Charles Ellicott Commentary Lamentations 5:7

"Our fathers sinned, and are not; And we have borne their iniquities." — Lamentations 5:7 (ASV)

We have borne their iniquities. —The words seem at first parallel to the proverb of the “sour grapes” in Jeremiah 31:29; Ezekiel 18:2. Here, however, it is followed in Lamentations 5:16 by a confession of personal guilt, and the complaint is simply that the former generation of offenders had passed away without the punishment which now fell upon their descendants, who thus had to bear, as it were, a double penalty.