Lamentations 5:5
What does Lamentations 5:5 mean?
A plain-English look at Lamentations 5:5 in WEB alongside six other public-domain English translations, with cross-references and chapter context.
What Lamentations 5:5 means
Their oppressors ride “upon our necks,” an image of constant pressure and domination. They are driven to weariness without rest—no Sabbath pause, no margin to recover. This captures the dehumanizing nature of servitude and conquest: people reduced to beasts of burden, breathless and pushed beyond their limits. The line expresses both physical exhaustion and spiritual fatigue. Even as they confess sin elsewhere, they ask God to see the cruelty of their present state. Lament does both—owns guilt and appeals for relief from excessive oppression. Only Jehovah can grant true rest to a people bowed under such weight.
Parallel translations
WEB
World English Bible · 2000Our pursuers are upon our necks: We are weary, and have no rest.
KJV
King James Version · 1611Our necks are under persecution: we labour, and have no rest.
ASV
American Standard Version · 1901Our pursuers are upon our necks: We are weary, and have no rest.
BBE
Bible in Basic English · 1949Our attackers are on our necks: overcome with weariness, we have no rest.
YLT
Young's Literal Translation · 1862For our neck we have been pursued, We have laboured--there hath been no rest for us.
DRA
Douay-Rheims (Challoner) · 1752We were dragged by the necks, we were weary and no rest was given us.
DBY
Darby Bible · 1890Our pursuers are on our necks: we are weary, we have no rest.
Context
The description of scarcity (paying for basics) now blends into unrelenting harassment. Verse 5 intensifies the picture of bondage. Next, the prayer will recall how they stretched out hands to Egypt and Assyria for bread—a humiliating reliance that failed them. The flow shows that human alliances and toil could not save them; this prepares for the later turn to God’s eternal throne as their only hope.
Cross references
Related passages from across Scripture, drawn from the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge.
- Nehemiah 9:36
Behold, we are servants this day, and as for the land that thou gavest unto our fathers to eat the fruit thereof and the good thereof, behold, we are servants in it.
- Deuteronomy 28:48
therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies that Jehovah shall send against thee, in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things: and he shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until he have destroyed thee.
- Acts 15:10
Now therefore why make ye trial of God, that ye should put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?
- Jeremiah 27:8
And it shall come to pass, that the nation and the kingdom which will not serve the same Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and that will not put their neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon, that nation will I punish, saith Jehovah, with the sword, and with the famine, and with the pestilence, until I have consumed them by his hand.
- Jeremiah 27:2
Thus saith Jehovah to me: Make thee bonds and bars, and put them upon thy neck;
- Jeremiah 28:14
For thus saith Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel: I have put a yoke of iron upon the neck of all these nations, that they may serve Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon; and they shall serve him: and I have given him the beasts of the field also.
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