Lamentations

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

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

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

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

5 Our pursuers are upon our necks: we are weary, and have no rest.

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

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

8 Servants rule over us: there is none to deliver us out of their hand.

9 We get our bread with the peril of our lives because of the sword of 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 maidens in the cities of Judah.

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

13 The young men bare the mill, and the children stumbled under the wood.

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

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

16 The crown is fallen from our head: woe unto 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 upon it.

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

20 Wherefore dost thou forget us for ever, cf15i and forsake us so long time?

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

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

English Bible