Lamentations 5:3

We are orphans and fatherless, our mothers are as widows. WE ARE ... FATHERLESS - our whole land is full of orphans (Calvin). Or, "we are fatherless," being abandoned by thee our "Father" (). (Grotius.)...

Here the Prophet not only speaks in the person of the whole people, but utters also the groans and complaints of each; for this could not have been suitable to the whole Church, as he speaks of fathers and mothers. We hence see that this verse does not apply to the whole body, but to individual members, though every one of the people might have said that widows and orphans were everywhere seen. Now, this usually happens when a nation is consumed either by pestilence or by war; for in one battle all do not so fall that a whole country becomes full of orphans. But the Prophet sets forth here the orphanage and widowhood occasioned through the continued vengeance of God, for he had not ceased to afflict the people until by degrees they were exhausted. It was, indeed, a sad spectacle to see among the chosen people so many widows, and also so many children deprived of their fathers. It follow...

1-16 Is any afflicted? Let him pray; and let him in prayer pour out his complaint to God. The people of God do so here; they complain not of evils feared, but of evils felt. If penitent and patient under what we suffer for the sins of our fathers, we may expect that He who punishes, will return in mercy to us. They acknowledge, Woe unto us that we have sinned! All our woes are owing to our own sin and folly. Though our sins and God's just displeasure cause our sufferings, we may hope in his pardoning mercy, his sanctifying grace, and his kind providence. But the sins of a man's whole life will be punished with vengeance at last, unless he obtains an interest in Him who bare our sins in his own body on the tree....

OUR MOTHERS ARE AS WIDOWS - The particle “as” suggests that the whole verse is metaphorical. Our distress and desolation is comparable only to that of fatherless orphans or wives just bereaved of their husbands....

EXPOSITION LAMENTATIONS 5:1 INSULT UPON INSULT HAS BEEN HEAPED UPON JERUSALEM. LAMENTATIONS 5:2 OUR INHERITANCE. The land had been "given" to Abraham (Genesis 13:1; Genesis 17:8), and was consequently inherited by Abraham's posterity. OUR HOUSES. Not as it the Chaldeans had actually taken up their abode in some of the houses of Jerusalem. The expressions are forcible, but inexact. The land wa

WE ARE ORPHANS AND FATHERLESS,.... In every sense; in a natural sense, their fathers having been cut off by the sword, famine, or pestilence; in a civil sense, their king being taken from them; and in a religious sense, God having forsaken them for their sins: OUR MOTHERS [ARE] AS WIDOWS; either really so, their husbands being dead; or were as if they had no husbands, they not being able to provide for them, protect and deferred them. The Targum adds, "whose husbands are gone to the cities of the sea, and it is doubtful whether they are alive.'' Some understand this politically, of their cities being desolate and defenceless....

CHAPTER 5 THE PRAYER OF HOPE The lamentations end with a prayer: “Remember, O LORD, what is come upon us; consider and behold our reproach.” It is the prayer of confession and of hope, which reaches the heart of the God of Israel. The prophet, in behalf of the nation, pours out his confession: “The crown is fallen from our head; woe unto us that we have sinned.” And there is hope in the Lord who remaineth, whose throne is from generation to generation. The prayer, “Turn Thou us unto Thee, O LORD, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old.” (Lamentations 5:21) will some day be blessedly answered. The Eightieth Psalm contains the same prayer a number of times, and there He is mentioned who will yet save His people Israel from their sins. “Let Thy hand be upon the Man of Thy right hand, upon the Son of Man whom Thou madest strong for Thyself. So will not we go back from Th

LAMENTATIONS 5. A PRAYER. This chapter differs much from the previous four. It is not a Lament, but one long pleading; and it is not the chant of an individual, but of a company, a plural, we. It may be called a hexameter poem, having six and not five beats in each of its twenty-two lines; it keeps, however, to this alphabetical number of lines, although it is not an alphabetic acrostic. Possibly, the composer intended to think out later other initial words for his lines, and thus to make them acrostic: so it may be an acrostic in the making. But it may perhaps have been appended to the book as a sort of satire on the alphabetic fancies of chs. 1- 4. It is not deeply spiritual, and yet at the close there comes a pathetic and even affectionate appeal to God. The cry in Lamentations 5:1 opens the prayer; then in...

_orphans and fatherless_ the fathers being in exile and the mothers thus "as widows," without protection....

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX A PENITENT NATION Lamentations 5:1-22 The form of the fifth poem differs in at least two respects from the four which precede it. First, this poem is not in the acrostic form. But like Chapter s 1, 2 and 4 it does have twenty-two verses which indicates that these five poems belong together. Secondly, chapter 5 is a prayer and not a dirge. While the poem does contain a recital of the miseries recently suffered by the people, the purpose of the poet here is to appeal to the compassion of God so as to gain His help. The poem consists of two unequal parts. (1) In Lamentations 5:1-18 the poet describes the present reproach of Zion, and (2) in Lamentat