Lamentations 5
Big idea: The last poem drops the acrostic — twenty-two lines, but the alphabet is gone — and stops describing to start asking. It is the only chapter addressed to God from beginning to end, and its final sentence is the hardest ending of any book in the Bible.
There is nothing after this. The book ends with the plea and the fear in the same breath, and does not resolve them.
5:1–18 — Remember, Yahweh, what has come on us
The first word is a request rather than a cry, and what follows is an inventory of an occupation: land in other people's hands, water and firewood that have to be bought, bread fetched at the risk of being killed, women assaulted, princes hanged, elders shown no respect, boys carrying millstones. The dirge metre gives way to something flatter and more like a report.
1 Remember, Yahweh, what has come on us. Look, and see our reproach. 2 Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, our houses to aliens. 3 We are orphans and fatherless. Our mothers are as widows. 4 We must pay for water to drink. Our wood is sold to us. 5 Our pursuers are on our necks. We are weary, and have no rest. 6 We have given our hands to the Egyptians, and to the Assyrians, to be satisfied with bread. 7 Our fathers sinned, and are no more. We have borne their iniquities. 8 Servants rule over us. There is no one to deliver us out of their hand. 9 We get our bread at the peril of our lives, because of the sword in the wilderness. 10 Our skin is black like an oven, because of the burning heat of famine. 11 They ravished the women in Zion, the virgins in the cities of Judah. 12 Princes were hanged up by their hands. The faces of elders were not honored. 13 The young men carry millstones. The children stumbled under loads of wood. 14 The elders have ceased from the gate, and the young men from their music. 15 The joy of our heart has ceased. Our dance is 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 are dim: 18 for the mountain of Zion, which is desolate. The foxes walk on it.
5:19–22 — Renew our days as of old
Four verses that put the whole book to God as a question. The one thing left standing is stated first — you, Yahweh, remain forever, your throne from generation to generation — and everything else is asked: why do you forget us, turn us back to yourself, renew our days. Even the request to repent is a request; the poem does not claim it can turn on its own.
19 You, Yahweh, remain forever. Your throne is from generation to generation. 20 Why do you forget us forever, and forsake us for so long a time? 21 Turn us to yourself, Yahweh, and we will be turned. Renew our days as of old. 22 But you have utterly rejected us. You are very angry against us.
Scripture text: World English Bible (public domain).