Lamentations 5:2-12

2 ¹Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, our homes to foreigners.

3 We have become orphans, fatherless; our mothers are like widows.

4 We must pay for the water we drink; the wood we get must be bought.

5 ²Our pursuers are at our necks; ^[a] we are weary; we are given no rest.

6 We have given the hand to ³Egypt, and to ⁴Assyria, to get bread enough.

7 Our fathers sinned, and are no more; ⁵and we bear their iniquities.

8 ⁶Slaves rule over us; there is none to deliver us from their hand.

9 ⁷We get our bread at the peril of our lives, because of the sword in the wilderness.

10 ⁸Our skin is hot as an oven with ⁹the burning heat of famine.

11 Women are raped in Zion, young women in the towns of Judah.

12 ¹⁰Princes are hung up by their hands; ¹¹no respect is shown to the elders.

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.

Cross References

• 1. 5:2 Ps. 79:1
• 2. 5:5 [Josh. 10:24]
• 3. 5:6 [Hos. 12:1]
• 4. 5:6 [Hos. 12:1]
• 5. 5:7 Jer. 31:29; Ezek. 18:2
• 6. 5:8 [Prov. 30:21, 22]
• 7. 5:9 [Jer. 6:25]
• 8. 5:10 See ch. 4:8
• 9. 5:10 [Deut. 32:24]
• 10. 5:12 See 2 Kgs. 25:19-21
• 11. 5:12 ch. 4:16

Footnotes

• [a] 5:5 Symmachus 'With a yoke on our necks'