Charles Ellicott Commentary Lamentations 5:4

"We have drunken our water for money; Our wood is sold unto us." — Lamentations 5:4 (ASV)

Our water ... our wood. —The point of the complaint lies in the possessive pronoun. The Chaldean conquerors were in possession of the country, and the very necessities of life, which had been regarded as the common property of all, could only be obtained with money. In the Hebrew of the first clause, the fact appears even more emphatically: Our water comes to us for money. These words have been attributed by some commentators to the sufferings of the exiles in Egypt, but the context is more consistent with the idea of the hardships of those who were left in Judah.