51 Remember, O Jehovah, what is come upon us; consider, and see our reproach. 2 Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens. 3 We are orphans and fatherless, our mothers are as widows. 4 Our water have we to drink for money, our wood cometh unto us for a price. 5 Our pursuers are on our necks: we are weary, we have no rest. 6 We have given the hand to Egypt, [and] to Asshur, to be satisfied with bread. 7 Our fathers have sinned, [and] they are not; and we bear their iniquities. 8 Bondmen rule over us: there is no deliverer out of their hand. 9 We have to get our bread at the risk of our lives, because of the sword of the wilderness. 10 Our skin gloweth like an oven, because of the burning heat of the famine. 11 They have ravished the women in Zion, the maids in the cities of Judah. 12 Princes were hanged up by their hand; the faces of elders were not honoured. 13 The young men have borne the mill, and the youths have stumbled under the wood. 14 The elders have ceased from the gate, the young men from their music. 15 The joy of our heart hath ceased; our dance is turned into mourning. 16 The crown is fallen from our head: woe unto us, for we have sinned!
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.