Lamentations - The Old Testament

¹ Yahweh, remember what has happened to us; consider, and see our degradation.

² Our heritage has passed to strangers, our homes to foreigners.

³ We are orphans, we are fatherless; our mothers are like widows.

⁴ We have to buy our own water to drink, our own wood we can get only at a price.

⁵ The yoke is on our necks; we are persecuted; exhausted we are, allowed no rest.

⁶ We made a pact with Egypt, with Assyria, to have plenty of food.

⁷ Our ancestors sinned; they are no more, and we bear the weight of their guilt.

⁸ Slaves rule us; there is no one to rescue us from their clutches.

⁹ At peril of our lives we earn our bread, by risking the sword of the desert.

¹⁰ Our skin is as hot as an oven, from the scorch of famine.

¹¹ The women in Zion have been raped, the young girls in the towns of Judah.

¹² Princes have been hanged by their hands; the face of the old has won no respect.

¹³ Youths have been put to the mill, boys stagger under loads of wood.

¹⁴ The elders have deserted the gateway; the young have given up their music.

¹⁵ Joy has vanished from our hearts; our dancing has turned to mourning.

¹⁶ The crown has fallen from our heads. Alas that ever we 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 Yet you, Yahweh, rule from eternity; your throne endures from age to age.

²⁰ Why do you never remember us? Why do you abandon us so long?

²¹ Make us come back to you, Yahweh, and we will come back. Restore us as we were before!

²² Unless you have utterly rejected us, in an anger which knows no limit.