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Lamentations 5
FIFTH LAMENTATION
1 Yahweh, remember what has happened to us; look on us and see our degradation.
2 Our inheritance has passed to aliens, our homes to barbarians.
3 We are orphans, we are fatherless; our mothers are like widows.
4 We drink our own water – at a price; we have to pay for what is our own firewood.
5 The yoke is on our necks; we are persecuted; we are worked to death; no relief for us.
6 We hold out our hands to Egypt, or to Assyria, just to get enough bread.
7 Our fathers have sinned; they are no more, and we ourselves bear the weight of their crimes.
8 Slaves[*a] rule us; no one rescues us from them.
9 At peril of our lives we earn our bread, by risking the sword of the desert.
10 Our skin is as hot as the oven, such is the fever of famine.
11 They have raped the women in Zion, the virgins in the towns of Judah.
12 Princes have been hanged at their hands; the face of the old has not been respected.
13 Youths have toiled at the mill; boys have collapsed under loads of wood.
14 The elders have deserted the gateway; the young men have given up their music.
15 Joy has vanished from our hearts; our dancing has been turned to mourning.
16 The garland has fallen from our heads. Woe to us, because we have sinned!
17 This is why our hearts are sick; this is why our eyes are dim:
18 because Mount Zion is desolate; jackals roam to and fro on it.
19 But you, Yahweh, you remain for ever; your throne endures from age to age.
20 You cannot mean to forget us for ever? You cannot mean to abandon us for good?
21 Make us come back to you, Yahweh, and we will come back. Renew our days as in times past,
22 unless you have utterly rejected us, in an anger that knows no limit.