5:1
Yahweh, remember what has happened to us; consider, and see our degradation.
5:2
Our heritage has passed to strangers, our homes to foreigners.
5:3
We are orphans, we are fatherless; our mothers are like widows.
5:4
We have to buy our own water to drink, our own wood we can get only at a price.
5:5
The yoke is on our necks; we are persecuted; exhausted we are, allowed no rest.
5:6
We made a pact with Egypt, with Assyria, to have plenty of food.
5:7
Our ancestors sinned; they are no more, and we bear the weight of their guilt.
5:8
Slaves rule us; there is no one to rescue us from their clutches.
5:9
At peril of our lives we earn our bread, by risking the sword of the desert.
5:10
Our skin is as hot as an oven, from the scorch of famine.
5:11
The women in Zion have been raped, the young girls in the towns of Judah.
5:12
Princes have been hanged by their hands; the face of the old has won no respect.
5:13
Youths have been put to the mill, boys stagger under loads of wood.
5:14
The elders have deserted the gateway; the young have given up their music.
5:15
Joy has vanished from our hearts; our dancing has turned to mourning.
5:16
The crown has fallen from our heads. Alas that ever we sinned!
5:17
This is why our hearts are sick; this is why our eyes are dim:
5:18
because Mount Zion is desolate; jackals roam to and fro on it.
5:19
Yet you, Yahweh, rule from eternity; your throne endures from age to age.
5:20
Why do you never remember us? Why do you abandon us so long?
5:21
Make us come back to you, Yahweh, and we will come back. Restore us as we were before!
5:22
Unless you have utterly rejected us, in an anger which knows no limit.
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