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¹ Remember, O LORD, what is come upon us; behold, and see our reproach.² Our inheritance is turned unto strangers, our houses unto aliens.³ We are become orphans and fatherless, our mothers are as widows.⁴ We have drunk our water for money; our wood cometh to us for price.⁵ To our very necks we are pursued; we labour, and have no rest.⁶ We have given the hand to Egypt, and to Assyria, to have bread enough;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 hot like an oven because of the burning heat of famine.¹¹ They have ravished the women in Zion, the maidens in the cities of Judah.¹² Princes are hanged up by their hand; the faces of elders are not honoured.¹³ The young men have borne the mill, and the children 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 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, art enthroned 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 Thou canst not have utterly rejected us, and be exceeding wroth against us!