Read the Bible

¹ 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!

¹⁷ For this our heart is faint; for these things our eyes have grown dim,

¹⁸ Because of the mountain of Zion, which is desolate: foxes walk over it.

¹⁹ Thou, Jehovah, dwellest for ever; thy throne is from generation to generation.

²⁰ Wherefore dost thou forget us for ever, dost thou forsake us so long time?

²¹ Turn thou us unto thee, Jehovah, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old.

²² Or is it that thou hast utterly rejected us? Wouldest thou be exceeding wroth against us?