The Bible

 

Lamentations 5

Study

   

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

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

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

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

5 Our necks are under persecution: we labour, and have no rest.

6 We have given the hand to the Egyptians, and to the Assyrians, to be satisfied with bread.

7 Our fathers have sinned, and are not; and we have borne their iniquities.

8 Servants have ruled over us: there is none that doth deliver us out of their hand.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   

Commentary

 

Skin

  

'Skins' or 'hides' signify external things, because the hide is the outermost organ of an animal where its interiors extend, the same as with a person's dermis or skin. 'Skin' corresponds to truth or to falsity in the extremes. See Arcana Coelestia 1835, 10036, and Apocalypse Explained 386. 'Skin,' as in Job 19:26, means the natural degree a person has with him after death.

In Exodus 22:27, this signifies things that are relatively external. (Arcana Coelestia 9215)

In Exodus 34:29, this signifies the internal of the Word shining from the external. (Arcana Coelestia 10691)

In Job 19:20, this signifies being not entirely in falsities. (Apocalypse Explained 556[11])

In Jeremiah 13:23, this signifies that evil cannot change its nature. (Apocalypse Explained 780[5])

In Genesis 3:21, this signifies that the Lord instructed them in spiritual and natural good. (Arcana Coelestia 292)

In Genesis 27:16, this signifies the external truths of domestic good. (Arcana Coelestia 3540)