"We are orphans and fatherless; Our mothers are as widows." — Lamentations 5:3 (ASV)

Our mothers are as widows — i.e., their husbands, though living, were carried into exile, and they were as destitute as though they had been deprived of them by death. The Chaldee paraphrase gives the same meaning to the last clause also, “We are like orphans.”