Lamentations 5:1

A Final Plea for God's Remembrance

Many scholars have mentioned the differences of this chapter from the preceding four. Although it has exactly twenty two verses in the same pattern as the others, it is not an acrostic. Furthermore, it is not primarily a dirge, but a national prayer, most probably written by Jeremiah upon behalf of the beleaguered people of God. In its conclusion, it rises above all the sorrows in the magnificent appeal to Him whose throne is forever and ever. The final appeal for God to "turn Israel" unto himself should be the prayer of the Church in every generation. May God "turn us all" unto Him, who alone is our hope of eternal life.

Lamentations 5:1

"Remember, O Jehovah, what has come upon us:

Behold and see our reproach."

In faithful submission to God's will, this lays the profound burden of the people's anguish before the Lord, pleading merely for him to look upon it and to behold the manifold wretchedness of their condition. Their king Hezekiah, when Sennacherib threatened the city, did a similar thing, when he spread the insulting message of the Assyrian king before the presence of God in the Temple (2 Kings 19:14). Price called this chapter, "A national prayer to Jehovah, Zion's only hope and help."[1] "It is not a dirge, but a nation's prayer for compassion."[2] Nevertheless, the Douay Version heads this chapter as, "The Prayer of Jeremiah." It was the prophet's prayer for the suffering nation.