Skip to main content
Psalmlog Logo

Lamentations 5

Judah’s communal prayer brings devastation and confessed sin before God’s enduring throne, ending with a plea for renewal and unresolved rejection.

The people of Judah address YHWH amid the ruin of Zion. Speaking as a community, they describe lost homes, hunger, forced labor, and sexual violence. Ordinary life has collapsed: elders no longer gather at the gate, and music has stopped. The prayer names both the burden of their ancestors’ sins and their own guilt. It then sets God’s enduring throne beside their sense of abandonment, asking for restoration before closing with a stark statement of rejection and anger.

grieffeeling distant from Godinjustice and anger
Read
1Remember, LORD, what has come on us. Look, and see our reproach.
2Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, our houses to aliens.
3We are orphans and fatherless. Our mothers are as widows.
4We must pay for water to drink. Our wood is sold to us.
5Our pursuers are on our necks. We are weary, and have no rest.
6We have given our hands to the Egyptians, and to the Assyrians, to be satisfied with bread.
7Our fathers sinned, and are no more. We have borne their iniquities.
8Servants rule over us. There is no one to deliver us out of their hand.
9We get our bread at the peril of our lives, because of the sword in the wilderness.
10Our skin is black like an oven, because of the burning heat of famine.
11They ravished the women in Zion, the virgins in the cities of Judah.
12Princes were hanged up by their hands. The faces of elders were not honored.
13The young men carry millstones. The children stumbled under loads of wood.
14The elders have ceased from the gate, and the young men from their music.
15The joy of our heart has ceased. Our dance is turned into mourning.
16The crown has fallen from our head. Woe to us, for we have sinned!
17For this our heart is faint. For these things our eyes are dim:
18for the mountain of Zion, which is desolate. The foxes walk on it.
19You, LORD, remain forever. Your throne is from generation to generation.
20Why do you forget us forever, and forsake us for so long a time?
21Turn us to yourself, LORD, and we will be turned. Renew our days as of old.
22But you have utterly rejected us. You are very angry against us.
World English BibleRead in NIV in Psalmlog →Highlighted verses are the most connected.
Key verses
Lamentations 5:16The fallen crown marks lost honor, while the confession makes clear that the speakers acknowledge their own sin.
Lamentations 5:7The speakers describe bearing the consequences of their ancestors’ sins, a burden placed alongside their own confession.
Lamentations 5:20This question follows the declaration of God’s enduring reign, exposing the tension between his permanence and their prolonged abandonment.
Where this chapter reaches

Jeremiah shares the setting of Judah’s devastation, while Deuteronomy describes covenant judgments involving hunger, foreign domination, and loss of home. Psalm and Job share the language of lament addressed to God, including questions about his absence amid suffering that remains unresolved.

Lamentations 5's chapter linksAll strongest linksHover or tap a book
Notice

After reading the whole chapter

Which loss in Judah’s account most holds your attention, and what makes it stand out?

Write on this

How does the question in verse 20 shape your reading of God’s enduring throne in verse 19?

Write on this

Questions people ask about Lamentations 5

What does Lamentations 5:7 mean about bearing the sins of ancestors?

The speakers say that earlier generations sinned and died, while those still living bear the consequences. The surrounding verses describe those consequences as deprivation and oppression. Verse 16 also acknowledges the present community’s own sin, so the prayer does not place all guilt on the ancestors.

Why does Lamentations 5 end with rejection instead of hope?

The closing verses hold together God’s enduring reign, a question about abandonment, and a request for renewal. In the supplied translation, verse 22 ends with rejection and anger. No answer from God follows. The book leaves the community’s plea unresolved rather than narrating restoration or declaring that relief has arrived.

Read it. Now write it.

Start an entry on Lamentations 5. Your words go beside the text, and you get one next step for the week.

Lamentations · 5 chapters
12345
What the Bible says about grief →What the Bible says about doubt →What the Bible says about anger →

Cross-reference data from OpenBible.info (CC BY). Scripture from the World English Bible (public domain). Arc diagram after Chris Harrison and Christoph Römhild (2007).