Lamentations 5:5-15

5 Our attackers are on our necks: overcome with weariness, we have no rest.

6 We have given our hands to the Egyptians and to the Assyrians so that we might have enough bread.

7 Our fathers were sinners and are dead; and the weight of their evil-doing is on us.

8 Servants are ruling over us, and there is no one to make us free from their hands.

9 We put our lives in danger to get our bread, because of the sword of the waste land.

10 Our skin is heated like an oven because of our burning heat from need of food.

11 They took by force the women in Zion, the virgins in the towns of Judah.

12 Their hands put princes to death by hanging: the faces of old men were not honoured.

13 The young men were crushing the grain, and the boys were falling under the wood.

14 The old men are no longer seated in the doorway, and the music of the young men has come to an end.

15 The joy of our hearts is ended; our dancing is changed into sorrow.

Lamentations 5:5-15 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.