The prophet, representing the city, pleads with God for mercy
5
📚Remember, O LORD,what has come upon us.
Consider,
and look at our disgrace.
2 📚Our inheritance✭ has been turned
over to foreigners,
our houses to aliens.
3 📚We are orphans and fatherless;
our mothers are widows.
4 📚We have to lay out money for
our drinking water✭.
Our wood is sold to us.
5 📚Our necks are being pursued.
We labour,
and have no rest.
6 📚✭We have given our
hand to the Egyptians,
and to the Assyrians,
to be satisfied with bread.
7 📚✭Our fathers sinned,
and are no more,
and we have borne their evil deeds.
8 📚✭Servants rule over us.
There is no one to rescue
us out of their hands.
9 📚We get our bread at
the peril of our lives,
because of the sword in
the wilderness.
10 📚Our skin is black as an oven
because of the terrible famine.
11 📚They have ravished the women
in Zion,
and the maidens in the cities
of Judah.
12 📚Princes have been hanged up
by their hands.
The faces of elders have not been
honoured.
13 📚They took the young men to grind,
and the children fell under
the loads of wood.
14 📚The elders have gone
from the gate,
the young men from their music.
15 📚The joy of our heart has ceased.
Our dancing has turned to mourning.
16 📚The crown has fallen
from our head.
Woe to us, for we have sinned!
17 📚Because of this our heart is faint.
Because of these things
our eyes are dim;
18 📚Because of Mount Zion,
which is desolate.
The foxes walk on it.
19 📚✭You, O LORD,
remain forever,
your throne from generation
to generation.
20 📚Why do you forget us permanently,
and forsake us
for such a long time?
21 📚✭Turn us back to you,
O LORD,
and we will turn back.
Renew our days as of old,
22 📚unless you have utterly rejected us,
and are very angry with us.