1.9 KiB
Prayer for Restoration
Chapter 5
- LORD, remember what has happened to us.
See how we have been disgraced!
- Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers,
our homes to foreigners.
- We are orphaned and fatherless.
Our mothers are widowed.
- We have to pay for water to drink,
and even firewood is expensive.
- Those who pursue us are at our heels;
we are exhausted but are given no rest.
- We submitted to Egypt and Assyria
to get enough food to survive.
- Our ancestors sinned, but they have died--
and we are suffering the punishment they deserved!
- Slaves have now become our masters;
there is no one left to rescue us.
- We hunt for food at the risk of our lives,
for violence rules the countryside.
- The famine has blackened our skin
as though baked in an oven.
- Our enemies rape the women in Jerusalem
and the young girls in all the towns of Judah.
- Our princes are being hanged by their thumbs,
and our elders are treated with contempt.
- Young men are led away to work at millstones,
and boys stagger under heavy loads of wood.
- The elders no longer sit in the city gates;
the young men no longer dance and sing.
- Joy has left our hearts;
our dancing has turned to mourning.
- The garlands have fallen from our heads.
Weep for us because we have sinned.
- Our hearts are sick and weary,
and our eyes grow dim with tears.
- For Jerusalem is empty and desolate,
a place haunted by jackals.
- But LORD, you remain the same forever!
Your throne continues from generation to generation.
- Why do you continue to forget us?
Why have you abandoned us for so long?
- Restore us, O LORD, and bring us back to you again!
Give us back the joys we once had!
- Or have you utterly rejected us?
Are you angry with us still?