A Prayer for Mercy and Restoration

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 drank our water for money; our wood is sold to 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 doth deliver us out of their hand.

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

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

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

12Princes were hanged by their hand: the faces of elders were not honored.

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

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

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

16The crown is fallen from our head: woe to 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.

19Thou, O LORD, remainest for ever; thy throne from generation to generation.

20Why dost thou forget us for ever, and forsake us so long time?

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

22But thou hast utterly rejected us; thou art very wroth against us.