Lamentations 5

[Woody]

We are studying the LDS Standard Works, a chapter a day.

Please post your thoughts on this chapter, commentary written by others on topics related to this chapter, related passages from other chapters, etc. We all benefit from discussion.

Consider: "My motto was always to keep swinging. Whether I was in a slump or feeling badly or having trouble off the field, the only thing to do was keep swinging." -Hank Aaron

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Lamentations 5

(Old Testament)

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

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

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

4 We have drunken our water for money; our wood is sold unto us.

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

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

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

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

9 We gat our bread with the peril of our lives because of the sword of the wilderness.

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

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

12 Princes are hanged up by their hand: the faces of elders were not honoured.

13 They took the young men to grind, and the children fell under the wood.

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

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, that we have sinned!

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

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

19 Thou, O LORD, remainest for ever; thy throne 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 But thou hast utterly rejected us; thou art very wroth against us.

[Bill “Papa” Lee]

This is much like the prayer of JS in D&C 121, from the heart in hopeless despair.

D&C 121: 1-6

1 O GOD, where art thou? And where is the pavilion that covereth thy hiding place?

2 How long shall thy hand be stayed, and thine eye, yea thy pure eye, behold from the eternal heavens the wrongs of thy people and of thy servants, and thine ear be penetrated with their cries?

3 Yea, O Lord, how long shall they suffer these wrongs and unlawful oppressions, before thine heart shall be softened toward them, and thy bowels be moved with compassion toward them?

4 O Lord God Almighty, maker of heaven, earth, and seas, and of all things that in them are, and who controllest and subjectest the devil, and the dark and benighted dominion of Sheol

[Woody]

This is much like the prayer of JS in D&C 121, from the heart in hopeless despair.

Wow, that IS a lot like.

cf. Psalm 79. Here also the call for vengeance. Seems like this is what people call for when they've been thoroughly beat up.

Wood

[Smith]

Well Lamentations was surely aptly named.

Clearly these people have had a very hard time. They feel rejected of the Lord. They feel their fathers have sinned and they have born the brunt of the punishment dealt out. They are looking for their burdens to be lightened, they are looking for redemption. It seems like they are at a point where they are returning to God.

I am reminded of where the scriptures talk of (and for the life of me I cant remember where) the Lord deeming it necessary to give us a hard time because when it becomes easy we forget him too quickly. It seems to me that we need to be brought down in humility because otherwise we forget so quickly even to do the basics, even to just be grateful to him in prayer for our many blessings. If only we would climb up out of that rut and accelerate on towards eternal life, why don't we learn that lesson. At least that's how I see things and that's what this chapter has conjured up in my mind.