Old Testament · Poetry

Lamentations 5

Remember, O Lord

Remember what has happened to us. Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers. The book ends not with resolution but with a question: have You utterly rejected us?

King James Version BSB KJV

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.

Understand This

Lamentations 5, explained

What Lamentations 5 is saying

The final chapter abandons the acrostic structure—as if even literary order has collapsed—though it retains 22 verses matching the Hebrew alphabet count. The community pleads: Remember, LORD, what has happened to us. They describe the daily humiliations of occupation: stolen inheritance, purchased water, relentless labor. The closing question—'unless You have utterly rejected us'—is left hauntingly unanswered.

The background behind it

This communal prayer likely reflects conditions in Judah after 586 BC under Babylonian administration and local exploitation. The abandoned acrostic form has been interpreted as a literary reflection of the community's disorientation—form itself has broken under the weight of suffering.

Themes running underneath

The unanswered ending is the chapter's most powerful theological feature. Unlike psalms of lament that typically resolve in praise, Lamentations refuses closure. The open-ended question forces every subsequent generation to supply its own answer—or to sit with the ambiguity.

Why it still matters

The unresolved ending validates the experience of faith without resolution. Not every prayer receives an immediate answer, and Lamentations authorizes the community of faith to sit with unanswered questions rather than manufacturing false closure.

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Scripture text: King James Version — public domain.