5:1ffAta time of grief, the true believer should turn to God in prayer. Here Jeremiah prayed for mercy for his people. At the end of his prayer, he wondered if God had “utterly rejected” his people because of his great anger toward them. But God would not stay angry with them forever. “You will not stay angry with your people forever, because you delight in showing unfailing love” (Micah 7:18).
Life Application Study BibleLamentationsChapter 5
Lamentations 5
New Living Translation · Life Application Study Bible · Original pages: 1304, 1305
A few verse numbers on this page were hard to read in the scan and are marked with a dotted underline — compare with the original page image if in doubt.
5Lamentations 5
1See how we have been disgraced!
2Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers,our homes to foreigners.
3We are orphaned and fatherless.Our mothers are widowed.
4We have to pay for water to drink,and even firewood is expensive.
5Those who pursue us are at our heels;we are exhausted but are given no rest.
6We submitted to Egypt and Assyriato get enough food to survive.
7Our ancestors sinned, but they have died—and we are suffering the punishment they deserved!
8Slaves have now become our masters;there is no one left to rescue us.
9We hunt for food at the risk of our lives,for violence rules the countryside.
10The famine has blackened our skinas though baked in an oven.
11Our enemies rape the women in Jerusalemm*and the young girls in ail the towns of Judah.
12Our princes are being hanged by their thumbs,and our elders are treated with contempt.
13Young men are led away to work at millstones,and boys stagger under heavy loads of wood.
14The elders no longer sit in the city gates;the young men no longer dance and sing.
15Joy has left our hearts;our dancing has turned to mourning.
16The garlands have* fallen from our heads.Weep for us because we have sinned.
17Our hearts are sick and weary,and our eyes grow dim with tears.
18For Jerusalem* is empty and desolate,a place haunted by jackals.
19But LORD, you remain the same forever!Your throne continues from generation to generation.
20Why do you continue to forget us?Why have you abandoned us for so long?
21Restore us, O LORD, and bring us back to you again!Give us back the joys we once had!
22Or have you utterly rejected us?Are you angry with us still?
Textual footnotes
- 5:16 Or The crown has, 5:18 Hebrew Mount Zion.
Life Application Notes 3 notes
5:14During peace and prosperity, the leaders and elders of the city would sit at the city gate and talk over politics. theology, and philosophy, and conduct business. As Jeremiah prayed, he saw fewer and fewer evidences of either the healthy interaction or the lighthearted dancing of their former lives under God's biessing. They had lost even the everyday events they had assumed would always be there. A lack of continual gratefuiness to God often indicates that we are taking the goodness of life for granted.
5:22Ahigh calling flouted by iow living results in deep suffering. Lamentations gives us a portrait of the bitter suffering the people of Jerusalem experienced when sin caught up with them and God turned his back on them. Every material goal they had lived for collapsed. But although God turned away from them because of their sin, he did not abandon them—that was their great hope. Despite their sinful past, God would restore them if they returned to him. Hope is found only in the LORD. Thus, our grief should turn us toward him, not away from him.