A Prayer for Mercy and Restoration

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

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

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

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

5Our pursuers are upon our necks: we are weary, 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 rule over us: there is none to deliver us out of their hand.

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

10Our skin is black like an oven because of the burning heat of famine.

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

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

13The young men bare the mill, and the children stumbled under the wood.

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

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

16The crown is fallen from our head: woe unto us! for we have sinned.

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

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

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

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

21Turn thou us unto 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.