Lamentations 5:3-13

3 We are orphans and fatherless, our mothers are as widows.

4 We have paid money for water we drink; our wood is sold unto 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 provided with bread.

7 Our fathers have sinned, and are no more; 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 got 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 are hanged up by their hand; the faces of elders were not honored.

13 They took the young men to grind, and the children fell under the wood.

Lamentations 5:3-13 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.