Lamentations 5  Modern English Version

5 Remember, O Lord, what has come upon us;
    look, and see our reproach!
² Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers,
    our homes to foreigners.
³ We have become orphans and fatherless;
    our mothers are like widows.
⁴ We must pay for the water we drink;
    our wood is sold to us.
⁵ Our pursuers are at our necks;
    we labor and have no rest.
⁶ We have given our hand to Egypt and to Assyria,
    to be satisfied with bread.
⁷ Our fathers sinned and are no more,
    but we bear their iniquities.
⁸ Slaves rule over us;
    there is no one to deliver us from their hand.
⁹ We get our bread at the peril of our lives,
    because of the sword in the wilderness.
¹⁰ Our skin is hot as an oven,
    because of the terrible famine.
¹¹ They ravished the women in Zion,
    the virgins in the cities of Judah.
¹² Princes were hung up by their hands,
    the faces of elders were not honored.
¹³ Young men ground at the millstones;
    boys staggered under loads of wood.
¹⁴ The elders have left the city gate,
    the young men stopped their music.
¹⁵ The joy of our hearts has ceased;
    our dancing has 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 grow dim;
¹⁸ because of Mount Zion, which is desolate,
    with foxes walking upon it.