Lamentations Five
by Dr. Henry M. Morris
(taken from the Defender's Study Bible)
Lamentations 5:1 Remember, O LORD, what is come upon us: consider, and behold our reproach.
our reproach. The concluding lamentation is not acrostic in its structure like the others, but it does have twenty-two verses like they do. It expressed both hopelessness and hope in the nature of God and His purpose.
Lamentations 5:2 Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens.
Lamentations 5:3 We are orphans and fatherless, our mothers are as widows.
Lamentations 5:4 We have drunken our water for money; our wood is sold unto us.
Lamentations 5:5 Our necks are under persecution: we labour, and have no rest.
Lamentations 5:7 Our fathers have sinned, and are not; and we have borne their iniquities.
Lamentations 5:8 Servants have ruled over us: there is none that doth deliver us out of their hand.
Lamentations 5:10 Our skin was black like an oven because of the terrible famine.
Lamentations 5:11 They ravished the women in Zion, and the maids in the cities of Judah.
Lamentations 5:12 Princes are hanged up by their hand: the faces of elders were not honoured.
Lamentations 5:13 They took the young men to grind, and the children fell under the wood.
Lamentations 5:14 The elders have ceased from the gate, the young men from their music.
Lamentations 5:15 The joy of our heart is ceased; our dance is turned into mourning.
Lamentations 5:16 The crown is fallen from our head: woe unto us, that we have sinned!
The crown is fallen. As Jeremiah had prophesied, the crown would pass permanently from the line of King Jehoiachin (Jeconiah), and there would never again be a king in Judah until Messiah would be crowned as king (Jeremiah 22:30; Genesis 49:10; Jeremiah 23:5).
Lamentations 5:17 For this our heart is faint; for these things our eyes are dim.
Lamentations 5:18 Because of the mountain of Zion, which is desolate, the foxes walk upon it.
Lamentations 5:19 Thou, O LORD, remainest for ever; thy throne from generation to generation.
remainest for ever. God is “from everlasting to everlasting” (Psalm 90:2), and this is the ultimate answer to every question, and solution to every problem.
Lamentations 5:20 Wherefore dost thou forget us for ever, and forsake us so long time?
Lamentations 5:21 Turn thou us unto thee, O LORD, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old.
Lamentations 5:22 But thou hast utterly rejected us; thou art very wroth against us.