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¹ Remember, O what is LORD, come upon us: behold, and see our reproach.² Our inheritance is turned unto strangers, our houses unto aliens.³ We are orphans and fatherless, our mothers are as widows.⁴ We have drunken our water for money; our wood is sold unto us.⁵ Our pursuers are upon our necks: we are weary, and have no rest.⁶ We have given the hand to the Egyptians, and to the Assyrians, to be satisfied with bread.⁷ Our fathers have sinned, and are not; and we have borne their iniquities.⁸ Servants rule over us: there is none to deliver us out of their hand.⁹ We get our bread with the peril of our lives because of the sword of the wilderness.¹⁰ Our skin is black like an oven because of the burning heat of famine.¹¹ They ravished the women in Zion, the maidens in the cities of Judah.¹² Princes were hanged up by their hand: the faces of elders were not honoured.¹³ The young men bare the mill, and the children stumbled under the wood.¹⁴ The elders have ceased from the gate, the young men from their music.¹⁵ The joy of our heart is ceased; our dance is turned into mourning.¹⁶ The crown is fallen from our head: woe unto us! for we have sinned.

¹⁷ For this our heart is faint; for these things our eyes are dim;¹⁸ For the mountain of Zion, which is desolate; the foxes walk upon it.¹⁹ Thou, O LORD, abidest for ever; thy throne is from generation to generation.²⁰ Wherefore dost thou forget us for ever, and forsake us so long time?²¹ Turn thou us unto thee, O LORD, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old.²² But thou hast utterly rejected us, thou art very wroth against us.