A Prayer for Restoration
5 Remember, O Lord, what has come upon us;
look, and see our reproach!
2 Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers,
our homes to foreigners.
3 We have become orphans and fatherless;
our mothers are like widows.
4 We must pay for the water we drink;
our wood is sold to us.
5 Our pursuers are at our necks;
we labor and have no rest.
6 We have given our hand to Egypt and to Assyria,
to be satisfied with bread.
7 Our fathers sinned and are no more,
but we bear their iniquities.
8 Slaves rule over us;
there is no one to deliver us from their hand.
9 We get our bread at the peril of our lives,
because of the sword in the wilderness.
10 Our skin is hot as an oven,
because of the terrible famine.
11 They ravished the women in Zion,
the virgins in the cities of Judah.
12 Princes were hung up by their hands,
the faces of elders were not honored.
13 Young men ground at the millstones;
boys staggered under loads of wood.
14 The elders have left the city gate,
the young men stopped their music.
15 The joy of our hearts has ceased;
our dancing has turned into mourning.
16 The crown has fallen from our head;
woe to us, for we have sinned!
17 For this our heart is faint;
for these things our eyes grow dim;
18 because of Mount Zion, which is desolate,
with foxes walking upon it.
19 You, O Lord, remain forever;
Your throne endures from generation to generation.
20 Why do You forget us forever,
and forsake us for so long a time?
21 Restore us to Yourself, O Lord, that we may return!
Renew our days as of old,
22 unless You have utterly rejected us,
and are very angry with us.
