Bible Strands
Lamentations 5:3
We have become fatherless orphans; our mothers are widows.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The collective voice of Judah addresses God, describing their condition immediately after Jerusalem's destruction. The speaker reports their status following the loss of inherited land and private dwellings.
The words — The Hebrew יְתוֹמִים (ye.to.Mim) translates literally to "fatherless ones," while the phrase כְּאַלְמָנוֹת (ke./'al.ma.Not) means "like widows." These terms document the collapse of family structures rather than isolated personal loss.
The thread — This imagery of forced orphanhood and widowhood appears in Exodus 22:24 as a covenant warning, and reappears in Jeremiah 15:8 and Jeremiah 18:21 as prophetic judgment language. The motif tracks the systematic unraveling of social order under divine penalty.
Why it lands — The verse requires the reader to acknowledge total institutional collapse rather than individual grief. It demands a clear-eyed assessment of how judgment removes foundational protections and leaves communities without legal or familial recourse.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
We are orphans and fatherless, our mothers are as widows.
Cross-references
- Exodus 22:24 My anger will be kindled, and I will kill you with the sword; then your wives will become widows and your children will be fatherless.
- Jeremiah 18:21 Therefore, hand their children over to famine; pour out the power of the sword upon them. Let their wives become childless and widowed; let their husbands be slain by disease, their young men struck down by the sword in battle.
- Jeremiah 15:8 I will make their widows more numerous than the sand of the sea. I will bring a destroyer at noon against the mothers of young men. I will suddenly bring upon them anguish and dismay.
- Hosea 14:3 Assyria will not save us, nor will we ride on horses. We will never again say, ‘Our gods!’ to the work of our own hands. For in You the fatherless find compassion.”