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Summary

Lamentations 5:1–18 – Shared losses and broken life

What happens: The people ask God to remember their disgrace. Strangers hold their land, and they become orphans and debtors. They face hunger, violence, and shame. Joy fades, elders are dishonored, and Mount Zion lies desolate with wild animals roaming.

What it means: Sin’s fallout is communal and touches every layer of life. Lament joins personal sorrow to corporate confession. God allows this pain to turn hearts back to Him and to teach dependence on His mercy.


Lamentations 5:19–22 – Prayer for restoration

What happens: They confess that the Lord reigns forever and His throne endures. They ask why He seems to forget and plead for restoration to Himself. They ask to be renewed unless He has utterly rejected them. The book ends with a prayer hanging in hope.

What it means: Real hope centers on God’s unchanging rule and presence. Restoration is first to God, then to circumstances. Faith keeps praying even when answers feel delayed, trusting His covenant mercy.


Application

  • Pray as a community about shared sins and wounds, not only private needs.
  • Ask God to restore you to Himself before asking for changed circumstances.
  • Hold to God’s reign when feelings say He is distant, and keep praying.```

Bible

1Remember, O LORD, what is come upon us: consider, and behold our reproach.

2Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens.

3We are orphans and fatherless, our mothers are as widows.

4We have drunken our water for money; our wood is sold unto us.

5Our necks are under persecution: we labour, and have no rest.

6We have given the hand to the Egyptians, and to the Assyrians, to be satisfied with bread.

7Our fathers have sinned, and are not; and we have borne their iniquities.

8Servants have ruled over us: there is none that doth deliver us out of their hand.

9We gat our bread with the peril of our lives because of the sword of the wilderness.

10Our skin was black like an oven because of the terrible famine.

11They ravished the women in Zion, and the maids in the cities of Judah.

12Princes are hanged up by their hand: the faces of elders were not honoured.

13They took the young men to grind, and the children fell under the wood.

14The elders have ceased from the gate, the young men from their musick.

15The joy of our heart is ceased; our dance is turned into mourning.

16The crown is fallen from our head: woe unto us, that we have sinned!

17For this our heart is faint; for these things our eyes are dim.

18Because of the mountain of Zion, which is desolate, the foxes walk upon it.

19Thou, O LORD, remainest for ever; thy throne from generation to generation.

20Wherefore dost thou forget us for ever, and forsake us so long time?

21Turn thou us unto thee, O LORD, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old.

22But thou hast utterly rejected us; thou art very wroth against us.

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