Lamentations 5

World English Bible 84 include this book

1 Remember, LORD, what has come on us. Look, and see our reproach.

2 Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, our houses to aliens.

3 We are orphans and fatherless. Our mothers are as widows.

4 We must pay for water to drink. Our wood is sold to us.

5 Our pursuers are on our necks. We are weary, and have no rest.

6 We have given our hands to the Egyptians, and to the Assyrians, to be satisfied with bread.

7 Our fathers sinned, and are no more. We have borne their iniquities.

8 Servants rule over us. There is no one to deliver us out of their hand.

9 We get our bread at the peril of our lives, because of the sword in the wilderness.

10 Our skin is black like an oven, because of the burning heat of famine.

11 They ravished the women in Zion, the virgins in the cities of Judah.

12 Princes were hanged up by their hands. The faces of elders were not honored.

13 The young men carry millstones. The children stumbled under loads of wood.

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

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

16 The crown has fallen from our head. Woe to us, for we have sinned!

17 For this our heart is faint. For these things our eyes are dim:

18 for the mountain of Zion, which is desolate. The foxes walk on it.

19 You, LORD, remain forever. Your throne is from generation to generation.

20 Why do you forget us forever, and forsake us for so long a time?

21 Turn us to yourself, LORD, and we will be turned. Renew our days as of old.

22 But you have utterly rejected us. You are very angry against us.

Go deeper in Lamentations

1 place named in this chapter.

Jerusalem traditional A lament over the fallen city, most naturally composed there or nearby.

The traditions broadly agree on this one.

Broad agreement: 586 BC–570 BC Traditionally Jeremiah
Composed in the immediate aftermath of Jerusalem's destruction; the author is not named.

Events overlapping the period this book is dated to (586 BC–570 BC).

1200 BC–400 BC Olmec civilisation Mesoamerica
The earliest major Mesoamerican civilisation, known for colossal stone heads and an early calendar.
1070 BC–350 AD The kingdom of Kush Africa
A Nubian power on the upper Nile that ruled Egypt itself as its twenty-fifth dynasty.
624 BC–546 BC Greek philosophy begins at Miletus Greece
Thales sought natural rather than mythic explanations, the beginning of Greek science.
620 BC–560 BC Coinage invented in Lydia Anatolia
Stamped electrum coins of guaranteed weight, an idea that spread across the ancient world within a century.
600 BC–500 BC Daoism takes shape in China China
The teaching associated with Laozi, emphasising harmony with the natural order.
599 BC–527 BC Mahavira and the rise of Jainism India
A contemporary of the Buddha whose teaching centred on non-violence toward every living thing.
587 BC–586 BC Fall of Jerusalem and the Babylonian exile Levant
Nebuchadnezzar II destroyed the temple and deported the Judean elite to Babylon.
570 BC–495 BC Pythagoras Greece
Mathematician and mystic whose school treated number as the structure of reality.

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