3. We are orphaned and fatherless.Our mothers are widowed.
4. We have to pay for water to drink,and even firewood is expensive.
5. Those who pursue us are at our heels;we are exhausted but are given no rest.
6. We submitted to Egypt and Assyriato get enough food to survive.
7. Our ancestors sinned, but they have died—and we are suffering the punishment they deserved!
8. Slaves have now become our masters;there is no one left to rescue us.
9. We hunt for food at the risk of our lives,for violence rules the countryside.
10. The famine has blackened our skinas though baked in an oven.
11. Our enemies rape the women in Jerusalemand the young girls in all the towns of Judah.
12. Our princes are being hanged by their thumbs,and our elders are treated with contempt.
13. Young men are led away to work at millstones,and boys stagger under heavy loads of wood.
14. The elders no longer sit in the city gates;the young men no longer dance and sing.