Lamentations, 5

1. Remember, O LORD, what is come upon us: consider, and behold our reproach.

1. Remember, Yahweh, what has befallen us. Look, and see our disgrace,

2. Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens.

2. our home handed over to strangers, our inheritance to foreigners.

3. We are orphans and fatherless, our mothers [are] as widows.

3. We are as orphans, fatherless, and early widowed are our mothers.

4. We have drunken our water for money; our wood is sold unto us.

4. Our drinking water we must buy; for our own wood we have to pay.

5. Our necks [are] under persecution: we labour, [and] have no rest.

5. With the yoke stifling our breath, without rest we work to death.

6. We have given the hand [to] the Egyptians, [and to] the Assyrians, to be satisfied with bread.

6. We have bowed down to Egypt, and to Assyria, just to subsist.

7. Our fathers have sinned, [and are] not; and we have borne their iniquities.

7. Our fathers who sinned are no more but we bear their guilt.

8. Servants have ruled over us: [there is] none that doth deliver [us] out of their hand.

8. Slaves rule us, and there is no one to rescue us from their hands.

9. We gat our bread with [the peril of] our lives because of the sword of the wilderness.

9. We brave the desert heat and the sword just to get our hard-earned food.

10. Our skin was black like an oven because of the terrible famine.

10. Our skin is hot like a furnace, dried up and shriveled by hunger.

11. They ravished the women in Zion, [and] the maids in the cities of Judah.

11. Ravished are the wives in Zion, the virgins in the towns of Judah.

12. Princes are hanged up by their hand: the faces of elders were not honoured.

12. Princes are hung up by their hands; elders shown no respect.

13. They took the young men to grind, and the children fell under the wood.

13. Young men toil at the millstones, boys stagger under heavy loads.

14. The elders have ceased from the gate, the young men from their musick.

14. The old have shunned the city gate, the young, their music.

15. The joy of our heart is ceased; our dance is turned into mourning.

15. From our hearts joy is gone; we danced then, but now we lament.

16. The crown is fallen [from] our head: woe unto us, that we have sinned!

16. The garlands have fallen from our heads. Woe upon us, for we have sinned!

17. For this our heart is faint; for these [things] our eyes are dim.

17. Over all this our hearts are sick; and our eyes have grown weak:

18. Because of the mountain of Zion, which is desolate, the foxes walk upon it.

18. for we see Mount Zion desolate; the jackals prowl within.

19. Thou, O LORD, remainest for ever; thy throne from generation to generation.

19. You, O Yahweh, forever reign; your throne endures from age to age.

20. Wherefore dost thou forget us for ever, [and] forsake us so long time?

20. Why, then, should you abandon us, why forget us for so long a time?

21. Turn thou us unto thee, O LORD, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old.

21. Lead us to you again, O Lord, that we may be restored; renew our days as of old.

22. But thou hast utterly rejected us; thou art very wroth against us.

22. Have you utterly rejected us? Is there no end to your wrath against us?