Lamentations 5  EasyEnglish Bible

5 Lord, please remember the trouble that has happened to us.
Look at us, because we are ashamed.
² Strangers have taken the land that our ancestors gave to us.
Foreign people live in our homes.
³ We are children whose fathers have died.
Our mothers no longer have husbands.
⁴ We must pay money for the water that we drink.
We must buy wood for our fires.
⁵ Our enemies cause us to work like animals.
But the work is too difficult
and they will not let us rest.
⁶ We gave ourselves to the Egyptians and to the Assyrians,
so that we could get food to eat.
⁷ Our ancestors sinned, but they are dead.
Now we have the troubles that you caused because of them.
You punished us because of their sin.^[b]
8 Slaves now rule us.
And there is nobody to save us from their power.
⁹ We meet danger when we work in the fields.^[c]
Enemies are everywhere and they want to kill us.
¹⁰ Our skin feels as if we are burning.
We are so hungry that we are ill.
¹¹ Enemies do what they want with the women in Zion.
They are cruel to the young women in Judah's cities.
¹² They hang our leaders by their hands.
And they are cruel to our old men too.
¹³ They took the young men to make flour for them, like slaves.
Our boys have to carry heavy bags of wood.
¹⁴ Our enemies no longer let our old men decide things.^[d]
The old men cannot say what is right or fair for us.
And the young men have stopped their music.
¹⁵ We are not happy any longer.
Instead, we are very sad,
so we do not dance any longer.
¹⁶ And we have no king in Jerusalem any longer.
We have sinned, so it will be very bad for us.
¹⁷ So our bodies feel ill and we feel ill deep inside us.
Our eyes are very tired and we cannot hope for good things any longer.
¹⁸ We are so sad because they destroyed Zion's walls and buildings.
Wild animals walk on them now.