{Lam 5:1-22; Oba 1:1-21; 2Ki 25:22-26; Jer 50:7-51:18 ^**}

    ^5:1 Remember, O Jehovah, what has come upon us. Behold and see our reproach. ^5:2 Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens. ^5:3 We are orphans and fatherless. Our mothers are as widows.^5:4 We have drunken our water for money. Our wood is sold to us.

    ^5:5 Our pursuers are upon our necks. We are weary and have no rest. ^5:6 We have given the hand to the Egyptians and to the Assyrians, to be satisfied with bread. ^5:7 Our fathers sinned and are not and we have borne their iniquities.

    ^5:8 Servants rule over us. There is none to deliver us out of their hand. ^5:9 We get our bread at the peril of our lives, because of the sword of the wilderness. ^5:10 Our skin is black like an oven, because of the burning heat of famine.

    ^5:11 They ravished the women in Zion, the virgins in the cities of Judah. ^5:12 Rulers were hanged up by their hand. The faces of elders were not honored. ^5:13 The young men bore the mill and the sons stumbled under the wood. ^5:14 The elders have ceased from the gate, the young men from their music. ^5:15 The joy of our heart is ceased, our dance is turned into mourning.

    ^5:16 The crown has fallen from our head. Woe to us! For we have sinned. ^5:17 For this our heart is faint. For these things our eyes are dim, ^5:18 for the mountain of Zion, which is desolate. The foxes walk upon it.

    ^5:19 You, O Jehovah, abide everlasting. Your throne is from generation to generation.

    ^5:20 Why do you forget us forever and forsake us so long time? ^5:21 Turn us back to you, O Jehovah and we will be turned back. Renew our days as of long-ago. ^5:22 But you have utterly rejected us. You are very angry against us.