| 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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