5 | Lamentations | Passage |
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1 |
Yahweh, remember what has happened to us; consider, and see our degradation. |
A prayer of mercy. Lm.5.1-22
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2 |
Our heritage has passed to strangers, our homes to foreigners. |
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3 |
We are orphans, we are fatherless; our mothers are like widows. |
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4 |
We have to buy our own water to drink, our own wood we can get only at a price. |
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5 |
The yoke is on our necks; we are persecuted; exhausted we are, allowed no rest. |
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6 |
We made a pact with Egypt, with Assyria, to have plenty of food. |
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7 |
Our ancestors sinned; they are no more, and we bear the weight of their guilt. |
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8 |
Slaves rule us; there is no one to rescue us from their clutches. |
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9 |
At peril of our lives we earn our bread, by risking the sword of the desert. |
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10 |
Our skin is as hot as an oven, from the scorch of famine. |
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11 |
The women in Zion have been raped, the young girls in the towns of Judah. |
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12 |
Princes have been hanged by their hands; the face of the old has won no respect. |
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13 |
Youths have been put to the mill, boys stagger under loads of wood. |
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14 |
The elders have deserted the gateway; the young have given up their music. |
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15 |
Joy has vanished from our hearts; our dancing has turned to mourning. |
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16 |
The crown has fallen from our heads. Alas that ever we sinned! |
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17 |
This is why our hearts are sick; this is why our eyes are dim: |
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18 |
because Mount Zion is desolate; jackals roam to and fro on it. |
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19 |
Yet you, Yahweh, rule from eternity; your throne endures from age to age. |
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20 |
Why do you never remember us? Why do you abandon us so long? |
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21 |
Make us come back to you, Yahweh, and we will come back. Restore us as we were before! |
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22 |
Unless you have utterly rejected us, in an anger which knows no limit. |
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