Login Go Premium

Lamentations 5

Prayer for Restoration

¹Lord, remember what has happened to us. See how we have been disgraced!

²Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, our homes to foreigners.

³We are orphaned and fatherless. Our mothers are widowed.

⁴We have to pay for water to drink, and even firewood is expensive.

⁵Those who pursue us are at our heels; we are exhausted but are given no rest.

⁶We submitted to Egypt and Assyria to get enough food to survive.

⁷Our ancestors sinned, but they have died— and we are suffering the punishment they deserved!

⁸Slaves have now become our masters; there is no one left to rescue us.

⁹We hunt for food at the risk of our lives, for violence rules the countryside.

¹⁰The famine has blackened our skin as though baked in an oven.

¹¹Our enemies rape the women in Jerusalem and the young girls in all the towns of Judah.

¹²Our princes are being hanged by their thumbs, and our elders are treated with contempt.

¹³Young men are led away to work at millstones, and boys stagger under heavy loads of wood.

¹⁴The elders no longer sit in the city gates; the young men no longer dance and sing.

¹⁵Joy has left our hearts; our dancing has turned to mourning.

¹⁶The garlands have fallen from our heads. Weep for us because we have sinned.

¹⁷Our hearts are sick and weary, and our eyes grow dim with tears.

¹⁸For Jerusalem is empty and desolate, a place haunted by jackals.

¹⁹But Lord, you remain the same forever! Your throne continues from generation to generation.

²⁰Why do you continue to forget us? Why have you abandoned us for so long?

²¹Restore us, O Lord, and bring us back to you again! Give us back the joys we once had!

²²Or have you utterly rejected us? Are you angry with us still?

Lamentations 5 (NLT)

Click verse numbers to view individual verses with commentary

View interlinear text with original Hebrew/Greek →

Lamentations

Chapter 5

5 of 5