Lamentations 5 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.
Time Period
Roughly 586 to 580 BC, during the first years of Babylonian rule over the wrecked province of Judah
Location
Judah under foreign occupation, with references to seeking food from Egypt and Assyria, the two great powers on either side of the land
Audience
The surviving community of Judah, praying this together as a congregation rather than hearing one poet speak
Situation
The book closes with a communal prayer that lists the daily humiliations of life under occupation, from paying for their own water and wood to forced labour and the collapse of ordinary joy. It ends by asking God to restore the people, while admitting he may have rejected them utterly.
Key Background
Unlike the first four chapters, this poem does not follow the Hebrew alphabet as an acrostic, though it keeps twenty-two lines, one for each letter, which suits a prayer that has run out of formal composure. Conquered territories were routinely stripped of leaders and put under conscripted labour, so grinding at the mill and carrying wood describe real corvee duties imposed on a defeated population. Jewish liturgical practice later repeated the second-to-last verse after the bleak final line so that the book would not end on despair, a custom still followed when Lamentations is read on the fast day mourning the temple's destruction.
Yahweh, what has happened to us. Look — really look — at our disgrace.
Our has been handed over to strangers, our homes to foreigners.
We have become fatherless; our mothers are like widows.
We have to pay money for our own water; our own wood comes to us at a price.
Those who pursue us are right at our necks; we are exhausted but given no rest.
We reached out to Egypt; we reached out to Assyria — just to get enough bread.
Our ancestors and they are gone; we are left carrying the weight of their
us; there is no one to free us from their hands.
We risk our lives just to get our bread, facing the sword in the wilderness.
Our skin an oven from the fever of starvation.
They women in Zion, virgins in the towns of Judah.
Leaders were up by their hands; elders were shown no respect.
Young men were forced to at the millstone; boys staggered under loads of wood.
The elders have vanished from the gate; the young men have their
Joy has vanished from our hearts; our has
The has from our head. How for us — because we have failed.
Because of all this our hearts are sick; because of all this our eyes have gone dim—
because of Mount Zion, which lies desolate, with over it.
But you, Yahweh — you forever; your throne endures from one generation to the next.
Why do you keep us? Why have you abandoned us for so long?
us to you, Yahweh, and we will come back. Renew — make them like they were before.
Unless you have us — unless your anger against us no