A Prayer to God

1Remember, O LORD, what is come upon us: consider, and behold our reproach.

2Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens.

3We are orphans and fatherless, our mothers are as widows.

4We have drunk our water at a price; our wood is sold unto us.

5Our necks are under persecution: we labor, and have no rest.

6We have given the hand to the Egyptians, and to the Assyrians, to be satisfied with bread.

7Our fathers have sinned, and are not; and we have borne their iniquities.

8Servants have ruled over us: there is none that does deliver us out of their hand.

9We got our bread at the peril of our lives because of the sword in the wilderness.

10Our skin was black like an oven because of the terrible famine.

11They ravished the women in Zion, and the maidens in the cities of Judah.

12Princes were hung up by their hands: the faces of elders were not honored.

13They took the young men to grind, and the children stagger under loads of wood.

14The elders have ceased from the gate, the young men from their music.

15The joy of our heart has ceased; our dance has turned into mourning.

16The crown has fallen from our head: woe unto us, that we have sinned!

17For this our heart is faint; for these things our eyes are dim.

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

19You, O LORD, remain forever; your throne from generation to generation.

20Why do you forget us forever, and forsake us for so long a time?

21Turn us back to you, O LORD, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old.

22But you have utterly rejected us; you are very angry against us.