Lamentations 5)
1 Remember, O LORD, what is come upon us: consider, and behold our reproach.
2 Our inheritance (i.e. Canan) is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens.
3 We are orphans and fatherless, our mothers are as widows.
4 We have drunken our water for money; our wood is sold to us.
5 Our pursuers are upon our neck: we labor, and no respite was granted us.
6 We have given the hand (put for voluntary submission) to the Egyptians, and to the Assyrians, to be satisfied with bread.
7 Our fathers have sinned, and are not; and we have borne (as a burden) their iniquities.
8 Servants have ruled over us: there is none that does deliver us out of their hand.
9 We brought home our bread with the peril of our soul because of the sword of the wilderness. (Sword put for the raids and fightings of the inhabitants of the wilderness.)
10 Our skin was black like an oven because of the terrible famine.
11 They ravished the wives in Zion, and the maids in the cities of Judah.
12 Princes are hanged up by their hand: the faces (put for the whole person) of elders were not honored. (Kids run over old folks.)
13 They took the young men to grind (i.e. to do women's work, i.e. they had 2 jobs), and the young children staggered under the wood. (I.e. under [the weight or load] of the wood [they were compelled as bond-slaves to carry])
14 The elders have ceased from the gate (were judgment is exercised), the young men from their music. (They are not happy anymore.)
15 The joy of our heart is ceased; our dance is turned into mourning. (They have slipped into a rut.)
16 The crown is fallen from our head: woe to us, that we have sinned! (Do opposite of this. Act like a child of God!)
17 For this (i.e. this sin) our heart is faint; for these things (i.e. loss of king, country, possessions, and liberties) our eyes are dim. (They can't see what's happening.)
18 Because of the mountain of Zion, which is desolate, the jackals (Kenites) walk upon it.
19 You, O LORD, sit (as King) for ever; Your throne from generation to generation.
20 Wherefore will You forget us for ever, and forsake us so long time? (He doesn't, they forgot Him.)
21 Turn (our thoughts) You us to Yourself, O LORD (national repentance was the one abiding condition of nation blessing, and this must be Yehovah's own work), and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old. (1st earth age. See Ps. 51:5-12.)
22 But You have utterly rejected us; You have been very wroth against us.
(In the public reading of the Hebrew text v.21 is repeated after v.22, so that the book may end with comfort. The same is the case with Ecclesiastes, Isaiah, and Malachi. The synagogue use appoints this book to be read on the 1st of Ab, which commemorates the destruction of Jerusalem)