Lamentations 5:2-12

2 Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens.

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] not; and we have borne their iniquities.

8 Servants have ruled over us: [there is] none that doth deliver [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 maids in the cities of Judah.

12 Princes were hanged by their hand: the faces of elders were not honored.

Lamentations 5:2-12 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO LAMENTATIONS 5

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, La 5:1-16; their great concern for the desolation of the temple in particular is expressed, La 5:17,18; and the chapter is concluded with a prayer that God would show favour to them, and turn them to him, and renew their prosperity as of old, though he had rejected them, and been wroth with them, La 5:19-22.