A Prayer for Mercy

51 Keep in mind, O Lord, what has come to us: take note and see our shame. 2 Our heritage is given up to men of strange lands, our houses to those who are not our countrymen. 3 We are children without fathers, our mothers are like widows. 4 We give money for a drink of water, we get our wood for a price. 5 Our attackers are on our necks: overcome with weariness, we have no rest. 6 We have given our hands to the Egyptians and to the Assyrians so that we might have enough bread. 7 Our fathers were sinners and are dead; and the weight of their evil-doing is on us. 8 Servants are ruling over us, and there is no one to make us free from their hands. 9 We put our lives in danger to get our bread, because of the sword of the waste land. 10 Our skin is heated like an oven because of our burning heat from need of food. 11 They took by force the women in Zion, the virgins in the towns of Judah. 12 Their hands put princes to death by hanging: the faces of old men were not honoured. 13 The young men were crushing the grain, and the boys were falling under the wood. 14 The old men are no longer seated in the doorway, and the music of the young men has come to an end. 15 The joy of our hearts is ended; our dancing is changed into sorrow. 16 The crown has been taken from our head: sorrow is ours, for we are sinners.

Matthew Henry's Commentary on Lamentations 5:1-16

Commentary on Lamentations 5:1-16

(Read Lamentations 5:1-16)

Is any afflicted? Let him pray; and let him in prayer pour out his complaint to God. The people of God do so here; they complain not of evils feared, but of evils felt. If penitent and patient under what we suffer for the sins of our fathers, we may expect that He who punishes, will return in mercy to us. They acknowledge, Woe unto us that we have sinned! All our woes are owing to our own sin and folly. Though our sins and God's just displeasure cause our sufferings, we may hope in his pardoning mercy, his sanctifying grace, and his kind providence. But the sins of a man's whole life will be punished with vengeance at last, unless he obtains an interest in Him who bare our sins in his own body on the tree.