5. Jeremiah pleads for restoration
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. +